Wyoming
Barrasso bill aims to improve rescue response in national parks
Much of Wyoming outside of Yellowstone and Grand Teton also struggles with emergency response time.
By Katie Klingsporn, WyoFile
Wyoming’s U.S. Sen. John Barrasso is pushing legislation to upgrade emergency communications in national parks — a step he says would improve responses in far-flung areas of parks like Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks.
“This bill improves the speed and accuracy of emergency responders in locating and assisting callers in need of emergency assistance,” Barrasso told members of the National Parks Subcommittee last week during a hearing on the bill. “These moments make a difference between visitors being able to receive quick care and continue their trip or facing more serious medical complications.”
The legislation directs the U.S. Department of the Interior to develop a plan to upgrade National Park Service 911 call centers with next-generation 911 technology.
Among other things, these upgrades would enable them to receive text messages, images and videos in addition to phone calls, enhancing their ability to respond to emergencies or rescues in the parks.
Each year, rangers and emergency services respond to a wide range of calls — from lost hikers to car accidents and grizzly maulings — in the Wyoming parks’ combined 2.5 million acres.
Outside park boundaries, the state’s emergency service providers also face steep challenges, namely achieving financial viability. Many patients, meantime, encounter a lack of uniformity and longer 911 response times in the state’s so-called frontier areas.
Improving the availability of ground ambulance services to respond to 911 calls is a major priority in Wyoming’s recent application for federal Rural Health Transformation Project funds.
Barrasso’s office did not respond to a WyoFile request for comment on the state’s broader EMS challenges by publication time.
The bill from the prominent Wyoming Republican, who serves as Senate Majority Whip, joined a slate of federal proposals the subcommittee considered last week. With other bills related to the official name of North America’s highest mountain, an extra park fee charged to international visitors, the health of a wild horse herd and the use of off-highway vehicles in Capitol Reef National Park, Barrasso’s “Making Parks Safer Act” was among the least controversial.
What’s in it
Barrasso brought the bipartisan act along with Sens. Angus King (I-Maine), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) and John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.).
The bill would equip national park 911 call centers with technological upgrades that would improve and streamline responses, Barrasso said. He noted that hundreds of millions of visitors stream into America’s national parks annually. That includes more than 8 million recreation visits to Wyoming’s national parks in 2024.
“Folks travel from across the world to enjoy the great American outdoors, and for many families, these memories last a lifetime,” he testified. “This is a bipartisan bill that ensures visitors who may need assistance can be reached in an accurate and timely manner.”
The Park Service supports Barrasso’s bill, Mike Caldwell, the agency’s associate director of park planning, facilities and lands, said during the hearing. It’s among several proposals that are “consistent with executive order 14314, ‘Making America Beautiful Again by Improving our National Parks,’” Caldwell said.
“These improvements are largely invisible to visitors, so they strengthen the emergency response without deterring the park’s natural beauty or history,” he said.
Other park issues
National parks have been a topic of contention since President Donald Trump included them in his DOGE efforts in early 2025. Since then, efforts to sell off federal land and strip park materials of historical information that casts a negative light on the country, along with a 43-day government shutdown, have continued to fuel debate over the proper management of America’s parks.
Several of these changes and issues came up during the recent National Parks Subcommittee hearing.
Among them was the recent announcement that resident fee-free dates will change in 2026. Martin Luther King Day and Juneteenth will no longer be included in those days, but visitors won’t have to pay fees on new dates: Flag Day on June 14, which is Trump’s birthday and Oct. 27, Theodore Roosevelt’s birthday.
Conservation organizations and others decried those changes as regressive.
At the hearing, Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM), assured the room that “when this president is in the past, Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth will not only have fee-free national park admission, they will occupy, again, incredible places of pride in our nation’s history.”
Improvements such as the new fee structure “put American families first,” according to the Department of the Interior. “These policies ensure that U.S. taxpayers, who already support the National Park System, continue to enjoy affordable access, while international visitors contribute their fair share to maintaining and improving our parks for future generations,” Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum said in an announcement.
WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.
Wyoming
Wyoming Just Greenlit America’s Largest Data Center Project, and Locals Are Bracing for Impact
As the data center boom overtakes rural America, impacted residents are often divided over whether these facilities help or harm their communities. But the commissioners of Laramie County, Wyoming, are willing to bet that building the largest data center campus in the U.S. will bring in jobs, tax revenue, and long-term economic growth.
On January 6, they unanimously approved two site plans for a proposed power plant and data center campus to be built south of Cheyenne. The power plant project, called the BFC Power and Cheyenne Power Hub, is being developed by Tallgrass Energy. It will ultimately provide electricity to the Project Jade data center campus being built by AI infrastructure company Crusoe.
Crusoe and Tallgrass announced the partnership in July, revealing that the data center campus will open with a capacity of 1.6 gigawatts (GW) but will be designed to scale up to 10 GW. Achieving that maximum capacity would make it the largest single AI campus in the U.S.
Big projects with big impacts
The joint project will now progress to the construction phase in the Switch Grass Industrial Park area, located 8 miles south of Cheyenne, according to documentation obtained by Inside Climate News.
Project Jade will be developed on a 600-acre (243-hectare) parcel of land and will consist of five data centers, two support buildings, and additional supporting infrastructure. The BFC Power and Cheyenne Power Hub project will be built right next door on a 659-acre (267-hectare) parcel and will consist of two power generation facilities plus supporting infrastructure.
Crusoe and Tallgrass expect to begin construction in the first quarter of this year, and the first data center building should be operational by the end of 2027, the Wyoming Tribune Eagle reports.
Before the final vote, the Hyndman Homesites Homeowners Association—which represents a community near the project—wrote a letter to the county commissioners expressing residents’ concerns about drilling deep wells into the local aquifer, gas turbine emissions, the location of wastewater ponds, and other impacts, according to ICN.
Ahead of the final vote, the Hyndman Homesites Homeowners Association, which represents a community near the project, sent a letter to the county commissioners raising concerns about deep aquifer wells, gas turbine emissions, wastewater pond locations, and other impacts, according to ICN.
Studies suggest they’re right to be worried. Researchers have found that data center facilities much smaller than the proposed Jade campus emit harmful air pollutants such as fine particulate matter, guzzle local water resources, and drive up energy bills.
Promises of sustainability
The projects’ developers say they have plans to mitigate local impacts. To reduce the data centers’ water demand, Crusoe intends to implement closed-loop cooling systems that recycle treated water and treatment fluids, according to a 2024 Impact Report.
When Crusoe and Tallgrass announced their partnership in July, they said the data center campus’s proximity to Tallgrass’s existing CO2 sequestration hub will also provide long-term carbon capture solutions for the gas turbines powering the data centers. They added that “future renewable energy developments in the region” could eventually supplement the facilities’ power demand.
Whether these prove to be viable, meaningful solutions remains to be seen. County leadership is apparently comfortable enough with the risks to allow the projects to move forward. The true costs and benefits of their decision won’t become clear until these facilities are operational and the campus begins drawing power, water, and scrutiny at scale.
LARAMIE — The Wyoming Cowboys return to the Arena-Auditorium on Wednesday to host San Diego State in a Mountain West matchup scheduled for a 6 p.m. tipoff on CBS Sports Network.
San Diego State enters the contest tied for first place in the Mountain West, while Wyoming is seeking its 10th home win of the season.
The contest will be broadcast on the Cowboy Sports Network across 26 affiliate stations with Keith Kelley on the call and Kevin McKinney providing color commentary. In Sweetwater County, the game can be heard on KUGR 104.9 FM.
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Wyoming comes into the game with an 11-5 overall record and a 2-3 mark in conference play after a road loss to Nevada on Saturday. The Cowboys are averaging 84 points per game, which ranks second in the conference, while allowing 72.7 points per contest. Wyoming is shooting 48 percent from the field and holding opponents to 44 percent. The Cowboys average 8.3 3-pointers per game, while opponents make 6.4, and Wyoming leads the Mountain West at 38 rebounds per game.
San Diego State is 11-4 overall and 5-0 in conference play after winning eight of its last nine games. The Aztecs are tied atop the Mountain West standings with Utah State. San Diego State averages 82.5 points per game and allows 72.8. The Aztecs are shooting 48 percent from the field while holding opponents to 40 percent, and they average 37.6 rebounds and 17.1 assists per game.
Leland Walker leads Wyoming in scoring at 14.5 points per game and also averages a team-high 3.8 assists, ranking seventh in the conference. Nasir (Naz) Meyer is averaging 13.8 points and 5.1 rebounds per game while shooting 52 percent from the field. Khaden Bennett adds 9.8 points per game and ranks second on the team with 4.8 rebounds per contest. Bennett ranks fourth in the Mountain West, shooting over 87 percent from the free throw line, and is second on the team with 41 assists.
San Diego State is led in scoring by BJ Davis at 12.1 points per game. He is shooting 44 percent from 3-point range and is tied for the team lead with 21 made 3-pointers. Reese Dixon-Waters averages 11.1 points per game and also has 21 3-pointers on the season. Miles Heide leads the Aztecs with 5.4 rebounds per game, and San Diego State has seven players averaging at least three rebounds per contest.
The Cowboys trail the all-time series 53-42, with the first meeting dating back to Jan. 12, 1979. Wyoming holds a 27-14 record at home against the Aztecs. San Diego State won both meetings last season by a combined five points.
Wyoming will return to the road Saturday to face Fresno State at 5 p.m. MT in a game on the Mountain West Network.
CASPER, Wyo. — The University of Wyoming has produced several NFL players currently making an impact. Here’s how they did in the most recent week’s slate of games.
Josh Allen, Buffalo Bills
Allen was explosive for the Bills on Sunday, and Buffalo survived its playoff opener against the Jacksonville Jaguars 27–24.
Allen accounted for three of his team’s four touchdowns, two coming on the ground and the third coming by way of the pass. He threw for 273 yards on 80% efficiency, also picking up 33 yards via the rushing game.
Allen and the Bills have advanced past the Wild Card round of the playoffs every year since 2020.
In the divisional round, the Bills will face the top seed in the AFC, the Denver Broncos.
Frank Crum, Denver Broncos
Crum and the Broncos were off last week, as they earned a bye in the playoffs as the top AFC seed.
Crum will take the field against the Buffalo Bills and reigning MVP and fellow UW alum Josh Allen in the divisional round.
Marcus Epps, Philadelphia Eagles
Epps had a respectable day for the Eagles, though the team ultimately fell 23–19 to the San Francisco 49ers, marking the end of their season.
Epps had a trio of tackles for the Eagles’ secondary unit in the loss.
The former Wyoming Cowboy finishes the year with 24 tackles, including one for a loss.
Chad Muma, New England Patriots
The New England Patriots easily handled their Wild Card opponents, beating the Los Angeles Chargers 16–3. However, Muma had little impact on the result in limited playing time.
In the victory, Muma failed to record a statistic. He only took the field for 13 special teams snaps and did not play a defensive down.
The Patriots will move on to face the Houston Texans in the next round of the playoffs.
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