Wyoming
Cowboy State Daily Video News: Thursday, July 18, 2024
The future of coal may not be as a fuel source for power plants to produce and provide electricity.
Ramaco Resources Inc.’s research facility in Ranchester will help the East Coast metallurgical coal company determine the quality and kinds of critical rare earth magnets buried at different layers of strata below the foothills of the Bighorn Mountains, according to energy reporter Pat Maio.
“There’s three things that you can do with coal. One is burn it in a power plant. There’s also metallurgical coal, used in steelmaking, and the third thing, which is what they’re really focusing on here in Wyoming, is converting or tapping into mined coal and then tap it to make rare earths. And this is a big project, they were estimating that they could have over 30 plus billion dollars worth of rare earths in the ground outside of Ranchester.”
The rare earths find in upstate Wyoming near Sheridan is considered one of the biggest in the United States, if not the world.
Read the full story HERE.
When inclement weather hits central Wyoming, folks who need to travel between Shoshoni and Thermopolis in central Wyoming get a little nervous. If there is significant rockfall on the highway, or a major traffic accident occurs, waits can take hours and sometimes days.
So Wyoming transportation officials are studying alternative routes or detours around the Wind River Canyon Scenic Byway between, according to Cowboy State Daily’s Jackie Dorothy.
“So the Wind River Canyon Scenic Byway resilience study is about safety. But it’s also about more. It’s about, what are their options? Can they make another route to go around? Will it be a full time road? Or will it just be a detour that they can use in case of an emergency? And then the question comes up, who will take care of that detour route? Will it be the county or will it be the state? Or will it even be a federal road? These are all questions that WYDOT is hoping that this study will help them answer.”
WYDOT has secured a $1.6 million federal grant for the Wind River Canyon Corridor Resilience Study, part of the Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity program.
Read the full story HERE.
One Wyoming man died and one was injured Tuesday after a semi truck reportedly tried to beat a train to a temporary crossing on a curved Nebraska highway.
The crash occurred in the far southwest corner of Nebraska, near the Wyoming and Colorado borders. But Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that there is more to the crash than meets the eye.
“Authorities said it seems like the semi truck tried to cross the tracks ahead of the train. But as I dug deeper and followed a follow up statement by the same Sheriff there in Nebraska, they said they’re concerned about the railroad crossing. It’s a temporary crossing that was put up so that a large feedlot could go in in that area in southwest Nebraska, and there was an accident there in June.”
No one in the train was injured in Tuesday’s crash, although both the train engine and semitruck were totaled.
Read the full story HERE.
There’s a trend developing among Wyoming legislative candidates to skip forums and debates hosted by groups they don’t like and or believe will treat them unfairly in those settings.
Politics reporter Leo Wolfson says that candidates can dodge tough questions by avoiding debates.
“There were five candidates in Fremont County who put out a newspaper ad, basically saying that they would not participate in League of Women Voter forums, because they believe the group is not nonpartisan, as it says… But it’s not just happening there… There’s a few candidates in Campbell County that I spoke with, who are not participating in certain events, and also a few in Natrona County, too.”
Wolfson reports that candidates on both sides of the political divide have made the choice to skip debates, not just right- or center-leaning Republicans.
Read the full story HERE.
Forest officials continue to call in additional resources to battle a stubborn wildfire in a popular recreation area called Greys River, approximately 30 miles south of Jackson.
The blaze has grown to 43 acres, and winds are pushing the blaze toward a community that recalls too vividly the last time a fire came their way, according to Cowboy State Daily’s Jake Nichols.
“The Horse Creek fire burning in the Bridger Teton National Forest is about where another major fire began. And that’s going back to … the Roosevelt fire of 2018, that gobbled up more than 55 homes burned, almost 62,000 acres. So this is in kind of that same place, and if prevailing winds keep pushing it, it heads towards Bondurant, a community that was evacuated six years ago during that fire, so it’s got an eerie feeling of being the same thing.”
The Horse Creek Fire was discovered July 1 in the Big Piney Ranger District of the Bridger-Teton National Forest. Lightning is suspected as the cause.
Read the full story HERE.
With Highway 22 over Teton Pass once again functioning under a short-term fix, all those involved took a moment Tuesday to receive congratulations from the state’s highest-ranking official.
Cowboy State Daily’s Jake Nichols reports that Wyoming Highway Department of Transportation workers and construction crew members were in Jackson to be recognized for their monumental efforts by Governor Mark Gordon.
“Elks Lodge in Jackson, Tuesday night, Governor Gordon stopped by among other elected officials, both locally and statewide, to congratulate WYDOT and the three or four subcontractors who fixed the Teton pass in 20 days, less than three weeks. So it’s the first time all these groups have gathered together in one place without a backup beeper going off.”
A long-term solution is already underway. Highway department officials plan to rebuild the section of mountainside that collapsed and put the road back essentially where it was.
Read the full story HERE.
It’s not uncommon for lobbyists to solicit state lawmakers in Wyoming with model legislation and key points they want inserted into law. It’s less common for lawmakers to then adopt those suggestions almost word for word as their own legislation.
But some legislators say that’s what Secretary of State Chuck Gray has done after receiving emails from Florida-based think tank Foundation for Government Accountability, according to politics reporter Leo Wolfson.
“What’s interesting about these emails is that they show that Secretary of State Chuck Gray, basically handed off these suggested bills from FGA, the Florida lobbying group, and handed them off to legislators to run. And they were nearly copy and pasted from what the Florida group suggested, basically proving… that what was tried to be brought in Wyoming was kind of a one size fits all type effort.”
Gov. Mark Gordon vetoed most of those rules earlier this year, saying they ran outside the scope of regulatory authority guaranteed under Wyoming law.
Read the full story HERE.
The estranged son of a Casper man lost out on his inheritance because he sued other beneficiaries of his father’s will.
Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that when Chadwick Traylor contested the way his father, Doc Traylor, had chosen to distribute his nearly $4 million dollar estate, the action triggered a no-contest clause in the longtime Casper chiropractor’s will.
“His son hadn’t seen him for several years before his death… And so the neighbors and other people, a handyman, started kind of taking care of him, walking his dog checking on him. And he left substantial sums of money to a lot of these friends… And so the son sued three of the people who benefited from this will – but there was a clause in the will that said if you sue if a beneficiary … to try to invalidate, or warp the will somehow, then he gets nothing.”
Traylor argued that he didn’t violate the “no-contest” clause, because he was a residuary beneficiary under the trust, not just a beneficiary. But the Wyoming Supreme Court disagreed.
Read the full story HERE.
A Wyoming drug dealer couldn’t finish his methamphetamine run from Colorado last month because his purple Volkswagen bug slowed to a crawl and spewed black smoke when he reached Chugwater.
Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that 41-year-old Wade Schear of Gillette was already on the radar of the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation.
“So he rolls through Chugwater on his way back home to Gillette from Colorado. His Volkswagen Bug is billowing smoke, he’s going 20 miles an hour on the highway. And a Platte County Sheriff’s deputy pulled over to see what was up. And he reportedly found out, you’re acting nervous. So next thing, here comes a drug dog, who gives the air a sniff, and they say they found quite a bit of methamphetamine and cash in the car.”
Schear faces one felony charge of possessing methamphetamine with the intention to trade it and another of knowingly possessing a felony amount of methamphetamine.
Read the full story HERE.
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
Evacuations spread from fires in South Dakota, Wyoming due to strong winds from coast-to-coast storm
CLIMATE TECH: As wildfires grow stronger, faster, and more expensive, a California-based startup is taking a high-tech approach to fight these fires using autonomous drones designed to extinguish flames before they turn deadly. Founder & CEO Stuart Landesberg joins FOX Weather to discuss Seneca’s firefighting drones.
Large, fast-moving fires are causing evacuations in South Dakota and Wyoming due to the impacts of a coast-to-coast storm.
The FOX Forecast Center said winds have been gusting up to 70 mph in the Pennington County, South Dakota area, which has caused the wildfire to spread rapidly.
COAST-TO-COAST STORM CAUSES TRAVEL ISSUES DUE TO HURRICANE-FORCE WINDS, HEAVY RAIN ACROSS NORTHWEST
The blaze, known as the Greyhound Fire, is approximately 200 acres in size. The fire is burning two to three miles south of Keystone and is moving east, according to the Pennington County Sheriff’s Office.
The Greyhound Fire in South Dakota spans 200 acres.
(FOX Weather / FOX Weather)
Highway 40 and Playhouse Road are closed as crews work to contain the fire.
People living along the highway between Playhouse Road and Rushmore Ranch Road have been evacuated, officials said.
TWO KIDS WAITING FOR THE BUS CRITICALLY INJURED DUE TO STRONG WINDS IN IDAHO
Crews are asking anyone in an evacuation zone to leave the area. Officials are advising people in the area to check the Pennington County Public Safety Hub.
A grass fire has caused evacuations in the Winchester Hills section of Cheyenne, Wyoming.
(FOX Weather / FOX Weather)
People in the Winchester Hills area of Cheyenne, Wyoming, have also been evacuated due to a grass fire.
The FOX Forecast Center said winds are gusting up to 75 mph in the area.
The National Weather Service has issued a Fire Warning and says there is a shelter at South High School for evacuated residents.
Check for updates on this developing story.
The University of Wyoming filed a lawsuit this week seeking $2.5 million from an energy company it partnered with to research enhanced oil recovery.
The university in 2024 signed a contract with Houston-based ACU Energy to advance research at the university’s Center of Innovation for Flow Through Porous Media, according to the university’s complaint filed Monday in Wyoming’s U.S. District Court. ACU Energy agreed to pay the university $15 million over the six-year research period. The company, according to the complaint, was to pay the university $2.5 million annually with two payments each year.
While the university kept up its end of the bargain — by assembling a research team, training research members and incurring costs to modify laboratory space — ACU Energy “failed to pay the University even a cent owed under the Agreement, leaving $2,500,000 outstanding in unpaid invoices,” the complaint alleges.
ACU Energy did not respond to a WyoFile request for comment before publication.
The company notified the university in February that it was terminating the contract, and the university notified ACU Energy in May of its breach of contract, according to court filings. The university asked the court for a jury trial.
Enhanced oil recovery refers to methods used to squeeze more crude from reservoirs that have already been tapped for primary production, extending the life of an oilfield.
The university commonly accepts money from private businesses in return for lending resources and expertise to advance research. The Center of Innovation for Flow Through Porous Media is part of the university’s Research Centers of Excellence in the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences.
The Center of Innovation for Flow Through Porous Media, led by Mohammad Piri, a professor of petroleum engineering, bills itself as “the most advanced oil and gas research facility in the world.” The center conducts research at the university’s High Bay Research facility, which “is funded by $37.2 million in state dollars and $16.3 million in private contributions, with an additional $9.2 million in private gifts for research equipment,” according to the center’s website.
The center has received donations from oil industry heavyweights like ExxonMobil, Halliburton and Baker Hughes.
Piri was tapped to serve as “principal investigator” for the UW-ACU Energy partnership, according to the university’s complaint. As of press time, ACU Energy had not filed a response to the lawsuit.
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