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.