Mountain West (CO ID MT NV UT WY)

It's the latest second-hand smoke issue: motorized vs. nonmotorized winter sports.

Federal district judge Dee Benson ruled Oct. 9, 2007, that a group of news media companies could not have access to an investigation by the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) into the Crandall Canyon mine collapse in Utah Aug. 6, which killed six miners and three workers trying to rescue them.

The AP reports that the conservation group Wildlands CPR has won a 2-year battle to get U.S. Forest Service records on damage caused by off-road vehicles and unmaintained roads in the West.

A series of drinking-water contamination incidents have raised doubts about EPA's safety claims regarding hydraulic fracturing in domestic gas wells. And it's hard for people to get to the bottom of those claims when the identity of the chemicals injected during the process is protected as a "trade secret."

There are at least 61 sites in CO, ID, MT, NM, and WY that naturally contain some form of asbestos, according to a report released July 9, 2007,by the US Geological Survey.

Preliminary results from a Montana air quality study suggest that replacing older wood-burning stoves and fireplaces with cleaner-burning, EPA-certified models can substantially reduce airborne fine particulates.

The long-running battle over the status of wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains is heading into another critical stretch.

Throughout the West, farmers' fields are covered in tall grass. That's not neglect - it's profitable.