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[{"type":"text","text":"When the spiked eggnog kicks in......"}]

Herald 12 29 24

Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>Hark The Herald: Sunday, December 29, 2024 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

When the spiked eggnog kicks in......

Hark The Herald: Sunday, December 29, 2024

Mac Watson

Daily Video News

It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Wednesday, July 8th.  I’m Mac Watson

This newscast is brought to you by the Wyoming State Fair. Wrap up your summer at the Wyoming State Fair, August 11th through the 15th in Douglas!

Rodeo, Demolition Derby, live music, entertainment and fair food await. Learn more at W-Y State Fair dot com. See you at the fair! This ad was paid for by Converse County Tourism.

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A North Carolina man is still missing after jumping into the Snake River without a life jacket on Saturday.  Cowboy State Daily’s Kolby Fedore reports that authorities have changed the mission from search and rescue to recovery.

“55- year-old Tory Rather of Charlotte, North Carolina, went missing near Alpine in Wyoming when he jumped into the Snake River on Saturday without a life jacket. Authorities say that he was swept up by the current, and they have been searching for days to try and recover his body. On Tuesday, Lincoln County Sheriff Shane Johnson confirmed that this is now being looked at as a recovery and no longer a rescue. Johnson said, as time goes by, the likelihood of having a positive outcome goes down significantly. He is positive at this point. It is a recovery mission and not a rescue.”

Raether’s family sent Cowboy State Daily photos of the man and his wife taken just hours before the incident. Rafts, jet skis, a jet boat, drones, and search dogs have combed the Snake River below a popular cliff-jumping spot for days, all with one goal: bring Tory home.

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At least 13 portable toilets were blown up in Billings over the July 4th holiday and the company is blaming Wyoming fireworks for the destruction. Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports the owners say the fireworks were likely purchased in Wyoming because Montana's fireworks aren't powerful enough.

“This is going to come straight out of the company's pocket. They're estimating at least $12,000 in damages, and while they have insurance, their deductible is $1,000 and if their deductible is $1,000 and each portable toilet is treated as a separate incident. So, if they tried to file a claim to get the cost for the destroyed toilet, then they would get maybe $100- $150 each after their deductible. So, it's not even worth filing the claim. They don't know who did it. They have no way of identifying them, and there's not a viable path to collect on insurance.”

Co-owner Kris Vogele tells Cowboy State Daily that these aren’t the type of fireworks you can “buy at a fireworks stand in Montana. It had to have been a large explosive.” Vogele said he believes the fireworks came from Wyoming or the Crow Indian Reservation near Billings.

Matthew Lynch lost most of his right hand in a fireworks explosion on July 4th. But Cowboy State Daily’s Kolby Fedore reports that the Gillette carpenter isn't giving up on his electric-guitar dreams. 

“Matthew Raymond Lynch says the incident was horrifying. He said when he lit a firecracker that he'd been carrying in his back pocket for years, trying to be adventurous, it blew up almost instantly. He looked down and his hand was the craziest, most mangled thing he says he's ever seen. the damage was so extensive that his friend took off his belt and used it as a tourniquet to save Lynch from losing his life. Lynch is an artist, he's a musician, a potter, and a carpenter by trade. He says the road to recovery will be long, but he's already been talking to doctors and hopeful that he will be able to get a prosthetic, and vows that one day he'll be able to play guitar again.”

The blast severed most of Lynch's right hand, shattered bones throughout his left hand, peppered his face, neck and chest with shrapnel and burns, and sent him by Life Flight to Billings, Montana. In the days since, Lynch has publicly apologized, saying he feels terrible for the people who were injured alongside him.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"–"}]

The Green River City Council is considering finalizing a $112,000 grant it's been awarded to install license-plate readers in the city. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that the mayor says the cameras could curb terrorism while former Libertarian lawmaker Marshall Burt says it's all “bullshit.”

“The police chief said, ‘Yeah, we're not looking to nitpick with these. We want to really amplify our response to things like missing and vulnerable persons cases or serious criminal flight cases.’ Marshall Burt, who is the first Libertarian ever that Wyoming ever sent to the legislature, said, ‘This is a slippery slope, because this grant is based on fighting terrorism, but these things can track people's movements and compile data on people's movements and patterns.’”

Green River applied last year for two Wyoming Office of Homeland Security grants and in January was awarded one for $111,956 to buy and install license plate readers for the police department, says the 

. Mayor Pete Rust tells Cowboy State Daily the police department spearheaded the grant application.

I’ll have more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.

Cowboy State Daily News continues now….

A Casper man says he felt fortunate to rescue a baby pronghorn who got stuck in a cattle guard on Tuesday. Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that Dylan Heide says by posting the video, he hopes he can reduce the stigma around hunting and hunters. 

“It was a very young fawn, so he just gently lifted and twisted it out of the cattle grate and let it successfully reunited with what he assumed was a few does, and one of which was probably its mother. Dylan goes out a lot during the summer, scouting for pronghorn. He hopes to hunt in the fall, and he'd never seen one with its body stuck in a cattle grate before, but if this fawn was young, he estimated it was probably only a month old, if that, and it's just probably the first time I'd ever seen a cattle guard before.”

Heide shares his stories and perspectives on hunting and fishing in Wyoming on his 

 social media pages. He has a particular outlook on Wyomingites’ relationship with pronghorn and tells Cowboy State Daily, “The majority of us really care about wildlife.”

Allegedly outraged by a dirt bike zipping around his Albany County campsite, a man is accused of pulling two guns and brawling with three other campers over the weekend. Cowboy State Daily’s Greg Johnson reports that investigators say, at one point, Tyler James McGill “stepped back and racked the slide, and pointed.”

“What it boils down to is somebody riding a motorbike past somebody else's campground got that guy mad, and so he went looking for him down this camp. There were three men in the camp, and all four of them brawled. This guy took all three of them on, and at times during the brawl, it kind of the affidavit reads kind of like a movie script. he gets a gun from the waistband of one of the one of the other campers he's fighting, pointed at him, the guy wrestles the gun away from him, so he goes back to his campsite and gets another gun, it's just kind of a wild, wild tale at this Albany County campground over the Fourth of July weekend.”

McGill, born in 1996, could get more than 15 years in prison if convicted of felony aggravated assault and battery and possession of a deadly weapon with unlawful intent.

A Washington, D.C., super-PAC is attacking U.S. Senate candidate Sam Mead for a $27 donation Mead made in 2019 to then-presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that Mead is defending the move, saying it was about solving health care policy problems.

“Sam Mead has political credentials and is waging a really staunch Keep Public Land in Public Hands campaign, and this, you know, conservative super PAC found that in 2019 he had donated $27 to Bernie Sanders campaign. The election filings show that, and Meade told me that at the time he saw a lot of harm from Obamacare, the Obama insurance policies that Wyoming pushed back against hard at the time, and he said that he liked a lot of Sanders' ideas on health care, and decided to back that.”

 post by Club For Growth president David McIntosh. The group calls itself the leading free-enterprise advocacy group in the nation and has endorsed Rep. Harriet Hageman.

Cheyenne’s Board of Public Utilities is not commenting further on the city’s data center sewer contamination. Cowboy State Daily’s Kate Meadows reports that residents still don't know where contaminated wastewater was taken, why the public wasn't notified for months, or what safeguards are now in place.

“Residents in Cheyenne have a lot of questions still with the sewer reuse contamination that was announced last week by the Board of Public Utilities. Cowboy State Daily reached out to Mayor Patrick Collins and asked, should the public be worried about this being a public health crisis, and is there a chance that it could happen again. The mayor candidly told us that we should be worried, because there's always a chance that it can happen, and there's always something to worry about when you're dealing with, you know, public utilities and big corporations, that's juxtaposed to the Board of Public Utilities that told us they are not commenting any further on anything until they deliver this press conference in about a week.”

Last Thursday, the board announced that Goat Systems LLC, the corporate entity Meta uses during construction of its nearly 800,000-square-foot data center campus, was in “significant noncompliance” with the city's industrial pretreatment regulations. 

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And that’s today’s news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on 

 - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our 

 channel, or listen to us on your favorite podcast app.  Thanks for watching - I’m Mac Watson, for Cowboy State Daily.

News image 2 7 7 26

<title>Cowboy State Daily Video Newscast: Wednesday, July 8, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Wednesday's headlines include:
* Vandals Explode 13 Portable Toilets
* Man Presumed Drowned In Snake River
* Guitarist Vows To Play Again After Losing Hand

Cowboy State Daily Video Newscast: Wednesday, July 8, 2026

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's Feature Reporter, Andrew Rossi.

Andrew Rossi

Wildlife

Casper Realtor and sportsman Dylan Heide got some good karma by saving a baby pronghorn stuck in a cattle guard near Casper on Tuesday morning.

Heide was driving along an unpaved county road "in the middle of nowhere" scouting for pronghorn when he noticed something strange sticking out of a cattle guard he was approaching.

“I noticed something right before I drove over it,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “I thought it looked like an antelope butt, but it was too late for me to mentally recognize what the heck it was. I went over it, stopped, rolled my window down, looked back, and could just see it.”

The weird bump was a pronghorn fawn. Its head and legs were stuck between the grate, and it was desperately kicking and flailing to escape.

[{"type":"text","text":"“It was probably no more than a month old,” Heide said."}]

Heide gingerly grabbed the fawn by the torso and gently lifted and twisted it out of the cattle guard. He set it down on the dirt road, and it bolted.

“She obviously didn't want to have anything to do with me, so I tried to be as calm and careful as I could,” he said. “I put her down. It screamed and ran away.”

Heide stayed long enough to watch the rescued fawn join a nearby group of pronghorn. He’s fairly confident his mother was among them.

“I heard a doe chirping as soon as I parked,” he said. “There were three does staying a little close to the cattle guard. She ran right to them, and they took off.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Unguarded"}]

Heide regularly scouts pronghorn during the summer, so he’s seen and heard plenty of stories about awkward encounters. This one stands out.

“I hear about them getting stuck in fences, and I’ve seen them stuck in a fence before, but they normally get themselves out pretty quick,” he said. “I've never seen one stuck in a cattle guard.”

The probable sequence of events, according to Heide, is that the adult pronghorns went under barbed-wire fence on either side of the cattle guard. The fawn, not knowing any better, took what looked like the path of least resistance.

“It probably didn't even know what a cattle guard really was,” he said. “It was probably taking the easy path, walking down the road until it tried to cross it and accidentally fell in.”

The fawn wasn’t injured. Heide hopes this was a lesson well-learned for the youngster.

“As long as it doesn't go back and find the same cattle guard, we're probably all right,” he said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Never Too Early Or Too Far"}]

 social media pages. He has a particular outlook on Wyomingites’ relationship with pronghorn.

“I have issues with how many residents take antelope hunting for granted,” he said. “They shoot the first antelope they see, call it a hunt, and then complain that it's too easy. I think if they took it more seriously, they could learn to enjoy it.”

By scouting pronghorn in the summer, Heide can observe the animals he hopes to take when Wyoming’s season opens later in the year. He’s already got a list of several individuals he’s been observing in the same area for years.

Heide also believes Wyomingites don’t see the bounty before them. Pronghorn are plentiful in the Cowboy State, but rarer elsewhere.

“Wyoming is really unique in that aspect,” he said. “We have so many antelope here. Colorado, Montana and Idaho, especially, have very, very, very few antelope, so they're very hard to come by. We take them for granted in Wyoming.

Heide feels the satisfaction of a successful pronghorn hunt comes from spending time with the target. By choosing a particular individual and observing its movements and habits over time, a successful harvest is much more rewarding.

“Every animal is a little different,” he said. “The more you're out there, learning the terrain and scoping out the animals running around, the more success you're going to have in the fall.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"All Creatures Great And Small"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Heide said he felt fortunate he was able to save the fawn."}]

“We're here to take care of God's animals,” he said. “I think God put me there for a reason, in that situation, to help that baby antelope.”

He also hopes that, by posting the video, he can help reduce the stigma around hunting and hunters. It’s something he’s seen more after 

 in Daniel and other high-profile incidents of “hunters” showing poor judgment.

“Hunters get a bad rap for wanting to be cruel,” he said. “I think the majority of us really care about wildlife, conservation and putting forth the effort. We want to make sure our wildlife is taken care of for future generations.”

Pronghorn in cattle guard 1 7 7 26

<title>Hooray! Casper Man Rescues Baby Pronghorn Stuck In Remote Cattle Guard | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A Casper man says he felt fortunate to rescue a baby pronghorn who got stuck in a cattle guard on Tuesday. He said by posting the video, he hopes he can reduce the stigma around hunting and hunters. "The majority of us really care about wildlife," he said.

Hooray! Casper Man Rescues Baby Pronghorn Stuck In Remote Cattle Guard

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's managing editor, Greg Johnson.

Greg Johnson

Crime & Courts

Courts

Allegedly outraged by an aggressive dirt bike rider zipping around his Albany County campsite, a man is accused of pulling two guns on three other campers he brawled with over the holiday weekend.

Tyler James McGill, born in 1996, could get more than 15 years in prison if convicted of felony aggravated assault and battery and possession of a deadly weapon with unlawful intent.

He’s also charged with three misdemeanor counts of battery for fighting with the other campers, according to records filed Monday in Albany County Circuit Court.

McGill was camping to an area in the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest southeast of Rob Roy Reservoir a little after 5 p.m. on July 4.

He sought out the other campers when one of them was “riding a dirt bike aggressively around McGill’s campsite and kicking up rocks,” Albany County Undersheriff John Beeston writes in an affidavit of probable cause filed in McGill’s case.

“McGill stated that he went to confront the male subject at another campsite, (and) he became involved in a physical altercation with three adult males,” Beeston wrote.

As deputies investigated the altercation, a pair of videos of the fight were produced by witnesses which, along with accounts of those involved, elicit images of a Hollywood fight sequence.

While McGill was engaged with the first two campers, the third intervened to fight with him, the affidavit says.

During that scuffle, McGill allegedly retrieved a handgun that was in the back waistband of the third camper, Beeston wrote.

“While McGill and TL (initials for the third camper) were engaged in a physical fight, McGill reached into TL’s waistband and removed TL’s firearm and pointed it at FR (the second camper),” the affidavit says.

McGill then “stepped back and racked the slide, and pointed the firearm at FR,” Beeston continues in his affidavit. “TL then attempted to regain control of the firearm.”

As they fought over possession of the gun, a round was fired, but didn’t hit anybody.

[{"type":"text","text":"‘Exchanging Punches’"}]

Also during that tussle, TL and FR got possession of the gun back, the affidavit says. But that wasn’t the end of the fight.

“McGill then returned to his vehicle at his campsite, retrieved another firearm, and stood behind the vehicle holding the firearm at his waist,” Beeston wrote.

The affidavit doesn’t say if they argued or fought more after that point.

However, it does detail some of what investigators saw on the witness videos. A video obtained by the sheriff’s office the next day shows the first part of the fight, according to the affidavit.

“In the video, (a deputy) observed McGill punch FR while FR was kneeling on the ground and again after FR stood up,” the document says. “TL came to assist FR, at which point McGill and TL began exchanging punches.”

The investigation, along with the witness videos of the physical brawl between the four men, led the undersheriff to conclude that there is enough evidence to support McGill’s charges.

McGill had his initial circuit court appearance Monday, where he was advised of the charges against him and a July 14 preliminary hearing was set.

Medicine Bow National Forest

<title>Albany County Camper Charged With Pulling 2 Guns During Brawl With 3 Other Campers | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Allegedly outraged by a dirt bike zipping around his Albany County campsite, a man is accused of pulling two guns and brawling with three other campers over the weekend. At one point, he “stepped back and racked the slide, and pointed,” investigators say.

Albany County Camper Charged With Pulling 2 Guns During Brawl With 3 Other Campers

Employee kate meadows cropped

Kate Meadows

Government & Politics

Nearly a week after Cheyenne's Board of Public Utilities identified the company responsible for contaminating the city's sewer reuse system with a rare bacterium, many of the biggest questions surrounding the incident remain unanswered.

Residents still don't know where industrial wastewater from Meta's massive data center construction project has been hauled since it was disconnected from the city's sewer system, why the public wasn't notified for roughly four months after the contamination was discovered or whether city leaders knew about the problem before it became public.

Conversations have played out on social media about why the public wasn't notified for roughly four months after the contamination was discovered, whether city leaders knew about the problem before it became public and where the contaminated water drained from a city retention pond went.

On Tuesday, the Board of Public Utilities told Cowboy State Daily it would not answer questions about the contamination and instead plans to conduct a press conference "in the next week or so."

Meanwhile, a Cheyenne resident has raised thousands of dollars to fund a public-records request that includes more than 8,000 emails between Mayor Patrick Collins, Cheyenne LEADS and area data centers, including Meta, Microsoft, ViaWest, Skybox and Related Digital.

“Transparency hasn’t been forthcoming,” Heather Madrid told Cowboy State Daily. “It seems like we don’t get any information unless we force the issue.”

Mayor Patrick Collins told Cowboy State Daily on Tuesday that BOPU handled the incident efficiently, given the gravity of the situation.

“While it’s regrettable, I think (BOPU) handled this quickly,” he said, adding there was no danger to the public.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Questions Continue To Mount"}]

Last Thursday, the board announced that Goat Systems LLC, the corporate entity Meta uses during construction of its nearly 800,000-square-foot data center campus, was in "significant noncompliance" with the city's industrial pretreatment regulations after discharging wastewater contaminated with 

 into Cheyenne's municipal reuse water system.

The bacterium, which naturally occurs in soil and groundwater, is rarely associated with human illness and primarily poses a risk to people with compromised immune systems.

[{"type":"text","text":"The lack of additional information has only fueled public concern."}]

Among the unanswered questions are where Fortis, Meta's general contractor, is now hauling industrial wastewater from the project and what safeguards are in place to ensure it is being disposed of safely.

Collins said he learned Tuesday where the contaminated water from the retention pond went. He told Cowboy State Daily it's a local water-treatment facility.

The mayor said he understands the public concern. He said the delay in the public being informed was because it took the BOPU, the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality and the EPA “a number of months to understand the issue.”

“They didn’t want point fingers until they were positive (of the issue and the industrial user),” he said.

The incident has also prompted questions about oversight within city government.

Because the Board of Public Utilities operates under the city's umbrella, some residents are asking whether Collins and members of the City Council were aware of the contamination months before it was publicly disclosed.

Collins told Cowboy State Daily he was aware of the issue when it occurred.

“They told me they had something going on in the water,” he said. “I appreciate them letting me know.”

Council member Pete Laybourn previously told Cowboy State Daily he had just learned about the issue himself, the day BOPU announced that Goat Systems LLC was the industrial user behind the contamination.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"I'm disappointed I didn't know more before this,\" he said. "}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Wastewater Going To Certified Facility"}]

Fortis has not publicly identified where wastewater is now being taken, saying only that it is being hauled to "a certified offsite facility" despite Cowboy State Daily asking for a specific location.

[{"type":"text","text":"Collins said he also asked Fortis that question."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"“The folks who know were not available to tell me,” he said. "}]

He added that the company is required to send it to a certified facility. A data center operator he spoke with assured him that's the case, he said.

"We have been in regular communication with the BOPU throughout this process and take our environmental obligations seriously," Fortis spokeswoman Sarah Hamaker told Cowboy State Daily.

Hamaker said Fortis launched its own investigation after being notified of the positive test for 

, including repeated testing by independent environmental specialists.

The Cheyenne project is the seventh data center Fortis has built for Meta.

Cowboy State Daily also asked Meta whether it maintains on-site environmental oversight during construction and whether another corporate entity could later assume responsibility for utility connections. The company referred Cowboy State Daily to its most recent public statement, which answers neither of those questions.

Business filings list Goat Systems LLC as located in Delaware, with Pamela Gregorski as president. Calls and text messages seeking comment were not returned.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Tighter Regulations for Cooling Systems"}]

As a result of the contamination, BOPU now requires industrial companies that use closed-loop cooling systems to build separate collection systems so any water from cooling equipment goes directly into storage tanks provided by the data center developer, rather than the city's sanitary sewer.

“I think they’re going to have to and I think it’s a good policy,” Collins said.

The new policy adds a layer of regulation to closed-loop cooling systems. Data center proponents have heralded them as the answer to the demand for water, as the systems depend on less water than an evaporative cooling system.

However, the regulation will have little effect on Cheyenne data centers in the short term.

“The truth is, we don’t have anyone using a closed-loop system yet,” Collins said.

He said the first data center to use such a system would be Related Digital, later this year.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Resident Raises Money For Public Records"}]

The lack of transparency around Cheyenne’s broader data center buildout prompted Madrid to pursue information herself.

Madrid recently raised roughly $2,800 through a GoFundMe campaign to pay for the public-records request.

[{"type":"text","text":"The city quoted the public records request at $2,764."}]

Madrid said she has filed several public-information requests over the years but often abandoned them because of the cost.

The delayed disclosure of the sewer contamination convinced her this request was different.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"That was definitely concerning,\" she said."}]

Madrid launched the fundraiser believing other residents also wanted answers. Within about a week, she said, 23 donors had contributed enough money to cover the request, including an anonymous $1,000 donation that pushed the campaign over its goal.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"I was shocked,\" Madrid said."}]

She said she hopes the records ultimately reassure residents that proper procedures were followed but worries many documents could be heavily redacted because of nondisclosure agreements.

"Honestly, nothing concerning is what I'm hoping to find," she said. "I think it will be worth it to have that peace of mind."

Collins said he was confident peace of mind is exactly what Madrid will find.

“We have nothing to hide,” he said. “People are caught up in the emotion of this. That’s the way the system works. All my documents are public documents."

Madrid said the issue extends beyond the sewer contamination itself as Cheyenne continues to consider major data center projects and future annexations.

On Monday, Cheyenne’s Public Services Committee advanced the proposed annexation of a 3,500-acre county property into the city, helping clear the way for a Microsoft data center to be built and hook into city utilities.

The property is owned by the family of Wyoming Sen. Cynthia Lummis.

The proposed annexation will go to the City Council on July 13 for a final vote.

"I feel like it's urgent at this point that we have information," Madrid said. "It just seems like it's not stopping."

She added that while she believes most City Council members are trying to do their jobs, "it seems like even they are being left in the dark."

[{"type":"text","text":"Press Conference Planned"}]

Emails to BOPU members Jeff Fassett and Mary Guthrie were not returned Tuesday.

BOPU’s public-affairs coordinator Erin Lamb said an email to Cowboy State Daily that a press conference for media will be “in the next week or so."

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<title>Cheyenne Mayor Says Wastewater Contamination 'Regrettable' But Lauds BOPU Response | Cowboy State Daily</title>

As questions mount of the Cheyenne Board of Public Utilities' handling of data center contamination of the city's sewer reuse system, Mayor Patrick Collins said BOPU handled the incident "efficiently." "People are caught up in the emotion of this," he said.

Cheyenne Mayor Says Wastewater Contamination 'Regrettable' But Lauds BOPU Response

Urapeein Porta Pots in Billings, Montana, expects to lose a few toilets every Independence Day.

Over the last week, at least 13 of the small company’s portable toilets were destroyed.  

[{"type":"text","text":"Even by their standards, that’s a massacre."}]

“We typically lose four to five toilets every year during the Fourth of July due to fireworks,” co-owner Kris Vogele said. “Some years, we’ve lost eight or nine. There have been at least 13 this year, and that’s worse than normal.”

Vogele estimates that damages are well over $12,000 and could easily get higher. All those costs will come out of the company’s porta-pot profits.

“People don't think about who this impacts,” he said. “They want to blow up a toilet for the laughs, but it’s definitely hurting people, and it hurts our community.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Blowin’ Up Toilets"}]

Vogele started getting calls about destroyed toilets last week. They lost their first one on Wednesday.

“It mostly has happened in residential construction projects in northwest Billings,” he said. “Subdivisions where not a lot of people are living yet, but a lot of new homes are being built.”

Vogele’s phone was ringing off the hook Monday, as contractors returning to work after the holiday weekend reported unusable toilets and their contents scattered across their job sites.

The only explanation for the extent and nature of the damage is fireworks. Big fireworks.

After several years in the portable toilet business with his son, Connor, Vogele knows to anticipate some lost toilets during the week of Independence Day. It’s the only time of year it seems to happen.

“It's pretty much whenever anybody has access to fireworks,” he said. “We’ve lost a couple around New Year’s, and we might lose a few more this weekend. If people have fireworks they didn’t set off last weekend, they might blow up a toilet this weekend.”

At least 13 portable toilets were blown up in Billings over the July 4 holiday and the company is blaming Wyoming fireworks for the destruction. They say the fireworks were likely purchased in Wyoming because Montana's fireworks aren't powerful enough.

Hark The Herald: Sunday, December 29, 2024

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