It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming, for Monday, March 10th. I’m Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom - Brought to you by the Cowboy State Daily Morning Show With Jake! From 6 to 10 a.m., Monday through Friday, host Jake Nichols brings you news, weather, sports AND in-depth interviews with news-makers from across Wyoming - presented with Jake’s unique humor and lively commentary. Just click on the Cowboy State Daily homepage and join the live broadcast!
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A Gillette man implicated in a shooting and on the loose since Tuesday was caught Saturday evening.
18-year-old Kamren Crousore is suspected in the Tuesday shooting of a 19-year-old man following an argument. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that Crousore’s description and prior booking photo had been released by the Campbell County Sheriff’s Office Thursday in an effort to find him, warning the public he was considered “armed and dangerous.”
“This is a saga, because on like the 24th of February, Crousore was sentenced to a lengthy term of probation for some burglaries, multi county burglary with other youths, where they were car hopping, stealing things out of cars, and sometimes stealing cars, according to court documents. And so then, you know, days later, last Tuesday, he's implicated in this shooting, and he's left in a vehicle. They later find the vehicle without him in it, and then he's on the run for like, four or five days. So … for the suspect, it wasn't just a four day saga, it was closer to a 10 day, two week saga.”
Officials say Crousore was caught at an “unspecified residence” after “many hours of dedicated investigative work” by the department in cooperation with other area law enforcement agencies. Campbell County Undersheriff Quentin Reynolds confirmed that Crousore did not turn himself in, but no standoff unfolded.
Read the full story HERE.
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A partially built three-story home on McDonald Creek inside Glacier National Park was spared the wrecking ball by a federal judge last month, and those who believe it was illegally built continue the fight to tear it down.
It’s a case that’s drawn national attention, according to Cowboy State Daily’s David Madison.
“A federal judge affirmed their right to build in in the park on this private inholding. But it appears that they slip through some kind of loophole, because the federal judge says, You Glacier Park have jurisdiction over the construction of structures in the park, but the Park did nothing to regulate the construction of this place. It was built without permits. It's somehow no one at the park will tell me how, but it's somehow connected to the local sewer and water system that's controlled by the park. But the critics are correct when they say… somehow this house got built inside Glacier Park without a single permit.”
Few sources involved in the litigation want to speak to the press, leaving more questions than answers about what’s next for a home built without permits right on the banks of an iconic stream.
Read the full story HERE.
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With construction on an $800 million, 715,000-square-foot Meta data center underway in south Cheyenne, and similar projects coming soon, farmers in eastern Laramie County worry there won’t be enough water left for them.
However, Cheyenne Mayor Patrick Collins told Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz that the city has been assured that the Meta data center and forthcoming projects won’t use too much water.
“There are a lot of people who farm and ranch downstream from Cheyenne, either directly out of crow creek or from the aquifer that that creek feeds into. And there's been some concern with not just this, this one data center coming in, but more data centers expected. Of course, a lot of them use water to cool those huge servers that they have. And so the farmers are asking, is there going to be enough water to go around? Because water is already seems like it's getting scarce, and this is going to put even more demand on it. So how are we going to irrigate our crops?... I did talk to the mayor, and he said… they're going to use a mostly, what he called a dry cooling system, where if they use any water, they're just going to recirculate the same water through the system… Cheyennes water rights are actually connected to the Colorado River. And as we know, the Colorado River water is getting really scarce. There states are starting to fight over it, so Cheyenne might have to look elsewhere for water. So that could add to the concerns.”
Mayor Collins says that for now, at least, Cheyenne has a comfortable water surplus, but that might change as squabbling continues to heat up over water rights from the Colorado River.
Read the full story HERE.
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Four drums of jet fuel found tucked away inside a crack in a rock face near Jeffrey City, Wyoming, will cost taxpayers more than $35,000 to clean up.
That discovery is just one example of a larger problem, according to Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean. Rusting appliances, hulking sofas, chemicals, industrial metals, and other objects difficult to throw away are getting stashed in some of Wyoming’s most rural outposts, posing environmental and health hazards — not to mention visual pollution in some of the Cowboy State’s pristine areas.
“A lot of them are habitual dumps. People just go right back to the same place that's been cleaned out and dump a bunch of stuff right in the same place again. And it's on public lands, a lot of it, you know, BLM land, or sometimes it's by the sides of really deserted highways. Like, there's a highway, I think it's 136 there in Fremont County, and they regularly clean like, six tons of trash out of there… We have thieves taking rubber off of oil field sites, burning the rubber off of them on BLM land, and in one case, up there at Jibo, the old coal coal site, cold town, they burned all the rubber off, which left a whole bunch of lead in the ground. Oxidized lead, so it's soluble in water, which makes it a huge and. Environmental problem, and it's costing like six figures to clean this up every year. This year, there's like 20 sites on the list for BLM to clean up. That's over $150,000 worth of taxpayer funding, assuming that no environmental problems are found. Environmental problems dramatically increase it.”
The BLM’s list of places to clean up this year is roughly three times the number of sites cleaned up last year, but officials say that’s due to better outreach and education, and more success in getting field offices to report illegal dumping sites.
Read the full story HERE.
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It was an early June morning in 2001, and Jamie Kamai was driving to work in Cheyenne with his two young children in the backseat. The 25-year-old was on his way to drop his baby daughter and young stepson off at the babysitter before heading off to his job as a delivery driver for a furniture store.
But this routine errand took a tragic turn. Someone who had been tailgating Jamie killed him in a roadside confrontation - and Cowboy State Daily’s Jen Kocher reports that someone has never been found.
“What's so surprising to me about this, it happened right during the morning commute, just after 8am… somebody was either tailgating him or chasing him… he has two small children in the back seat. It got to the point where he had it… So he pulled over on the shoulder and got out, went back and confronted the man, and he shot him three times… But to this day, they have no idea. They've interviewed over 250 people, at least… it was the cousin Fred who has been championing Jamie's story for years… This is a case where it's a family member desperate to keep his loved one in the news and to keep pushing, because you never know when somebody will turn over it, to turn over information they have… Somebody might have said something to somebody in the past, and that person no longer is friends with that person for any number of reasons.”
Today, DCI continues to actively investigate the case. Laramie County Sheriff Brian Kozak said that since taking over, the agency has re-interviewed several witnesses and conducted 30 supplemental reports as well as resubmitted evidence to various labs. To date, however, there are no new solid leads.
Read the full story HERE.
And now let’s take a look at today’s weather, with Cowboy State Daily meteorologist Don Day.
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You can get Don’s full forecast on the Cowboy State Daily website. I’ll be back in just 15 seconds with more news.
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The final week of February brought high temperatures in the 40s and 50s to western Montana, and the start of a busy season for the state’s only commercially licensed maple syrup producer.
Known as “Maple Man,” Missoula resident David Knudson taps 300-plus trees around town to grow his urban syrup business. Cowboy State Daily’s Anna-Louise Jackson spoke to the Maple Man, whose hobby has produced a sought-after commodity.
“He worked at a cheese Creamery near Missoula, and I think he had quit that, and he was taking care of his kids, and he was out in his yard one day, and he was looking at his maple tree, and he thought, like, maybe I can make maple syrup. So he started just tapping trees… he has seven varieties. I didn't I did not know there were seven varieties of maple trees in Montana, so that was a learning thing for me… each variety, he makes its own syrup. He has done a blend that he had for himself, but he hasn't sold that. And then he's been experimenting with aging the syrups in barrels that once held, like bourbon or gin or other like locally made spirits.”
Knudson has permission from more than 100 homeowners to tap trees on their properties to create his Montana MapleWorks syrups. All of the syrup-making happens in Knudson’s driveway and inside a converted garage at his home that’s about a five minute drive from downtown Missoula.
Read the full story HERE.
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Election data tools now make it possible to zoom in on specific communities and dissect the local electorate in an instant. And data shows Wyoming growing increasingly red, but at the same time, the numbers reveal small, expanding pockets of blue voters across the state.
Those blips of blue aren’t enough to be a trend or come close to challenging GOP dominance in the state that supported President Donald Trump more by percentage of voters than any other state — three times. But Cowboy State Daily’s David Madison reports that the data also shows that the Democratic Party outside Teton and Albany counties isn’t dead in Wyoming, either.
“I got a tour of the state digitally speaking from the head of Research at L2 data, and he guided me through how granular elections managers can be in that you can pinpoint individual voters based on L2 data file that's mapped out… he took me on an electoral digital tour of the state. We looked at Wamsutter, which has six total Democrats out of about 105 registered voters, overwhelmingly Republican there, and that, you might say, is more typical of Wyoming towns, but the data showed that Lander and Cheyenne and even Torrington are seeing an increase in the number of Democrats coming to town. Now this is Wyoming, so an increase means that 30 something moved to Lander and 17 moved to Torrington, but it was still interesting to see these little blue dots growing in a sea of red.
In addition to Lander, Cheyenne and Torrington, the other Wyoming cities and towns growing bluer include Cody and Sheridan. Lander also led the state in the percentage of current Democrats who switched from Republican to Democrat in the last four years.
Read the full story HERE.
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There’s a new yellowcake mix on the market, but it’s definitely not Betty Crocker’s.
It’s the first batch of yellowcake uranium produced by Uranium Energy Corp. from its Christensen Ranch project in the Powder River Basin of northeast Wyoming. It’s fully processed and drummed up, ready for an eventual trip to Metropolis, Illinois. That’s where it will eventually be made into nuclear fuel rods for America’s re-emerging nuclear power sector.
Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports, though, that the production of this first batch of yellowcake is just a test by UEC, which is still tweaking all of its processes, in preparation for ramping up to full speed ahead.
“They're putting everything through its paces, making sure everything runs right, tweaking this, tweaking that this is all in preparation to gear up for steady production. Uranium Energy has a 12 point 1 million total production capacity right now, 8.1 million pounds of that is in Wyoming… Uranium costs … have been spiking. In January, they were over $100 per pound. So it's pretty significant economic boost for Wyoming to get this energy industry up and running.”
UEC continues to have a memorandum of understanding to potentially supply the plant TerraPower is building in Kemmerer with Wyoming uranium.
Read the full story HERE.
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For those who aren’t fans of the newest iteration of the Wyoming license plate — a big field of dark blue with white lettering — there’s another new alternative.
This one has plenty of color - at least, the only colors that matter to University of Wyoming fans, in brown and gold.
After more than a year of planning and taking public input, the new UW plates are available. And Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that, yes, the iconic bucking horse logo is front and center on this plate.
“Wyoming has to change its license plates every eight years per state statute. So that's why people can't hang on to designs that they like this time around, the state design is representative of the Wyoming State Flag, but people have been it's been contentious. To put it mildly, a lot of people don't like the look, so they're gravitating towards the other one of the other license plates that had to be redesigned, which was the University of Wyoming license plate. And all the proceeds generated from that license plate, it costs $180 extra to get it, but… that goes to the University of Wyoming Alumni Association, which helps fund scholarships at UW… It's brown, bold letters. It's got a mountain scape and gold on the backdrop. It's got Go Pokes at the bottom.”
The UW Athletics Department inspired the design. The colors — brown, gold and white — are recognizable across Wyoming, but the mountains on the license plate are similar to those in UW’s endzones and team uniforms.
Read the full story HERE.
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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 Cowboy State Daily Dot Com - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our YouTube channel, or listen to us on your favorite podcast app. Thanks for tuning in - I’m Wendy Corr, for Cowboy State Daily.
