It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Thursday, December 18th. I’m Mac Watson.
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At least part of the Dec.1st complaint in which Platte County residents asked Gov. Mark Gordon to remove their commissioners from office is false, documents show. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that public officials are saying other parts are hotly disputed.
“We actually obtained their campaign finance reports with file stamps on them. For example, there was a claim in there that Commissioner Steve Shockley was only nominally a fireman, and two high ranking fire officials were like, no, he's responding to fires all the time. And then there was one that developed into a gray area where they were saying these two commissioners. So two out of the three met with this energy developer, supposedly for a safety talk on how to deal with runaway fires and battery systems. And two makes a quorum. So under state law, there's public meeting laws apply.…So while some of the complaints are just we can soundly debunk some, multiple people are saying, ‘Yeah, that's not true.’”
The Platte County complaint marks the fourth concentrated attempt to remove county officials from office via a governor’s investigation in the past year.
Read the full story HERE.
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Rock Springs police and family of a missing Rock Springs woman are requesting the public’s help in locating her. Cowboy State Daily’s Jen Kocher reports that 20-year-old Searra Gentry, who family says struggles with mental health, was last seen Tuesday getting into a pickup truck with an unknown male.
“She went over to the Greyhound bus, and a woman purchased a ticket for her. And again, she has no money. She has no cell phone. So her aunt, Jessica Richter, who I spoke to, does not know what Sierra told the woman, but whatever she did encouraged her to buy her a bus ticket to Salt Lake City…but she did not get on that bus. Instead, she left with the gentleman in his pickup truck.”
The pickup has been described as a late 1990’s-early 2000’s primer gray GMC or Chevy pickup truck. Anyone with information is asked to call the Rock Springs Police department.
Read the full story HERE.
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Wildlife photographers say the reign of Hoback, the most famous moose in the Grand Tetons, could be coming to an end. Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz reports that the moose is estimated to be around 18 years old, and has already shed one of his antlers.
“The people that saw it happen see it happened on the 10th of December, which is somewhat early for a moose to shed their antlers. Usually they don't start until late December, January. And it probably could be because he's getting old and his testosterone levels are dropping, and so that might prompt him to shed his antlers earlier, which kind of segues into this whole, you know, larger topic of whole backs getting old. I mean, it happens with these iconic animals that we, you know, maybe kind of place on a pedestal in Wyoming, as we did with Grizzly 399.”
It’s been a rough year for Grand Teton’s moose. Several of them have been struck by vehicles, including a famed bull called Elk Antler, who was killed in October.
Read the story HERE.
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Cody Roberts, the Daniel, Wyoming, man accused of torturing a wolf before killing it is asking a judge to drop a felony animal cruelty charge. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports why Robert’s attorney asked for the charge to be dropped.
“Robert Piper, at first asked, like, ‘I want to know exactly what is the charging information here, the specifics of what this man is being accused of doing.’ Piper filed this motion to dismiss, basically accusing the state of stretching the law and using part of the law to negate the very exception that applies to it. And in all of that, he recognizes that this is a high profile case, and he wrote that a defendant's alleged conduct is unpopular or draws scorn does not deprive him of the fundamental right to be placed on notice of the accusations against him…He's claiming that the state has stretched a statute to charge a man who's accused of doing a very unpopular thing.”
Roberts was charged in August by a grand jury, with felony animal cruelty. The charge is punishable by up to two years in prison and up to $5,000 in fines.
Read the full story HERE.
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I’ll be back with more news from Cowboy State Daily, after this….
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Auto dealers in the Rocky Mountain region said they weren't surprised with Ford's announcement that the company was discontinuing its all-electric F-150 Lightning pickup. Cowboy State Daily’s David Madison reports that dealers saw this coming.
“It sold better, but it never penciled out for Ford because it was costing them more to build them than they could sell them for…This does not signal Ford getting out of the EV truck business. I spoke to one expert in Wyoming who said, ‘Look, come 2028, they'll actually have a ground-up EV on the way, whereas the Ford F150 was an existing gas powered vehicle that they tried to turn into an EV.’ This new mid size pickup, due in 2028, is supposedly built as an EV.”
One car dealer tells Cowboy State Daily another reason sales of the Ford Lightning have dropped off is because of the $7,500 incentive check a customer could get, but that program ended this past September.
Read the full story HERE.
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Decades after arsenic contamination shut down the Nedlog and Williams Strategic Metals plant south of Laramie, the EPA is moving ahead with a plan to finally finish removing arsenic and mercury from the site.Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports why the cleanup has taken so long.
“This was a Department of Defense project. They built this plant in the 1940 timeframe. They finished it in 44 slash 45 right when the war was ending. And the reason they built it was they needed a domestic supply of aluminum for the war effort, and so this plant was going to supply aluminum…And they did that for a while, and they sold out to this Williams strategic metals, and that is the plant that ultimately got shut down, and evidently was releasing some arsenic and other pollutants that have sickened some people around that plant. And so, you know, the potentially responsible party is a little difficult to tease out from all of that, because you don't really know exactly. When did that arsenic contamination start, and was it the Williams company? Was it the company before that?”
In 1988, Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality revoked the plant’s operating permit, shutting it down. Thus began a decades-long marathon of cleanup efforts at the site.
Read the full story HERE.
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Sweetwater County School District No. 1 leadership is under fire after parents and community members on social media accused a Rock Springs High School administrator of wearing an orange wristband that includes acronyms that stand for vulgar phrases. Cowboy State Daily’s Kate Meadows reports that the district is now reviewing the complaint but won’t discuss specific personnel.
“The school board received a written public complaint from Carrie Cochran, who is a parent in the district, and the complaint reads in part, it says, what is happening in these posts should alarm every parent, educator and community member, the fact that a bracelet with phrases like follow policy plus FAFO + GFY is not only circulating, but reportedly worn by a school leader, is deeply disturbing.”
School Board member Josh Sorensen acknowledged the existence of the wristband at last week’s school board meeting but did not accuse anyone specifically of wearing it.
Read the full story HERE.
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Comet 3I/ATLAS is a 33-billion-ton object that's older than our own solar system, and will make its closest approach to Earth on Friday. Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that scientists are captivated by its unusual “anti-tail.”
“The comet Atlas that has been monitored for the past several months has an anti-tail…The explanation I was given was that there might be a hole in the shell of this comet, and as the volatile elements in that hole are energized by the sun's energy, they're so energized that they're shooting straight out, rather than drifting to the back. So that's what's called an anti tail, as opposed to the traditional comet tail. The other interesting thing about this comet is that it's the third interstellar object that's been found in the last decade.”
Even though it poses no threat to Earth, NASA is keeping a close eye on the object, which scientists believe is over 7 billion years old, which is 3 billion years older than anything in our solar system.
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 watching - I’m Mac Watson, for Cowboy State Daily.
