It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Tuesday, December 23rd. I’m Mac Watson.
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Teton Pass was closed all day Monday as the Wyoming Department of Transportation did a controlled avalanche. Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports how a controlled avalanche works and how much snow came down the mountain.
“WYDOT made the decision to close Teton pass at 3am Monday and do a controlled avalanche, which meant a detonation using devices that use propane and oxygen rather than explosives, at 3:45am and that sent a wall of snow onto the pavement. We're talking at least 30 feet high and between 200 and 500 feet long. And when it's wet and heavy like that, they can't use the traditional snow blowers that they use to clear the highways. They had to call in dozers and loaders to get up there and move all of it.”
The mountainside had been scraped down to bare soil, leaving a massive amount of snow on the highway.
Read the full story HERE.
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A Utah company is leading a charge to take and store radioactive waste from Canada. Cowboy State Daily’s David Madison reports that opponents say that nuclear waste could be coming through Wyoming.
“Recently, this federal agency called the Northwest compact, which was mandated by Congress to regulate waste issues, has given the initial okay for waste coming from Ontario to be stored outside of Salt Lake City in Utah…I spoke to watchdogs who really monitor this stuff closely. And yeah, they raise concerns that they call it low level waste, but given the federal regulations around low level waste, that that could mean plutonium, plutonium in small amounts, but still plutonium coming through Wyoming, perhaps on the way to Utah, so it really an example of how two different states right next to each other.”
According to a coalition of environmental groups raising concerns, this is the first time in U.S. history that foreign nuclear power waste will be permanently disposed of on American soil.
Read the full story HERE.
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After strong winds blew more than 100 stacked freight cars off the BNSF Railway tracks near Cheyenne on Friday, crews mobilized to clean it up. Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that within 18 hours, the tracks were clear again.
“When you talk to train people, they’ll say the top priority with any derailment cleanup is to get the tracks open so freight can start moving again. So in this case, clearing everything off the site wasn't necessarily the priority. The priority was to get everything safely away from the rails so other trains could move through, and there are professional companies that specialize in cleaning up after derailment. So presumably, the BNSF Railway brought one of these companies in. They got to the scene as fast as they could, and then they worked over Friday night to get the scene as clear as they could so freight could resume moving again. It was a massive undertaking.”
Dozens of intermodal freight cars each carrying two stacked shipping containers had been derailed, but the rails weren’t the cause as gusts as strong as 75 mph were recorded between Laramie and Cheyenne on Friday.
Read the full story HERE.
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A 31-year-old Casper man accused of trying to burn down his ex-boyfriend’s house and causing $200,000 worth of damage pleaded not guilty Monday. Cowboy State Daily’s Dale Killingbeck reports that 35-year-old David Wilkinson didn’t spend much time in court at his appearance.
“It was kind of a short appearance. Wilkinson just pleaded. The judge asked him, ‘How are you gonna plead? Are you gonna plead not guilty?’ And he just said, ‘Correct.’ And so that was about it. He is still in jail on $30,000 bond.”
The night of the house fire, Wilkinson escaped with his pet snake, then gave investigators conflicting stories about what happened. He is facing a variety of charges, including one count of first-degree arson, one count of third-degree arson, and two counts of domestic assault.
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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Glenrock, the town attorney, and mayor asked a Virginia federal judge Friday to dismiss them from a $350 million lawsuit over claims they helped steal banking trade secrets. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that they’ve called the lawsuit an attempt to "bully a small Wyoming town into submission.”
“You've got all sorts of things going on here. Banks suing each other, and the town of Glen Rock and its leaders caught in the crosshairs in a way. So Eastern Point is suing Flat Irons Bank saying Flat Irons, you guys stole our platform. You stole our property, our intellectual property, and then Flat Iron sued back like ‘No, you guys are bullying and being anti competitive and trying to intimidate our clients with these claims.’ And then you have Eastern Point saying, ‘Hey, town of Glen Rock and your attorney, and your mayor, you're helping the intellectual property theft by using this platform and spreading it.’ And so the town of Glen Rock, its mayor, its attorney, they fired back Friday like they basically are saying Eastern Points claims against us are logically feeble. They didn't follow Wyoming's laws, or show that they followed Wyoming's laws, for when you want to sue the government.”
The lawsuit stems from a private investigation that examined the activities of Colorado-based Flatirons Bank. Both banks are involved in establishing accounts that distribute payments from lawsuit settlements, known as Qualified Settlement Funds or QSF.
Read the full story HERE.
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Snowmobile tours into Old Faithful were canceled for lack of snow, but Cooke City got slammed — and half the town lost power on Friday. Cowboy State Daily’s David Madison reports that townspeople helped tourists in amazing ways.
“So right at that special time when you come back from snowmobiling in the back country all day and you're ready for a Bud Light and some prime rib Well, the power's out. And so everybody kind of congregated in the Exxon, which had a generator running. And right around dinner time they're thinking about, can I get by on a bag of pretzels and this six pack of beer? And you know, the guy behind the counter at the Exxon was offering to heat up pizzas for people. And then along comes Mike Little John. He is a problem solver. He is a Mr. Fix it all around cook city. And he was trying to help everybody that night, as I was walking out of the Exxon, he called me over and said, Hey, my old lady is cooking some food. You got to come by and so I did and dropped in.”
Yellowstone's official winter season began Dec. 15, when most park roads close to automobiles and open to commercially guided snowmobiles and snowcoaches. But this year, the National Park Service warned that "the accumulation of snowfall on roads varies across the park," and the type of transportation available would depend on conditions.
Read the full story HERE.
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A judge has ruled that though a 77-year-old Wamsutter trucker won an appeal in the Wyoming Supreme Court, the state can keep $54,000 it found in his car. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that Ronald Mikulin claims it’s his life savings, but the state showed it was drug money.
“The catch is that the standard of proof isn't as hard in the civil case, so rather than like the beyond a reasonable doubt standard that the state would have pursued if it wanted to convict him of being a drug dealer, for example, that softened in the civil case to clear and convincing evidence standard. And even though the judge actually went too soft on the state the first time around,
the judge just weighed the evidence again this second time around after the Wyoming Supreme Court appeal, and said, ‘Yeah, even with the clear and convincing, still looks like drug money, so the state can take this money.’”
Mikulin was sentenced to 20 days in jail plus a year of probation and ordered to pay a $250 fine and other court costs and fees.
Read the full story HERE.
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Like many 11-year-olds, Wyatt loves cars, especially tricked-out classic rides that are blinged-out to the max. But Cowboy State Daily’s Dale Killingbeck reports that as a cancer patient in hospice care, he can’t get out to the car shows that he loves. So, the show came to him.
“People from Fort Collins, Colorado Springs, Denver and all over the place show up. And they end up having 60 to 70 vehicles of classic cars, trucks, motorcycles, all kinds of cars that they brought to the Laramie hospice and put on a show and a parade for this young man Sunday.”
Jimmy Mora, a member of the Rollerz Only Car Club and owner of a 1936 Plymouth P2 Deluxe Coupe, helped organize the private parade for Wyatt.
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.
