It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Wednesday, March 25th. I’m Mac Watson.
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A Union Pacific engineer has been charged with being on drugs while driving a train loaded with 16,000 tons of hazardous materials across eastern Wyoming. Cowboy State Daily’s Greg Johnson reports that Kristopher Richards told deputies he fell asleep “a little bit” and possibly “for the whole trip.”
“This Union Pacific train driver, an engineer, has been charged with reckless endangerment, also being under the influence of a controlled substance for an eight-hour trip that he did, driving fully loaded, almost 16,000 ton train full of hazardous materials, flammable, some explosive type of materials, and from Nebraska to Cheyenne. But he apparently had really bizarre behavior, according to his court file, that he urinated on himself a couple of times. He was just behaving aggressive and very bizarre with his co-workers.”
Laramie County Sheriff Brian Kozak tells Cowboy State Daily that the train was stopped prior to reaching the depot in Cheyenne, adding that Union Pacific was very cooperative in the operation.
Read the full story HERE.
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Reid Rasner is accusing Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray of hypocrisy for backing wind leases despite criticizing the industry frequently. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that Gray fired back, calling Rasner’s attacks desperate and linking him to “Las Vegas values.”
“Reid Rasner kind of went on the offensive Monday, giving an interview and then later a statement about Secretary of State Chuck Gray's former aye votes in favor of at least three wind projects, and this is in contrast to gray saying, you know, woke wind is wrong for Wyoming and criticizing the industry as a whole, where he's also had issues with specific leases. And so raisner said that is an issue. He leveled some insults at Gray, and he also said that gray did an about face on, and he did vote in favor of a gravel pit, and then later came to be one of its biggest opponents. But Gray retorted, saying that Cowboy State Daily should investigate Rasner’s Las Vegas values. It's a potential jab because Rasner had run to become city councilman in Las Vegas in 2017.”
Gray and Rasner are in a growing field of Republican U.S. House hopefuls headed into the Aug. 18 primary election.
Read the full story HERE.
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The mayor of Mills is frustrated that a Tuesday ruling postponed and scaled back a 440-megawatt solar farm. Cowboy State Daily’s David Madison reports that the project was supposed to transform thousands of acres of private land north of Mills into one of Wyoming’s largest renewable energy installations.
“The mayor of Mills today told Cowboy State Daily that they've been tracking this, they've been holding up their end of the bargain, and they would like to see some kind of impact reassessment. You know, they hoped that maybe a new hearing could be set and they could make their case look, we fronted these costs. These delays are costing us. The mayor also said that there have been talks about adjusting the impact costs and perhaps NextEra stepping in and filling some kind of financing gap Mills feels like it's been stuck in.”
The Industrial Siting Council on Tuesday approved an amendment to the Dinosolar Solar Energy Project’s permit, pushing the construction start date from the original April 2024 target to on or before March 3, 2029 and the amendment also slashes the project nearly in half, from approximately 3,500 acres to roughly 2,400 acres.
Read the full story HERE.
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Don't count Wyoming meteorologist Don Day as a believer in a much-repeated forecast for a "Super El Niño." Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that although Day says conditions for an El Niño, which would bring moisture to Wyoming, are good, he says it's too early to predict a “super” version.
“Most meteorologists are hesitant to give you a forecast that's beyond 14 days. If that’s so, it's entirely possible we could be in an El Nino by the summer, but with the amount of time between then and now and several other factors that have contributed to Wyoming's weather for years. At this point, we don't know exactly what's going to happen, which is why a cowboy state meteorologist Don day says anything talking about a super El Nino coming is just click bait.”
Several meteorologists say that an El Niño is forming over the Pacific Ocean. That means the ocean's surface temperatures are getting warmer along the equator, which always has wide-reaching impacts across the Western Hemisphere.
Read the full story HERE.
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I’ll be back with more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.
Cowboy State Daily news continues now…
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Chad Auer, who served recently as a senior policy adviser for the governor, declared Tuesday he's running for Superintendent of Public Instruction. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that Auer said he hasn’t sought any endorsements yet, but the governor has encouraged him to run.
“Chad Auer has been working for the governor recently. He's got his juris doctorate. He's got experience in public education. He's got experience in government. And so you add him into this race where we already have Tom Kelly, a PhD, a state representative, a college professor, and you have a really heavyweight race. And Kelly said, ‘Yeah, I welcome Chad Auer into this race, because it's going to be a good one for Wyoming.’”
According to Auer’s biography, he served two decades in educational leadership and as a teacher, principal and school improvement administrator before earning his law degree from the University of Wyoming.
Read the full story HERE.
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The 2,000-acre Haystack Solar Project that faced strong opposition from Natrona County residents last year is back. Cowboy State Daily’s Dale Killingbeck reports that on Monday, project leaders were told by residents of the area that resurrecting the project will be a “battle.”
“A company representative told me that, you know, told us that they waited a year kind of to just let things settle. But now they're back, and obviously they've probably been working behind the scenes, you know, to revise the project a little bit. They said they work with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department to try and make wildlife corridors better in the project. That was one concern that residents had, but there's still concerns about fire, about water, about the distance, or fire, if there is a fire, for trucks to get out there. So there's a lot of the same issues that residents are concerned about.”
The initial project involved 2,010 acres on the private ranch land, but the revised project adds 160 acres to avoid conflict with a neighboring rancher whose cattle grazing would have been affected by the former site plan.
Read the full story HERE.
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It took about four hours and a SWAT team from Campbell County to capture a reportedly armed Newcastle man out of a home Monday. Cowboy State Daily’s Greg Johnson reports that Brandon Suess was wanted on a warrant for a parole violation and now faces up to 10 more years in prison.
“When they went to get him, he locked himself in this house, and then he said, ‘I've got a weapon here. I'm going to use it.’ And at that point, with the threat of a gun play coming in, they called in the Campbell County SWAT team. They sent their SWAT team out, had their big, their big bulletproof shields, were able to go in, and they got the guy out. Now the guy didn't come out peacefully. It ended peacefully, but the guy didn't come out willingly. They had to go in and get him, and during about a four hour standoff with police.”
As for Suess, aside from the warrant for a parole violation, he now faces two additional charges of interference with a peace officer.
Read the full story HERE.
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Each spring, western tiger salamanders emerge from their burrows in Laramie’s neighborhoods to reach LaBonte Park’s pond in one of Wyoming’s least-known migrations. Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that for salamanders, this is an epic and dangerous journey.
“It is Wyoming's least known migration. It's kind of a hidden world in Laramie there with these creatures, they live in little underground burrows. You wouldn't think that they'd have a roommate that's a deer mouse like these guys will hole up with deer mice underground. It turns out to be good for them both. The salamander the mouse poop kind of attracts these insects which the salamander eats, with all that breathing the deer mouse is doing, the environments getting all humidified, which is what the salamander kind of needs. It is an amphibian. It's not a reptile.”
Western tiger salamanders, at first glance, seem like tiny snakes, but they’re not. In fact, they’re not even reptiles — they’re amphibians.
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.
