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A guard dog so good, she makes you think she's four dogs...

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Derek, nature's greatest hunter, who stalks his prey and attacks with efficiency and precision.

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Employee kate meadows cropped

Kate Meadows

Government & Politics

Speculation is growing over whether a data center could be linked to a rare bacterium discovered in Cheyenne's reuse wastewater system earlier this year, as city officials continue to withhold the identity of the industrial user responsible for the discharge.

Four days after the Cheyenne Board of Public Utilities publicly disclosed the contamination, which happened in February, officials have yet to identify either the company or the industry involved, saying legal and regulatory reviews are still underway.

"It would be likely that a newer industry would be responsible," said Jonathan Brant, a University of Wyoming associate professor of civil and architectural engineering who specializes in water treatment. "Data center discharges would be the first place I would look."

The Board of Public Utilities has fielded multiple public records requests as residents demand to know what industry is behind the hazardous discharge, who the offender is and why the public wasn’t notified as soon as the contaminant was discovered in February.

“Citizens deserve to know what industry contaminated the wastewater,” said Exie Brown Jr., a Republican vying for a House District 9 seat on the Wyoming House of Representatives.

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

Last week, the Board of Public Utilities reminded its customers via public notice that discharge of hazardous substances into the sanitary sewer system is prohibited.

The notice came four months after its lab staff detected an “unusual bacterium” during routine wastewater sampling in February.

The mystery bacterium was found to be cupriavidus gilardii, a naturally occurring organism commonly found in soil and groundwater environments, known for its high resistance to metals. It has been associated with industrial applications involving metal reduction processes, including some advanced manufacturing and industrial systems.

“It is new to us,” said Erin Lamb, BOPU’s administrative and public affairs coordinator. “We have a pretty robust lab and sampling protocol. It’s something that popped up and we thought it was odd, so we reached out to the public health lab.”

[{"type":"text","text":"The city’s reuse water system was taken offline as a precaution."}]

According to the public notice, BOPU staff have undertaken “significant remediation efforts,” draining and disinfecting the entire reuse water system and the city’s Prairie View retention pond to eliminate bacterial presence.

Reuse water irrigation services resumed Monday, after consultation with the Laramie County Public Health Department. By Tuesday, the retention pond was being refilled.

The contaminant affected the city’s reusable water system – water used strictly for irrigation, Lamb said.

Lamb said people are confusing the wastewater system with the drinking-water system, and she reiterated that the hazard affected the wastewater reuse system only.

“I think that’s been very confusing to people. It’s not our water system. It’s our reuse wastewater system," she said.

The source was eventually traced to an “industrial user within the system.” 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Mystery Industrial User"}]

Lamb told Cowboy State Daily the BOPU’s holdout to publicly identify the industrial user behind the contaminant is to ensure all local, state and federal regulations are being followed.

“We have to make sure our legalities are covered,” she said. “It is something we are right in the middle of.”

She said the purpose of Friday’s notice was more about reminding the public that discharging hazardous materials into the wastewater system is prohibited and less about the biohazard that had been discovered.

Still, news of the hazard stoked frustration, fear and confusion.

Conversations have played out on social media, with some people assuming a data center is behind the contaminant. Others called for voting out all city council members and Mayor Patrick Collins for their strong pro-data center stance. Some, like Cheyenne resident Jeffrey Scott, say data centers don’t use chemicals for refining metals.

[{"type":"text","text":"“We’re definitely aware of the public interest,” Lamb said."}]

Her office has received multiple public-records requests from residents demanding to know who is behind the hazardous discharge.

[{"type":"text","text":"One such request is from Brown."}]

Brown told Cowboy State Daily he is seeking information about how the discharge happened, adding, “Transparency should be the default and not the exception. The City of Cheyenne and BOPU work for the people and not the other way around.”

In his own public statement, Brown said, “BOPU’s press release spends considerable time reminding everyday residents and small businesses what not to put down a drain, while deliberately keeping the identity of the actual responsible party hidden behind vague language about ‘an industrial user’.”

Lamb said her office is following all the proper regulatory procedures and is undergoing a legal review to determine what information it can release.

“I understand the frustration,” she said. “But to do it right, we have to follow those procedures.”

Lamb also would not identify the offending industry.

“I can’t confirm anything at this point in terms of the entity’s name or industry,” she said. “We ask for patience. We just want to make sure we do everything by the book." 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Why So Long?"}]

Lamb told Cowboy State Daily that as soon as the contaminant was discovered, staff sent it to the state lab for testing.

Hazardous materials being discharged into the city sewer is not uncommon, she said, and it took a week to 10 days for the lab to confirm the contaminant was cupriavidus gilardii.

Lamb did not directly confirm with Cowboy State Daily why the public wasn’t notified about the contaminant until four months after it was discovered.

“This has been a process,” she said, adding that attention to local, state and federal regulations has been the focus of the probe.

According to the BOPU’s statement, research shows that while infections caused by cupriavidus gilardii are extremely rare the bacterium may pose health risks to immunocompromised individuals and the elderly through direct exposure.

According to the public notice, hazardous discharge violations can result in fines, penalties, liability for damages and potentially being disconnected from city water and sewer services.

The user behind this incident will face a series of fees, based on what it cost the city to remediate, Lamb said. She didn’t know an exact dollar amount.

“Violations can become extremely costly,” Lamb said. “We’re pretty firm on not putting that cost on our ratepayers.”

The user is also cut off from the city’s sewer system, their discharge permit terminated.

Lamb said that means the user will have to find another way to dispose of discharge, such as utilizing holding tanks or trucking waste to a facility that can treat and/or dispose of hazardous materials.

“It’s something that the Board of Public Utilities is not willing to risk happening again,” she said. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Common\/Not Common"}]

The Board of Public Utilities’ wastewater reclamation facilities have encountered a variety of hazardous materials discharged into the sewer system over the past two decades. Hazardous materials include gasoline, petroleum products, grease and concrete.

“This is unfortunately not an anomaly,” Lamb said. “It isn’t a once-in-a-while kind of thing."

[{"type":"text","text":"Every utility system experiences this kind of thing frequently, she said."}]

“It’s an amazing wonder how some of these things get put down into the sewer system,” Lamb said.

However, the specific bacterium identified in this instance is an anomaly.

“It’s a naturally occurring thing,” Lamb said. “We’ve just never seen it before. We really had to do some research.”

Brant, the water-treatment specialist at the University of Wyoming, told Cowboy State Daily the organism requires a metal-rich water system to thrive.

“Data centers, in general, can supply such environments for their heat-exchange systems,” he said. “Copper has historically been a widely used heat-exchange material, though other metals can be used as well, depending on the system design.”

As of Tuesday, a city water reclamation manager confirmed that water testing showed the bacterium was no longer present at either of the city’s two wastewater facilities — Crow Creek and Dry Creek.

Dry Creek Wastewater Plant IMG 6817 6 30 26

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

<title>Cheyenne Officials Haven't Said Who Polluted Its Reuse Water System | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Speculation is growing over whether a data center could be linked to pollution discovered in Cheyenne's reuse wastewater system earlier this year, as city officials haven't reported the identity of the industrial user responsible for the discharge.

Cheyenne Officials Haven't Said Who Polluted Its Reuse Water System

Heinz mark

Mark Heinz

Wildlife

A rancher near Choteau, Montana, caught video of six grizzlies strolling across his calving lot behind his barn late Monday, and said there were as many as seven bears on his property that night.

The next morning, rancher Neal Collins said agents from Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks hazed as many as 10 grizzlies out of patches of brush across the road from his place.

Collins said no people or livestock were attacked by the bears on his place, and FWP used non-lethal “cracker” shotgun shells to scare off the bears.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A ‘Herd’ Of Grizzlies"}]

Sparky Wallace, a friend of Collins who also lives near Choteau, somewhat humorously described the group of grizzlies as a “herd.”

He told Cowboy State Daily he and some of his neighbors have had encounters with multiple bears, as the number of grizzlies out on the prairie has steadily increased.  

Chad White, a bear management specialist with Montana FWP, said the bears on Collins’ property were probably a “couple of family groups that have been hanging out in the area.”

Meaning, they were likely two related adult females such as “a mother and daughter” and their cubs, White said.

The Choteau area has been busy with bear activity this spring and summer. The bears wander from the Rocky Mountain Front onto the prairie along the Teton River, which flows past Choteau. 

The bears might be feeding on green vegetation and other natural food sources, then taking shelter in brush patches.

“It may be that he (Collins) has the natural shelter for day bedding and they were traveling around the area,” White said. 

White said the FWP bear manager responding to Collins’ call told him as many as 10 grizzlies fled once the hazing stared.

FWP personnel fired cracker shells into the brush where the bears were holed up. Cracker shells fire a small explosive charge with a delayed fuse, designed to explode in the air and ward off predators such as bears and wolves.

“The six or seven bears in the family groups ran off in one direction, and two or three more ran off in another direction,” he said.

It’s not known where the other two or three bears might have come from, White added.

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

Collins said he was first alerted to the bears’ presence Monday when one of his dogs started frantically barking at about 9:30 p.m.

“We’ve got this one dog that’s supposed to be a cow dog, but she’s really not,” he said. “She was just barking, barking, barking. She barks on occasion, but not like that.” 

He said he stepped outside to investigate and saw a “flash of a bear.”

So, he immediately went back into his house, shooing the dog inside with him.

A camera he has mounted on the backside of his barn caught video and photos of the bears.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘You Get Immune To It’"}]

Collins’ ranch is about 35 miles out on the prairie from the Rocky Mountain front.

Grizzlies are usually associated with mountain habitat. However, they were originally a Great Plains species, and were driven into the mountains as the West was settled.

Grizzlies have been growing in number and expanding their range in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho in recent decades. In Montana, they’ve been pushing ever-farther onto the prairies.

Collins said his father was in his 70s before he ever saw a grizzly anywhere near Choteau. But the bears have become a common sight of late.

When asked if having the bears around worried him, Collins said, “I suppose, but you get immune to it.”

Even so, he’s not happy about the growing number of prairie grizzlies.

“There here, even though I don’t want them here,” he said.

In Wyoming, grizzlies attacking cattle is frequently listed as the leading cause of human-bear conflict.

Collins said he hasn’t lost any livestock to bears yet.

"Even so, they sure don’t help them (the cattle) even if they don’t kill them,” he said. "They move through the cattle herd and stir them up.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Bird Hunting Gets Wild"}]

North-central Montana is a bird hunter’s paradise. And in decades past, grizzlies would have been the furthest things from bird hunters’ minds.

That’s not the case any longer. In 2023, 

 between bird and whitetail deer hunters in separate incidents.

Those occurred in the vicinity of the Freezeout Lake Wildlife Management Area. It’s between Choteau and Fairfield, Montana, about 40 miles west of Great Falls.

Collins said that several years ago, a bird hunter had to shoot and kill a charging grizzly across the road from his place.

“He ended up with a scratch on his arm, because the last shot was right at the end of the gun barrel,” he said.

Wallace, a horse trainer and saddle maker, said he’s run into multiple grizzlies while bird hunting.

“I hunt ducks a lot. And even on the little prairie potholes out here, you’ve got to walk in there loaded and ready for bears,” he said.

Herd of grizzlies 2 6 30 26

<title>Holy Cow! Montana Rancher Spots 'Herd' Of 7 Grizzlies On Property | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Montana rancher Neal Collins said a camera on his barn captured a "herd" of seven grizzlies on his property Monday night. The next morning, agents from Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks hazed 10 grizzlies out of brush across the road from his place.

Holy Cow! Montana Rancher Spots 'Herd' Of 7 Grizzlies On Property

Jen kocher

Jen Kocher

Law Enforcement

The Campbell County Sheriff’s Office is asking for the public’s help in locating a Gillette man missing for two weeks.

Derek Schaff, 43, was last seen June 12 at the Weston Hills recreational area, a popular four-wheeling and hunting area jointly owned by the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service about 25 miles north of Gillette on Highway 59.

The sheriff’s office and partner agencies have deployed drones, K-9 teams, and search and rescue personnel across the rugged terrain, but Schaff has not been found, the sheriff’s office said Tuesday.

Authorities are asking anyone with information about his whereabouts in the days and hours leading up to his disappearance to contact their office.

“Even information that may seem insignificant could prove valuable to investigators,” the statement said, adding that it’s an active and ongoing investigation. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"'Extremely Worried'"}]

Little information has been released about the circumstances under which Schaff disappeared or why he may have gone to the recreation area in remote Campbell County.

"We are extremely worried about him and any information could be helpful," said Melissa Schaff, Derek's sister-in-law, adding that the family is working alongside law enforcement and WyoFind.  

Stacy Koester, president and founder of the Gillette-based 

, also has been in frequent contact with the Schaffs and continues to work with them along with law enforcement.

"They are grateful for all the work the sheriff’s office has done and with their communication with them.,” Koester said.

Koester also met with the Sgt. Gary Sams, lead investigator on the case with the Campbell County Sheriff’s Office.

Sams was on-site investigating and said he was unable to answer additional questions in response to Cowboy State Daily’s request for information. He said only that his office has received help from Natrona, Sheridan and Weston county search and rescue teams.

Koester and a small group of WyoFind volunteers have also been granted permission from Sams to search the area on foot and with drones in conjunction with their efforts, she said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Intensified Search Efforts"}]

Koester also encouraged anyone with information to contact the sheriff’s office but said people can also 

report anonymous tips on the WyoFind website

, which will be directly passed on to investigators.

“WyoFind recognizes that some individuals may hesitate to contact law enforcement directly due to personal circumstances, lifestyles, or activities,” Koester said.

In the meantime, Koester is planning upcoming search efforts with the support of the sheriff’s office and Schaff’s family.

“This collaboration reflects a shared commitment between local authorities, community members, and WyoFind volunteers to locate Derek and provide continued support to his loved ones,” Koester said.

Anyone with information can contact the Campbell County Sheriff's Office at 307-682-7271 or 307-687-6176. 

 on the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation’s website.

Weston hills 6 30 26

<title>Gillette Man Missing For 2 Weeks In Rugged Weston Hills Recreation Area | Cowboy State Daily</title>

The Campbell County Sheriff’s Office is asking for the public’s help in locating a Gillette man missing for two weeks. The sheriff’s office have deployed drones, K-9 teams, and search and rescue personnel across the rugged terrain, but Schaff has not been found.

Gillette Man Missing For 2 Weeks In Rugged Weston Hills Recreation Area

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

Public Safety

What first appeared to be an ordinary construction delay on a lonely stretch of highway west of Casper quickly turned into one of the 

 many of those involved had ever witnessed.

By the time emergency crews reached U.S. Highway 20/26 near mile marker 58 Friday afternoon, two people were dead, seven others had been injured, and strangers were comforting survivors, checking on children, searching for fire extinguishers and handing out bottled water.

On Monday, the Natrona County Coroner's Office identified the two people killed as James Faris Cox, 74, and Susan Horn Cox, 69, of Golden, Colorado.

"That was my aunt and uncle killed in the wreck Friday," their nephew Lee Wolfe told Cowboy State Daily. "They were on the way to their house in Ennis, MT. They lived in Golden, CO."

[{"type":"text","text":"He said the couple was traveling alone."}]

"It was just my aunt and uncle in their truck, no survivors," he said. "My two cousins and their families were heading up there at a different time thankfully."

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Semi, Multiple Vehicles Involved"}]

The Wyoming Highway Patrol said the crash involved multiple vehicles, including a semi-truck.

"Two confirmed fatalities. Seven injured. Seventeen people involved, two flown by helicopter, the others were taken to Wyoming Medical Center by ambulance," Wyoming Highway Patrol spokesman Aaron Brown said. "This is still an active investigation." 

As of Monday afternoon, investigators had not released a preliminary cause of the crash, and no criminal charges had been filed.

The Natrona County Coroner's Office said it is investigating the fatalities along with the Wyoming Highway Patrol and Natrona County Sheriff's Office.

[{"type":"text","text":"Krista Nethercott of Jackson never saw the crash itself."}]

She had been traveling toward Casper with a neighbor after taking her son to enroll in college when traffic suddenly came to a stop.

[{"type":"text","text":"At first, she assumed the delay was caused by nearby road construction."}]

"There were these pylons on the right-hand side that kind of tell you there's construction," she said. "But there wasn't anything alerting you to slow down. There wasn't a flagger."

After waiting several minutes, she said she couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong.

She stepped out of her vehicle and walked toward the front of the traffic backup.

"That's when I could see there were cars on both sides of the road," she said. "I was like, 'Oh my goodness.'"

Nethercott said she immediately ran toward the wreckage to make sure someone had called 911 and to offer whatever help she could.

An older Colorado couple have been identified as the two people killed in a Friday multi-vehicle crash west of Casper. "We made sure she wasn't alone,” said a Jackson woman who was among those who stopped to help the couple and others hurt in the crash.