Wyoming transportation

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By Wendy Corr, Cowboy State Daily

The trip between Shoshoni and Thermopolis could take an extra hour in the next two to four weeks due to last weekend’s Wind River Canyon rock slide and the start of a road project in the area.

Cody Beers, a spokesman for the Wyoming Department of Transportation, said the rock slide last week allowed the department to start work early on a slide stabilization project near Shoshoni, but added the combined projects, along with a paving project near Shoshoni could add 30 to 45 minutes to a trip in the canyon.

“We’ve had to mobilize in our subcontractor because of the rock slide that happened Saturday night, and the relative instability of the area above the road,” he said. 

Beers noted that it took two loaders four hours on Saturday night just to make the roadway passable due to the massive amount of debris that fell around 7 p.m., so several days will be required for a full cleanup of the area.

“So that’s going to probably take a week, and it’s going to add to the cost of that slide stabilization project through Wind River Canyon,” he said. “But it’s great that we’ve already got a contractor there and we can just do a change order and add to their scope of work.”

Put On Climbing Gear

Oftedal Construction of Casper is the primary contractor overseeing a project that will remove other loose rock from the side of the canyon to mitigate further slides that might impact traffic. Its subcontractor Midwest Rockfall, Inc. began work Tuesday, April 26, to scale smaller pieces of rock from the canyon wall which otherwise might fall onto traffic lanes. 

“They will put climbing gear on and then go right up on the rocks and push loose rocks off,” Beers said. “They’ve got experienced climbers that go up there with a pole and they try to move every loose rock off.”

Some of the originally planned rockfall mitigation work includes installing rock bolts, repairing existing rock fence and installation of new rock mesh.

But Beers said the subcontractor’s work will now include emergency work at the rock slide which closed the highway Saturday evening. 

“There’s several really big pieces of rock that are now loose after what happened Saturday,” he pointed out. “And so we’re going to move all that rock that fell Saturday out of there first so that we can drop those big rocks off the edge of the asphalt – because if we dropped those big rocks on the asphalt, then we’re going to have to rebuild the roadway in those areas.” 

Specialists Needed

Beers pointed out that contractors are hired for this specific scope of work because the Wyoming Department of Transportation doesn’t have the equipment or the expertise to handle a project of this type.

“If it’s an occasional rock, or some smaller rocks that come down, we are able to move those off the road either with one of our loaders or a snowplow,” Beers said. “But when we’re talking the breadth of rockfall that happened, and then the aftermath of the rock slide and what’s still up on the hill that’s now loose and needs to come off, that’s where we have to enlist the experts.”

At the same time, southeast of Wind River Canyon, asphalt paving is scheduled to begin this week on a little over 8 miles of U.S. Highway 20 between Shoshoni and the Wind River Canyon.

“So if you hit it the wrong time, you’re going to end up with stop delays of 40 minutes plus,” Beers said. “In some instances it could add an hour to your drive between Shoshoni and Thermopolis.”

“They’re going to be working as fast as the weather will allow them to work,” he added.  

Safer Experience

In the end, though, Beers pointed out that the results of the work will mean a safer traveling experience through the Wind River Canyon.

“We’ve had trooper vehicles get hit by rocks, or they were blocking rock slides in there,” he said. “We’ve had our own engineers in there that had to run out of the way of rock slides. And so we did these scaling projects to hopefully get ahead of the curve and make the whole corridor more safe.”

Beers predicted that the delays caused by the two projects between Shoshoni and Thermopolis will last for a few weeks.

“It’s probably going to be like this for probably two to four weeks depending on the weather, and how quickly the contractor is able to get in there and do the work.”

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By Wendy Corr, Cowboy State Daily

A group of Powell students helped clear debris from a rock slide along the narrow canyon highway between Shoshoni and Thermopolis that brought traffic to a standstill for four hours on Saturday.

However, some are questioning the wisdom of the action given the instability of the mountainsides above the highway.

“You know, that was totally on their own, and we would not recommend that,” said Cody Beers, a public information specialist for the Wyoming Department of Trasportation. “Now, I’m glad it all went well, and I’m glad they were able to get through there safely. But at that point, it was a fairly volatile situation. There could have been more rocks that could have come down.” 

According to reports, the rock slide just north of the three tunnels over U.S. Highway 20 between Shoshone and Thermopolis brought traffic on the highway to a halt. Photos taken by travelers showed a large amount of debris spread across both lanes of traffic.

Beers told Cowboy State Daily that the department received the initial call about the rock slide at about 7 p.m. Loaders were sent from both sides of the slide and had the road open again by about 11:15 p.m.

“And we ended up with five people out there Saturday night, and we got it cleaned out,” he said.

Included among the vehicles stopped on the road was a bus carrying members of Powell’s soccer team home after a meet.

“Standing O”

Witnesses said students got out of the bus and began moving some of the rocks to allow some traffic to pass.

Michele Hampton said she was traveling with her daughter, a member of the Powell girls varsity soccer team, a few vehicles behind the bus from Powell and one from Worland when they came upon the slide.

“We went through the three tunnels,” said Hampton. “And I saw the Powell Panthers, they were there pulling the rocks up, and I got there at the tail end of that.”

Hampton posted words of praise and a photo of the Worland bus working its way through the path cleared by the Powell students on social media Saturday.

“I just want to give a standing ‘O’ to the Powell Panther Soccer boys major rock slide coming through Wind River Canyon,” she wrote. “These boys pulled boulders off the highway so cars could get through! All people and kids are safe.”

Comments responding to Hampton’s post regarding the boys’ actions were largely positive, with several, such as Chris Brewer, also a parent to one of the students, joining Hampton in expressing pride in the young people for helping others.

“I’m also glad our young men were able to assist on their own accord,” she wrote. “No one forced them to do anything. Most other men wouldn’t have hesitated to jump in. They make a great team. Glad they got to move through the canyon vs. sitting ducks in the canyon for hours or the drive around route which would have been treacherous as well.” 

“Extremely Unsafe”

Others, while praising the students, said their actions might have been ill-advised.

“I do think that it was a highly commendable thought to help out the way that our Powell students did in regards to the slide,” said Chad Eagleton, also the parent of a Powell student. “However, they’re at a school function and the school is 100% responsible for their safety and how many were 18 and over? There was nobody qualified to say that scene was safe. It was extremely unsafe.”

Eagleton said the adults accompanying the athletes should have prevented them from putting themselves in harm’s way.

“I really do love that the kids’ first thought was to help,” Eagleton said, “but they do not have agency to make those decisions and neither does the school.”

Beers said when confronted with a rock slide, the best thing to do is leave the debris alone, since the mountainside that spawned the slide can still be unstable.

“The best bet when you encounter a rockslide is to not move rocks out of the way because there may be another event coming, you know, we just don’t know the stability of a canyon wall at that point,” he said. 

The Wind River Canyon is the only option for travelers to get from the north-central part of the state to get to the southern half, so when the canyon closes due to winter weather or rock slides, it causes a major snag.

“I’ve heard the old-timers say this for years – we’re only really one bad rock slide away from an extended closure of Wind River Canyon,” Beers said.

Thankful No One Was Hurt

Beers said continued rock slides in the future are guaranteed.

“Man cut his way through that canyon and created a highway,” he said. “And so we disrupted whatever natural things were there, and so the rocks are going to come down – I mean, it’s basic gravity. 

“Because when the ground freezes, it contracts, and when it thaws it expands, and that causes movement of rocks and dirt, and then you get weather and you have the possibility of having either a rock slide or mudslide,” he added. 

And because of the geography and geology of the canyon, Beers said the issues there will always exist.

“I don’t think that there’s enough money or enough manpower or enough engineering to keep us from ever having a problem in Wind River Canyon,” Beers said. “It’s about 10 miles of road through there that can be very beautiful and breathtaking, and very treacherous and dangerous. It looks peaceful in there, but it’s anything but peaceful.”

Because rock slides happen randomly, Beers urged travelers to proceed with caution through Wind River Canyon, and be aware that what happened Saturday could happen again at any time.

Beers said he as also thankful none of the students were hurt.

“I’m just thankful that nothing happened while they were there,” he said. “But you know, as a parent, that’s the last thing I’d want my son doing, is cleaning rocks off a road at the bottom of where a rock slide just happened.” 

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By Scott McClallen, The Center Square

Some experts this Earth Day are questioning whether electric vehicles (EV) are actually as environmentally friendly as initially claimed by automakers and government officials.

In the words of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan’s automakers are speeding to an “all-electric future,” despite looming supply chain issues, chip shortages, and a possible battery shortage.

Last week, Rivian Automotive CEO RJ Scaringe warned reporters of a potentially looming shortage of raw materials essential to manufacturing EV batteries, which he added could be a more significant problem than the current computer-chip shortage.

“Put very simply, all the world’s cell production combined represents well under 10% of what we will need in 10 years,” Scaringe said last week, according to the Wall Street Journal. “Meaning, 90% to 95% of the supply chain does not exist,” he added.

Widespread EV adoption would require rare earth minerals, including cobalt, lithium, and nickel, which are in short supply in the United States. Importing the minerals, moreover, sparks ethical questions as rare earth minerals extraction overseas often involves child slave labor and can damage the environment.

The world’s top lithium producers are South America, where Argentina and Chile provide 93% of U.S. lithium. Amnesty International reports thousands of child laborers mine cobalt for lithium batteries. Additionally, a Guardian report noted that children as young as six work in the mines.

While they don’t guzzle gas, a single Tesla requires seven kilograms of lithium for its battery pack, which requires an energy-intensive extraction from the brine of salt flats that can damage the environment and cause water shortages, such as in Chile’s Atacama and Argentina’s Salar de Hombre Muerto regions, Ronald J. Deibert explains in his book “Reset: Reclaiming the Internet for a Civil Society.”

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, which produces most of the world’s cobalt, child slaves often work in the mines. 

While there are only 456 registered electric vehicles in Wyoming, Michigan has 13,545 EVs. That sounds like a big difference but Michigan also has 5.8 million gas vehicles. Yet, the Great Lakes State has dumped more than $1 billion into EV subsidies.

Jason Hayes, director of environmental policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, said Michiganders should consider the “full environmental impact” of EVs.

“Electric vehicles are promoted as the more environmentally friendly choice, because the ratings often only consider CO2 emissions from the tailpipe,” Hayes said in a statement.

“But EVs have their share of CO2 embedded in their manufacturing processes and they use six times more mineral than conventional vehicles – many of which have to be mined, processed and then imported from developing nations,” he said.

“EVs will also put tremendous stresses on our increasingly fragile and weather-dependent electric grid. It’s time for government to stop caving to green special interests and honestly inform consumers about the full environmental impact of electric vehicles.”

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By Jennifer Kocher, Cowboy State Daily

One semi-trucker rollover a shift is enough to keep firefighters busy, let alone five in one day.

Wind gusts, blowing snow, cold temperatures and icy road conditions are being partly to blame for the three rollovers and two jackknifed semi-trucks on 1-90 and other roadways in Campbell County, with three in less than two hours between 10 a.m. and noon.

Nobody was seriously injured in any of the crashes.

It was the most that Bryan Borgialli, Battalion Chief for the Campbell County Fire Department, had ever been on in one day.

“The roads were nothing but a sheet of ice,” Borgialli  told Cowboy State Daily Thursday. “Probably some of the worst roads we’ve ever been on.”

He almost got hit on one of the calls when a car came speeding over the hill and braked too abruptly when they saw the flashing lights. He’s been hit once already in the same conditions, he said, when he first joined the force 19 years ago. 

“I didn’t need to do that again,” he said.

The icy road conditions also slowed them down as well to speeds between 40 to 50 mph as they attempted to attend to the accidents.

Two of the wrecks occurred on 1-90 near Gillette while the others were on South Highway 59 and Highway 50, the latter of which forced the roadway closed for several hours to clear one semi that had jackknifed around noon.

He’s not a crash expert, he said, but thought that the accidents had more to do with traveling at low speeds and being tipped over.

“The roads were treacherous but pretty deceiving,” he said, especially given last week’s temperate weather that he thinks tends to make people more complacent this time of year.

That and overestimating the road conditions.

“People should make the decision if they really need to travel or not,” he said. And if so, he urged drivers to reduce their speed and be on the lookout for emergency vehicles.

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Well, this is something — thankfully — you don’t see everyday.

A semi-truck driver on Thursday, who apparently fell asleep at the wheel, drove his truck into the North Platte River near Fort Steele.

The good news is that the driver and his passenger escaped the ordeal with only minor injuries. The bad news is, well, he drove his truck into the river.

According to a news release, the Wyoming Highway Patrol was dispatched to the area at 5:38 a.m. Thursday morning and spotted the vehicle in the river.

Carbon County Search and Rescue and the Wyoming Game and Fish also responded to the scene. 

Carbon County Search and Rescue used their boat to help retrieve the passengers from the truck.

The Wyoming Game and Fish and Carbon County Fire Department worked to contain any hazardous material leaking from the truck.           

The driver was cited for failing to maintain his lane of travel. 

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