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Dec 29
2008
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The West at RiskPosted by Bruce Robinson in water , Sebastopol , resources , public safety , policy , planning , ocean , history , Health , government , environment , economy , conservation , business , author , animals , alternative energy , air quality , agriculture |
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| The seeds of the rapacious exploitation of the American West lie in the popular myths about the region's history, but there's not very much real history within those myths.
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Two of the three co-authors of The American West at Risk, Howard Wilshire and Jane Neilson, are Sebastopol residents. Wilshire (left) was a U. S. Geological Survey research geologist for thirty-five years and now is Board Chairman of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.
Nielson was a U. S. Geological Survey research geologist for twenty-five years and now is President of the Sebastopol Water Information Group.
The third co-author, Richard Hazlett, is Professor of Geology and the coordinator of the Environmental Analysis Program at Pomona College.
| | While popular histories romanticize the "winning of the west," we now must make some hard policy decisions to keep from losing it.
At left, huge deposits of mining wastes fill the landscape near Yerrington, Nevada. Below, craters from atomic bomb tests further south in the Nevada desert. |
The authors have developed an extensive website with photos, updates, extra chapters, quotations and other materials at LosingTheWest.com
Small and mid-sized manufacturing companies in Sonoma County and northern Marin are banding together to raise their public profile, and their collective clout in a new trade organization called 
Santa Rosa MFG
