Episode Details

A fire sparked in northeastern Wyoming and running into southern Montana continues to grow. The Remington Fire is now at nearly 200,000 acres with 0% containment.

But Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports that a nearby fire in Johnson County, which forced evacuations and scorched thousands of acres of grasslands, is beginning to lessen in force.

"The biggest fire early on was the House Draw fire, which has now been eclipsed in volume by the Remington fire up in Sheridan County and Montana. The House Draw fire, despite reaching like 175,000 acres early on, is holding and it's 88% contained."

However, in nearby Campbell County, there's an all-out effort to save structures and land from the Flat Rock Fire and the Constitution Fire. But McFarland reports there's been some tension between private landowners and county firefighters.

"There are private sector drivers of big construction equipment out on the flat rock the Constitution fire in Campbell County, and they are, you know, blading and piling up dirt berms and dozing off the vegetation to create these fire break lines. Now, at least a couple of them… who said, yeah, some of these county firefighters just aren't doing much while we're out there scrambling… The fire department has countered meanwhile, saying, you know, some of these strategies where we're supposed to watch the fire line, for embers, for stray embers, it looks like we're sitting around when really we're not… there was another Campbell County resident who said that he didn't understand all the outrage because the firefighters saved his home."

The Flat Rock Fire has burned more than 52,000 acres and is 35% contained as of the last estimate. The Constitution Fire is nearly 25,000 acres and 28% contained.

Read the full story HERE.

Colorado's United Power Inc. severed ties with Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association - a cooperative that many rural Wyoming electric companies are members of - in May.

Energy reporter Pat Maio spoke with United's CEO, Mark Gabriel, about why the company left, taking 20% of Tri-State's revenue with them.

"What I found interesting about Mark is that he's rethinking the way he thinks about transmission, in the sense that he's no longer thinking big like that, even though he'll take it, get the power delivered to him, but he's thinking more local. He calls it hyper localization of electricity ... the Wyoming co-ops are paying close attention to all of us for reasons that kind of relate to coal. ... he claims that within within the year, there'll be two or three more, and that'll represent 30% of the revenue of tri state, which means financially, they're going to be struggling even more."

United is working towards getting power from alternative forms of energy, such as wind turbines and solar panels, plus tapping power from utility-scale batteries that store electricity.

Read the full story HERE.

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