Episode Details

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming, for Tuesday, January 14th. I'm Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom - brought to you by Visit Casper. Visit Casper invites you to come enjoy the Casper International Film Festival, January 31 through February 2. A broad range of films from local and international filmmakers will be shown. Learn more and get your tickets at visitcasper.com.

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The 68th Wyoming Legislature will forever be known as the session that the Wyoming Freedom Caucus took over the state House. What the group does with its majority during the 37-day legislative session that begins Tuesday remains to be seen.

Politics reporter Leo Wolfson will be reporting from the state capitol throughout the term, which he said promises to be a session to remember.

"One thing that's really notable, though, is some of the legislation that has already been proposed is pretty controversial and pretty out there, as far as what we've seen compared in the past, a lot of bills will probably be given the time of day and passed the law that didn't have a chance in the past, and that's what House Speaker Chip Neiman has said is one of his priorities… During a press conference last week, the Freedom Caucus did stress that they want unity and they want to listen to every voice in the legislature, so we'll see. Tomorrow it all begins."

The Freedom Caucus holds around 36 seats in the House as a result of the 2024 Republican primary election, whereas nearly a dozen members of the opposing Wyoming Caucus either lost their seats or didn't run for reelection.

Read the full story HERE.

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An innovative plan to use old wind turbine blades as filler for coal mine reclamation has gotten a thumbs up from the Biden administration after an almost four-year wait.

Wyoming filed its innovative idea for disposing of retired blades and wind towers with the federal government in 2021 - but Cowboy State Daily's Renee Jean reports that no one she talked to had any answers as to why the approval took four years.

"One wind turbine is like an entire semi truck load all by itself. Each tower's got three of them, so 79,000 of these. That's a lot, and there's really a lot of landfills don't want to take them unless they are crushed and shredded. They're hard to crush and shred because they're made to be durable… So they're sitting around with nowhere to put them. Well, Wyoming came up with a really innovative idea on how to handle that, and their idea was to, hey, let's use them for fill clean fill in coal mines… We've got enough space there to hold all of the nation's wind turbines… we passed that in 2020, so four years later, finally, the federal government said, Okay, you can do that. I don't know why it took so long… based on the record, it looks like it just kind of sat there for three years with nothing happening."

Wyoming's Director of the Department of Environmental Quality called the new rule "very forward thinking" and said it will help solve a nationwide problem.

Read the full story HERE.

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A cold wave from Canada will descend on the United States this weekend and bring some serious subzero temperature