Episode Details

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming for Tuesday, December 23rd. I'm Mac Watson.

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Teton Pass was closed all day Monday as the Wyoming Department of Transportation did a controlled avalanche. Cowboy State Daily's Andrew Rossi reports how a controlled avalanche works and how much snow came down the mountain.

"WYDOT made the decision to close Teton pass at 3am Monday and do a controlled avalanche, which meant a detonation using devices that use propane and oxygen rather than explosives, at 3:45am and that sent a wall of snow onto the pavement. We're talking at least 30 feet high and between 200 and 500 feet long. And when it's wet and heavy like that, they can't use the traditional snow blowers that they use to clear the highways. They had to call in dozers and loaders to get up there and move all of it."

The mountainside had been scraped down to bare soil, leaving a massive amount of snow on the highway.

Read the full story HERE.

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A Utah company is leading a charge to take and store radioactive waste from Canada. Cowboy State Daily's David Madison reports that opponents say that nuclear waste could be coming through Wyoming.

"Recently, this federal agency called the Northwest compact, which was mandated by Congress to regulate waste issues, has given the initial okay for waste coming from Ontario to be stored outside of Salt Lake City in Utah…I spoke to watchdogs who really monitor this stuff closely. And yeah, they raise concerns that they call it low level waste, but given the federal regulations around low level waste, that that could mean plutonium, plutonium in small amounts, but still plutonium coming through Wyoming, perhaps on the way to Utah, so it really an example of how two different states right next to each other."

According to a coalition of environmental groups raising concerns, this is the first time in U.S. history that foreign nuclear power waste will be permanently disposed of on American soil.

Read the full story HERE.

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After strong winds blew more than 100 stacked freight cars off the BNSF Railway tracks near Cheyenne on Friday, crews mobilized to clean it up. Cowboy State Daily's Andrew Rossi reports that within 18 hours, the tracks were clear again.

"When you talk to train people, they'll say the top priority with any derailment cleanup is to get the tracks open so freight can start moving again. So in this case, clearing everything off the site wasn't necessarily the priority. The priority was to get everything safely away from the rails so other trains could move through, and there are professional companies that specialize in cleaning up after derailment. So presumably, the BNSF Railway brought one of these companies in. They got to the scene as fast as they could, and then they worked over Friday night to get the scene as clear as they could so freight could resume moving again. It was a massive undertaking."

Dozens of intermodal freight cars each carrying two stacked shipping containers had been derailed, but the rails weren't the cause as gusts as strong as 75 mph were recorded between Laramie and Cheyenne on Friday.

Read the full story HERE.

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A 31-year-old Casper man accused of trying to burn down his ex-boyfriend's house and causing $200,000 worth of damage pleaded not guilty Monday