I remember sitting in a bathtub out in the open on the mountainside above the Dann ranch in Crescent Valley watching the stars come out, writes Jon Christensen. I had come to interview the Dann sisters about the latest twists in their long-running battle with the Bureau of Land Management.
Road weary and coated with dust, I’d asked Mary and Carrie Dann, pictured above, if it would be OK to use their hot spring on the nearby mountainside to wash up before bedding down in my van. They’d given me directions to the spring.
I followed the bumpy rutted dirt tracks through the sagebrush until I came to the ramshackle collection of tubs, pipes and other junk. I found the hot water gushing from a pipe and directed into a bathtub sitting in the dirt. As darkness fell and a chill came down the hill, I stripped and settled into the tub, and looked up at the starry sky.
The Dann sisters say this hot spring is a sacred site and that the surrounding Cortez Mountains are populated by spirits. I wondered about all this as I lounged in the gritty bathtub and watched the occasional lone light moving through the twinkling star field in the sky or across a dark stretch of the valley below.
These memories came back to me when I received the latest alert from the Dann ranch and the Western Shoshone Defense Project. It says the hot spring is threatened by Oro Nevada, a mining exploration company which has begun drilling for gold all around the Dann place. Crescent Valley seems destined to become home to a huge open pit—the Pipeline project. Boosters claim it will rival the Carlin Trend.
I sat back and imagined lying in the bathtub again and watching huge trucks climb out of an open pit and dump the earth in big piles so the precious ore could be leached out by cyanide. Something has gone out of this picture. Is it sacred?
The Dann sisters and the Western Shoshone Defense Project can be reached at P.O. Box 211106, Crescent Valley, NV 89821, 702-468-0230.
Grace Bukowski writes: Ten years ago on Memorial Day the residents of Dixie Valley, Nev.., held a mock funeral to bid farewell to their beloved community. The verdant oasis in north central Nevada had been the home to 75 people,mostly retirees. The valley lies between the Stillwater and Clan Alpine Mountains east of Fallon. Before the Navy took over, Dixie Valley was awe inspiring in its beauty and tranquility . In a state known for its semi-arid deserts, the contrast of cascading waterfalls, artesian springs and fishing streams was a secret few people ever knew. Now, even those people are gone.The former residents have scattered across the country. The military burned their homes—some within minutes of the owners’ departure.Corrals and fences have collapsed under the weight of neglect.
The events that sealed Dixie Valley’s doom began in1982, when officials at the Fallon Naval Air Station announced plans to double the size of its bombing ranges and to create a 3500-square-mile “Supersonic Operations Area” complete with sonic booms from high speed jets. But apparently, that air space grab is not enough.
The Navy has just released a Draft Environmental Impact Statement on a proposal to withdraw 127,365 acres of land administered by the Bureau of Land Management. The withdrawal includes a land bridge between Navy bombing ranges and the area acquired in the Dixie Valley takeover. This would allow helicopter over flights and landing to occur, as well as the placement of electronic targets, such as mock scud missiles, throughout the valley. These proposed ground maneuvers represent the final steps towards turning Dixie Valley into an all-out war zone.
This spring I took a trip to Dixie Valley. Ear-piercing jet fighters fly at low-levels directly over the nearby Clan Alpine Wilderness Study Area. Gates with Navy locks bar access to the public road and the quality fishing and recreational opportunities that area used to provide.We’re a nation supposedly at peace, except with ourselves in places like Dixie Valley.
The Navy will take comments on its expansion plans at public meetings in Reno and Fallon, September 16 and 17. For information, contact Grace Bukowski at the Rural Alliance for Military Accountability, P.O. Box 60036, Reno, NV 89506, 702-356-8083, e-mail rama@accutek.com or check out the web site at http://www.rama-usa.org.
Cash flow is up and wages are down at New York, New York in Las Vegas. The casino’s profit margin is one of the highest ever recorded thanks in part to lower wages, writes Kit Miller.
Most of the waiters, waitresses, busboys, cooks and dishwashers in New York, New York work for a subcontractor, Ark Restaurants Corp., of the real New York, N.Y. So they aren’t covered by the Culinary Union contracts that set wages and benefits for 40,000 workers in most of the casinos in Las Vegas.
The union has a contract with the casino but it doesn’t cover subcontractors, such as Ark. So inside New York, New York, cocktail waitresses who make the union scale of $7.76 an hour serving gamblers are working within hailing distance of Ark waiters making $4.75 an hour in the restaurants that surround the gambling floor.
The increase in subcontracting and part-time work are the top two issues for organized labor in the new service economy. Just days before 185,000 U.P.S. workers went out on strike for full-time jobs in late July, 10,000 waitresses, kitchen workers, and other Culinary Union stalwart rallied at the feet of New York, New York's phony Statue of Liberty to support Ark workers who want to join the union. The demonstrators slowed traffic to a a crawl on the scorching hot Las Vegas Strip.
“I tell you organizing has been tough some days,” said Kevin Carter, a waiter at the casino’s America Cafe. “Some of my fellow Ark workers have lost their jobs. But Ark’s not going to be able to come in here to the most profitable corner in southern Nevada and get away with it. We’re not going to stand around and say, Hi! ‘My name is Toby. Pay me what you want to.’”
Subcontracting is at the center of the Culinary Union’s concerns as it renegotiates contracts with all of the casinos in Las Vegas this year. The union wants a no subcontracting clause in the new contracts.
In the artificial New York,New York, union organizers believe they’re fighting one of the real important labor battles of the turn of the century. What a wonderful town.
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