In the Rockies today, the timber industry is the news.
In Montana, Plum Creek Timber Co. announced the closure of another of its sawmills, and put workers at two others on notice that those plants might stay open, shut down temporarily to close permanently, depending on how the market goes.
The mill in Pablo will close, ending jobs for 87 Montanans, and more than 200 jobs in Evergreen and Columbia Falls are on the line.
In Canada, Hank Ketcham, the head of West Fraser Timber, the world's largest timber company, told financial analysts on Monday that he believed the industry was at the bottom--not because he sees a rebound in the market but because the industry could go nowhere but up.
In British Columbia, Premier Gordon Campbell told workers at one of the few remaining sawmills in operation in the Kootenays that the province was marketing B.C. lumber to China.
Also in the news, the Environmental Protection Agency wants to withdraw its air-quality permit for the Desert Rock Power Plant on Navajo Nation land in New Mexico; and a company in Montana that has a permit for a coal-fired power plant near Great Falls is asking the state to revise that permit to allow it to build a natural-gas power plant in its stead.
