La Junta – Recovery teams Sunday worked to extract the remains of a person killed in a plane crash near La Junta.
The plane was registered to Russell J. Mayer, 49, of Monument, who was not accounted for, authorities said.
“I hope to have fingerprints and positive ID back Monday,” Otero County Coroner Bob Fowler said.
Steve Hamilton of the Civil Air Patrol said the twin-engine Piper Seneca left the Pueblo airport around 6:30 Friday morning in snow. It dropped off the radar a short time later while making a steep, lefthand descent on its way to Texas.
A search team found the wreckage Saturday.
DURANGO
Another record year in gas-drilling permits
The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission authorized 5,904 gas-drilling permits last year, the third straight record year.
The Durango Herald said it was a 35 percent increase from the previous year.
The boom should cause state officials to slow down, say officials of the Oil and Gas Accountability Project, an industry watchdog group based in Durango.
Christi Zeller of the groupcouncil said the state needs to catch its breath and make sure that neither the environment nor humans are being harmed.
Gas production figures for 2006 were not yet available.
DENVER
Snow doesn’t slow visitors to stock show
Friday’s snowfall and Saturday morning’s recovering roads had little or no effect on opening day of the National Western Stock Show, Rodeo & Horse Show.
Total attendance was 37,023, the second-biggest opening day ever for the 101-year-old collection of cowboys, livestock, vendors and fans.
The showing was an 11 percent drop-off from 2006, but spokeswoman Kati Anderson was quick to point out that the 100th anniversary was a record-breaking year for attendance. By show’s end last year, 726,972 fans and entered, shattering the old record of 641,033 set in 2003.
“Ticket sales are strong for today’s events, and I would imagine we would hold within this same range, if not better,” Anderson said of Sunday visitors. “Last year was our 100th anniversary. We knew coming in that it would be difficult to replicate the success we had last year, but we are very pleased with the numbers that were posted yesterday.”
AIR FORCE ACADEMY
New family houses to replace old units
The Air Force Academy will get 427 new family houses, but will demolish hundreds of 50-year-old structures under a public-private partnership that’s being negotiated.
The new houses will replace more than 1,100 housing units built in the 1950s, most of which have not been used for years and have been deemed inadequate by the Air Force.
The project is part of an area-wide shift in Air Force family housing, which includes the construction of nearly 500 additional homes at Peterson and Schriever Air Force bases.
The new houses will be in the Pine Valley and Douglass Valley areas of the academy and will be spaced farther apart than the current structures.
Under the plan, Forest City Enterprises and Hunt Building Corporation would build and maintain the housing and be compensated with housing allowance cash from airmen and officers who live on the base. The project, which will involve an investment of $100 million by the two firms, will be completed by 2013.
BOZEMAN, Mont.
Pay for livestock lost to wolves sets record
Compensation paid to ranchers who lost livestock to wolves set a record in 2006, the Boze man Daily Chronicle reported Sunday.
Defenders of Wildlife, a national environmental group that pays ranchers for confirmed or probable kills of livestock by wolves, wrote checks for $154,000 last year, the highest amount the group has paid, the paper reported.
Most of the deaths – with compensation totaling $148,000 – took place in the Northern Rockies states of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming.
The rest were in New Mexico and Arizona, where a fledgling group of Mexican gray wolves has been reintroduced.
In 2005, the group paid $101,000 for depredations. It paid $137,000 in 2004.
CASPER, Wyo.
Most wages already above the minimum
A federal minimum-wage increase that seems likely to clear the U.S. House this week would affect few jobs in Wyoming.
Thanks to the state’s energy boom, jobs paying $5.15 an hour are scarce here.
In Casper, for example, wages on the low end start at $6 to $7.
The U.S. House is considering a phased increase in the minimum wage to $7.25 by 2008.
