Word: sierras
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...existing technology can clean coal smoke. But the Environmental Protection Agency points to two recent studies showing that pollution-abatement devices now in use can remove toxic gases from smokestack emissions reli° ably and effectively. In any > case, says Michael McClos-8 key, executive director of the Sierra Club, "the limiting factor is not scrubbers, but whether we can produce sufficient coal supplies...
...name belied reality. As Hurricane Fifi slowly swept along the coast, torrential rains on its periphery dumped 20 in. of water on the high Sierra de Omoa in just 40 hours. Rivers and streams swelled uncontrollably, sending walls of water rolling down into the valleys that produce the country's basic crops of bananas, coffee and beans. Entire towns and villages were washed away in the flashfloods. The government set the death toll at 8,000, and even though other estimates put the figure at 2,000, it was the worst disaster in Honduras' recorded history...
Quick Help. In the Sierra de Omoa, the mountains were gashed with ugly long scars as if Fifi had been a gigantic cat and had clawed out the hillsides and gullies with its nails. Said Farmer Joaquin Ramirez Castro: "Our coffee and beans have all been washed away. Little villages have been swept down the hills with landslides. Some towns have been covered. Others are marooned and need help. I don't know whether my family is living or dead...
...dialogue contains direct tributes to such classics as John Huston's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and John Ford's The Searchers. But the most obvious homage is to Huston's Beat the Devil, a bit of straight-faced parody made more or less off the cuff. The picture has strong overtones of a director's not only assaulting the audience but deflating himself in the process. Indeed, Warren Gates seems to have modeled his excellent characterization of Bennie on Peckinpah himself, complete with foggy aspect, enveloping sunglasses and calculatedly gross behavior...
Environmentalists are appalled. Indeed, the Sierra Club, knowing that a Class II designation implies "significant deterioration" of clean air, threatens to go to court to overturn the EPA'S plan. Eventually, the increasingly complex issue may be tossed back into the lap of the Congress, where lawmakers may well amend the Clean Air Act to take into account an important factor ignored in the original legislation: economic needs. That kind of uniform federal regulation-coupled with continuing safeguards against overall deterioration of the air quality in the U.S.-would clearly be preferable to the legal confusion invited...