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(Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune) Off-road utility terrain vehicles (UTVs) motor down Main Street in Moab toward the Sand Flats Recreation Area just outside town, Feb. 19, 2021.

Why noise from off-road vehicles is making life miserable in Moab

By Zak Podmore | February 25, 2021, 7:31 p.m.

(Zak Podmore | Tribune file photo) Geri Hernandez, a certified Navajo interpreter working for San Juan County, holds a bilingual "I voted" sticker at an early voting day at the Red Mesa Chapter House on the Navajo Nation in San Juan County on Oct. 8, 2020.

Navajo Nation applauds expected extension of San Juan voting rights deal

By Zak Podmore | February 25, 2021, 2:00 p.m.

(Leah Hogsten | Tribune file photo) Energy Fuels, which operates the only conventional uranium mill in the United States near Blanding, in San Juan County, Utah, on June 24, 2020. The company and its leaders, along with another uranium mining company made coordinated campaign contributions leading up to the creation of a $75 million federal uranium stockpile.

Campaign contributions, including from a Utah operator, preceded creation of federal uranium stockpile

By Zak Podmore | February 22, 2021, 2:39 p.m.

(Leah Hogsten | Tribune file photo) Navajo Mountain Health Clinic Manager Revina Talker (left) tends to a 74-year-old Diné patient as medical assistant Toni Black gets an IV flowing on Aug., 25, 2020. The small community of Navajo Mountain has vaccinated over half of its residents against COVID-19.

Remote Navajo Mountain clinic now ranks among Utah’s most vaccinated places

By Zak Podmore | February 12, 2021, 3:18 p.m.

(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Hite Crossing Bridge stretches over the Colorado River as it flows into Lake Powell near Hite Marina on Thursday, Feb. 4, 2021.

Sunday preview: Why hedge funds are eyeing Utah’s shrinking water supply

By Zak Podmore | February 11, 2021, 4:52 p.m.

(Zak Podmore | The Salt Lake Tribune) Davina Smith, executive director of SLC Air Protectors, stands near the Colorado River on Thursday, Aug. 15, 2019, with a medicine bundle of plants she gathered in Bears Ears National Monument. Smith plans to run the bundle 320 miles from the Bears Ears Buttes to Salt Lake City.

Monument Valley woman is running 330 miles across Utah with a piece of Bears Ears National Monument

By Zak Podmore | February 10, 2021, 8:20 p.m.

(Murice D. Miller | Special to The Tribune) Millions of visitors flock to Moab every year, and city and county officials said they're receiving a flood of complaints about noise from off-highway vehicles on city streets.

Moab residents sound off against OHV noise. Lawmakers listen, advance bill that may silence the vehicles at night.

By Zak Podmore | February 10, 2021, 2:18 a.m.

(Jeremy Harmon | Tribune file photo) Joseph Hillstrom, known to most by his Industrial Workers of the World pen name, Joe Hill, was arrested and convicted of the murder of John G. Morrison. Prosecutors contended Hill and an accomplice, believed to be Otto Applequist, entered the Morrisons’ grocery store in downtown Salt Lake City on Jan. 10, 1914, near closing time. The elder Morrison was shot in the back. His teenage son Arling, the state argued, shot Hill. Arling was shot three times by the accomplice and died instantly. John Morrison died at a nearby hospital. Hill was convicted and eventually executed. Applequist was never found.

Utah wants your help in preserving the historical records around the 1915 execution of labor icon Joe Hill

By Zak Podmore | February 9, 2021, 4:22 p.m.

(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) The Colorado River flows into Lake Powell near Hite Marina on Thursday, Feb. 4, 2021. The reservoir is only 40% full and continued surging demand combined with the ravages of a drying climate signal a water crisis in the not-too-distant future. Wall Street investors see the an opportunity to capitalize on a whole new commodities trading market.

Exclusive: Hedge funds eye water markets that could net billions, as levels drop in Lake Powell

By Zak Podmore | February 8, 2021, 5:44 p.m.

(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Volunteer Zachary Farr helps plant flags at Liberty Park in Salt Lake City, on Saturday, Oct. 17, 2020, to recognize the thousands of individuals in Utah who are impacted by domestic violence each year for the Stop the Violence Utah campaign. Facing cuts in federal funding, Utah's domestic violence service providers are asking the state Legislature for $3.4 million this session to meet increased needs during the coronavirus pandemic.

Utah domestic violence shelters seek more state funding to meet need during COVID-19

By Becky Jacobs | Zak Podmore | February 4, 2021, 9:27 p.m.

(Courtesy of Dom Smith | EcoFlight) Energy Fuels' White Mesa Mill near Blanding, Utah, is the last conventional uranium mill still operating in the United States.

Can the White Mesa uranium mill shake southern Utah’s radioactive past?

By Zak Podmore | January 30, 2021, 1:00 p.m.

(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) While Utah's Republican leaders are united in opposing President Joe Biden using the Antiquities Act to once again expand the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, residents are deeply divided over the expected action. The polarization follows a pattern that has played out many times in history as presidents use the "superpower" of designating monuments under the 1906 Antiquities Act.

Presidential ‘superpower’: the federal Antiquities Act and its use in carving out national monuments

By Zak Podmore | January 28, 2021, 9:11 p.m.

(Leah Hogsten | Tribune file photo) Comb Ridge in Bears Ears National Monument is seen in this file photo. President Joe Biden has initiated a 60-day review of Bears Ears and also of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Former President Donald Trump slashed the size of both monuments and Biden is considering enlarging them.

President Joe Biden’s order to review Utah monuments leaves options open, but expansion all but certain

By Brian Maffly | Zak Podmore | January 25, 2021, 3:19 p.m.

(Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune) Annie, now 20, was 16-years old when a classmate in high school raped her and then told her from that moment on, "You're my girlfriend, but I'm not your boyfriend." From that moment on, he stalked her almost daily. San Juan County Attorney Kendall Laws said he wanted to prosecute Annie's attacker in adult court for sexual assault, but a gap in the law prevented him from doing so.

Special report: Young sex abuse survivors, backed by a county attorney, say a new Utah law deprived them of justice

By Jessica Miller | Zak Podmore | January 24, 2021, 1:00 p.m.

(Francisco Kjolseth | Tribune file photo) The Bears Ears buttes in Bears Ears National Monument in San Juan County are seen in this April 24, 2019 file photo. Grand County's governing commission has joined neighboring San Juan County in supporting an expansion of the monument boundaries to their original size, as designated by former President Barack Obama before President Trump moved to shrink them.

Utah’s Grand County asks President-elect Joe Biden to restore Bears Ears monument borders

By Zak Podmore | January 22, 2021, 12:57 a.m.

(Evan Vucci | AP) President Joe Biden waits to sign his first executive order in the Oval Office of the White House on Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2021, in Washington. An order starting the restoration of original boundaries to Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument were expected to be among the initial orders signed.

President Joe Biden starts process to restore Utah’s national monuments

By Brian Maffly | Zak Podmore | Taylor Stevens | January 22, 2021, 12:54 a.m.

(Leah Hogsten | Tribune file photo) Shelly Begay, a Diné medical assistant at Utah Navajo Health System’s Monument Valley Clinic, carries a patient’s coronavirus test kit out of the mobile triage unit for transport and testing on Aug., 24, 2020.

Navajo Nation leads COVID-19 vaccination in southern Utah, but limited doses slow rollout

By Zak Podmore | January 15, 2021, 10:48 p.m.

(Courtesy of the Ken Sleight Collection) Ken Sleight and Tim DeChristopher met while DeChristopher was being tried for protesting oil leases near Arches National Park in 2010.

New film chronicles environmental ‘outlaw’ Ken Sleight’s fight to restore Glen Canyon

By Zak Podmore | January 10, 2021, 8:48 p.m.

(Courtesy of Tomoyo Tamayama) Activists pose for a photo before their visit to a Japan Atomic Energy Agency site in southern Japan that plans to ship radioactive material to Utah for processing. Tomoyo Tamayama (below) researched the legacy of uranium mining on the Navajo Nation in two postgraduate programs.

Activists in Japan rally against plans to export radioactive material to Utah

By Zak Podmore | January 4, 2021, 1:00 p.m.

(Zak Podmore | The Salt Lake Tribune) Looking west from a parcel of Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration (SITLA) that was recently leased to an oil and gas company in San Juan County. Four parcels that sold in an October lease sale overlapped with the original boundaries of Bears Ears National Monument, which President-elect Joe Biden has promised to restore. December 16, 2020.

Utah criticized for selling oil and gas leases in the original Bears Ears monument

By Zak Podmore | December 26, 2020, 1:00 p.m.

(Courtesy of Rep. John Curtis) Rep. John Curtis (right), R-Utah, shakes hands with an employee at Energy Fuels' White Mesa uranium mill in September 2019. Some $75 million for a reserve uranium was included in the massive spending bill passed by Congress this week.

Creation of new national uranium reserve could mean jobs in Utah, but is the environmental cost too high?

By Zak Podmore | December 23, 2020, 4:32 p.m.

(Leah Hogsten | Tribune file photo) Two young boys fill the family water tank at the Oljato-Monument Valley water spigot adjacent to the post office on June 22, 2020. The water well is one of a few locations in San Juan County where members of the Navajo Nation can get clean water. More than one-third of Navajo Nation households lack running water, and the problem is even worse in San Juan County where over 40% of Navajo Nation residents have to haul water. Families fill jugs at communal wells or buy bottled water from stores — both costly and time-consuming burdens that have become only more difficult during the pandemic and the tribe's daily and weekend curfews.

Long-awaited bill to settle Navajo Nation water rights in San Juan County passed by Congress

By Zak Podmore | December 23, 2020, 3:12 a.m.

(Zoom screen shot by Brian Maffly) Three of the Moab slackliners who removed the 'Utah monolith' from a remote canyon last month discuss the sculpture's fate with reporters on a Zoom call Monday, Dec. 21, 2020. Pictured, left to right, are Andy Lewis, Sylvan Christensen and Homer Manson. On Friday they delivered the monolith to the Bureau of Land Management's Moab field office.

What’s next for the Utah monolith after its ‘return’ to federal land managers?

By Zak Podmore | Brian Maffly | December 22, 2020, 2:01 a.m.

(Zak Podmore | The Salt Lake Tribune) The smokestacks on the Navajo Generating Station coming down on December 18, 2020.

The demolition of the largest coal-fired power plant in the Western US brings reflection, hope to the northern Navajo Nation

By Zak Podmore | December 19, 2020, 8:17 p.m.

FILE - In this Nov. 3, 2020, file photo, Democratic Congresswoman Deb Haaland, N.M.-1st Dist., does a PSA for her Twitter account in downtown Albuquerque, N.M. Internet access, health care and basic necessities like running water and electricity within Indigenous communities have long been at the center of congressional debates. But until recently, Congress didn't have many Indigenous members who were pushing for solutions and funding for those issues. Hope is growing after the Native delegation in the U.S. House expanded by two on Election Day joining four others that were reelected. (Jim Thompson/The Albuquerque Journal via AP, File)

Utahns react to Biden’s history-making choice of Interior secretary

By Zak Podmore | Taylor Stevens | December 18, 2020, 2:10 a.m.