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Sweetwater County is slated to become home to the world’s largest atmospheric carbon removal project within eight years, though the two companies planning the project, dubbed Project Bison, aren’t yet publicizing exactly where it will be located. The project is a partnership between California-based CarbonCapture Inc. and Texas-based Frontier Carbon Solutions. By 2030, Project Bison is planned to store five megatons of carbon dioxide annually — enough to offset about 0.1% of the carbon dioxide that the U.S. currently emits each year. CarbonCapt...
Sweetwater County School District No. 2 has new programming related to mental wellness this school year thanks to funding provided by the American Rescue Plan, a stimulus bill passed by Congress in 2021 that provided $303 million to help Wyoming schools mitigate the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic. Now, the very top of the school district’s website has a link to a “Social/Mental Wellness” page, which can connect members of the school community to multiple new resources. “They’re very easy for any staff member or any family to access these sup...
Students in Sweetwater County School District No. 2 continue to do better on Wyoming’s standardized tests than the average Wyoming student, according to the latest batch of data released Tuesday by the Wyoming Department of Education. Under the state testing system, WY-TOPP, students are tested in English, science and math. In each of the three subjects, their test scores are labeled as either “below basic,” “basic,” “proficient” or “advanced.” Grades 3-10 are tested in English and math, while only fourth-, eighth- and 10th-graders are...
Amid the Rock Springs Young at Heart’s ongoing lawsuit to recover more than $1 million it claimed its former executive director embezzled from the organization, Sweetwater County Commissioner Roy Lloyd said the county should exercise greater oversight on the grant-funding it provides to local organizations. The discussion came during Tuesday’s commission meeting, in which the county approved a grant contract for RSYAH worth $222,000, a sum the county had already appropriated for the senior center when it filed its lawsuit in July regarding the...
A handful of voters in Sweetwater County will decide in November whether the Little Snake River Conservation District will assess up to 1 mill on lands within its newly expanded boundaries, which now span millions of acres across the eastern half of the county. The district already assesses a mill within its Carbon County boundaries. Little Snake River's new territory includes ample industry-heavy areas in Sweetwater County and, if the mill levy were passed, the bulk of revenue would come from a...
Two-thirds of the Sweetwater County Commission seats will change in January after incumbent Commissioners Roy Lloyd and Jeffrey Smith lost their re-election bids during Tuesday’s Republican primary. Commissioner Randy “Doc” Wendling, whose term expires this year, did not run for re-election. Barring some unlikely victory from a write-in candidate in November, the commission will be joined by Robb Slaughter, Island Richards and Keaton West. The top three candidates from the Republican primary advance to the general election, where they...
The school board of Sweetwater County School District No. 2 voted Tuesday evening to appoint Daniel Flom to fill a vacated seat on the board. The term runs through November and Flom will need to run for election this fall to keep his seat beyond that point. Two other seats on the school board will also be on the general election ballot this year. The filing period for those seats began Wednesday and ends Aug. 29. Flom, an underground diesel mechanic who unsuccessfully ran for a school board...
After vendors collected $169,123 in excess sales tax revenue, communities and hospitals in Sweetwater County received a small bonus from the 1% special purpose tax that was in effect from 2013 to 2018. The 1% SPT was approved by voters in 2012 and included $60.5 million in projects for county and municipal projects. Another $21.3 million was approved for projects at Memorial Hospital of Sweetwater County and Castle Rock Hospital District. After funding for those projects was fulfilled in 2018, the treasurer’s office of Sweetwater County has con...
The historic revenue crisis facing Wyoming’s state, county and municipal governments is threatening to claim yet another casualty: universally available ambulance service. The state-wide problem is perhaps most acute in Fremont County, where a five-year-old cost-saving plan has unraveled, leaving the nearly Vermont-sized region without a single outfit interested in providing service beyond June. Amid an economic downturn and significant budget cuts, Fremont County Commissioners opted to privatize the county’s ambulance service in March 201...
LARAMIE — The University of Wyoming is expecting to have about 1,900 fewer students enroll this fall than were enrolled at the university in fall 2019. UW had 6,212 undergraduates enroll for fall 2019 and, according to preliminary headcounts, that number is scheduled to drop 18.8% this fall. The drop in number of graduate students will be even more drastic: With just 1,170 graduate and professional students scheduled to enroll, UW’s graduate student count is set for a 38.9% decline. “We called everyone who did not register that we were expec...
LARAMIE — Barring any dramatic line-item vetoes from Gov. Mark Gordon, the University of Wyoming’s base support from the Legislature for the upcoming fiscal biennium will be essentially unchanged from its current status. While there’s a dollar increase to account for inflation, the House and Senate voted Monday to finalize the budget bill with a “standard budget” for UW — meaning just enough for the university to maintain its current operations. The Legislature sent the budget bill to Gordon’s desk with $175.4 million in base funding for e...
