Housing concerns surround plant

GILLETTE -- Basin Electric Power Co. is studying several different options to house the more than 1,000 workers who will be needed to build a power plant at the Dry Fork coal mine north of Gillette.

Work on the 422-megawatt power plant is expected to start in 2007, and the company wants all the workers to be housed in Campbell County, despite the housing crunch going on in the area.

Basin is looking at a variety of options, including building temporary or permanent housing, relying on long-term motel rentals, using manufactured homes, building construction camps or buying a housing complex.

Company spokesman Daryl Hill said some of those options stand out as more viable, but the company doesn't want to release a housing plan until it goes before the Industrial Siting Council on June 14.

Gillette Mayor Duane Evenson said he would like to know the company's plan for housing before the council meeting so that the city knows what to expect from the project.

Schools block MySpace use

POWELL -- School administrators in Powell have blocked access to the popular social networking Web site MySpace.com, saying they're protecting students from online predators.

Acting Powell High School Principal Jared Moretti said the site was blocked on school computers earlier this year.

The site allows individuals to post information about themselves and socially interact with others. They can post biographies and pictures or chat with other users.

Moretti said MySpace is dangerous because sexual predators can get on the site and obtain information about young people. He called the site a "predators' dream."

Yellowstone project wins big award

ANNAPOLIS, Md. -- An innovative volunteer program in Yellowstone National Park is one of four winners of national preservation awards.

Tauck World Discovery, a company helping preserve Yellowstone, has been running a program through which visitors to the park can contribute a day's work on preservation projects.

"Since the program began, guests have donated almost 10,000 hours of labor on projects throughout the park," President Bush said during a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden Monday. "By their good work, the good people at Tauck are inspiring Americans to lend a hand in preservation and making sure that Yellowstone is a natural wonder for the years to come."

Former employee sues college

POWELL -- A former grant writer at Northwest College has sued the school, saying she was not compensated for federal money she earned for the school.

Kathleen E. Kelley says a grant application she wrote in 2004 to the U.S. Department of Education for a Strengthening Institutions Program was used again by the college in 2005, according to court documents. The $1.8 million grant was awarded in 2005 -- $365,000 each year for five years.

Kelley worked at the school from April 2003 through March 2004.

According the her contract with the school, Kelley says she is owed 2 percent of the total money awarded through the grant. She is suing for $36,500 and filed in district court in late March.