Becky Kramer

Pay for Avista Corp.’s top five executives dropped last year as a result of lower stock awards and changing pension values. Scott Morris, chairman and chief executive officer of the Spokane-based utility, received about $2.9 million in total compensation in 2013, down nearly $600,000 from a year earlier.

A U.S. Forest Service land exchange that failed to win public support during years of study and hearings shouldn’t get pushed through Congress by Idaho’s delegation, a group of retired Forest Service employees says. Two dozen retirees sent a letter to the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last month expressing misgivings about the Upper Lochsa exchange.

Avista Corp.’s profits shot up 42 percent in 2013, following higher demand for heat and air-conditioning during a year that featured a colder-than-normal winter and a hot summer. The Spokane-based utility reported net income of $111.1 million for 2013, compared with income of $78.2 million in 2012.

Avista Corp.’s income shot up 42 percent in 2013, following strong utility revenue resulting from a cold winter and hot summer, which drove up energy use.

Hunters in the Idaho Panhandle would be allowed to bait wolves under a proposal being discussed by state officials. Idaho Fish and Game officials want more hunters to take a wolf, saying that reducing pack numbers would help reverse declines in elk numbers in the upper St. Joe River drainage.

One of North Idaho’s most popular campgrounds will be closed this year while the Forest Service removes hazardous trees.

After 20 years on a mainframe, Avista Utilities is launching new computer systems this year for handling customer service calls, managing work orders and tracking equipment in its three-state service territory. The $80 million project is a massive undertaking. For the past two years, 120 Avista employees, consultants and contractors have been working on the rollout in rented quarters in a Spokane Valley office park. The testing of the new systems is underway, with the switch-over expected in mid- to late summer.

A fungus that devours the roots of Douglas fir trees costs the timber industry millions of dollars each year, and it’s likely to become a bigger killer as the climate changes, a new study says. Laminated root rot, a native pest, is found in Douglas fir stands throughout the Northwest. If the disease doesn’t kill the firs outright, it leaves them weakened and susceptible to bark beetle attacks and uprooting during wind storms.

Oil trains traveling through the Inland Northwest cross Lake Pend Oreille and pass over the Spokane Valley-Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer. The rail route also follows portions of the Spokane River, Hangman Creek and the Columbia River. Though recent news has focused on fiery derailments of oil trains, the potential for spills into the region’s lakes and rivers is also a concern.

A miner who was killed during a cave-in at the Lucky Friday Mine was not in his assigned work area when the accident occurred, and that action contributed to his death, according to the mine’s owner. In court documents filed this week, Hecla Mining Co. said Larry “Pete” Marek’s death was partly a result of his own “negligent and careless misconduct.”

Four Lucky Friday miners who were trapped in a 2011 rock burst, and who accuse Hecla Mining Co.’s managers in a recent lawsuit of lying to them about dangerous conditions, are still working at the mine. “They’re career miners, so they really don’t have a lot of options,” said their attorney, Eric Rossman.

A federal grand jury found enough evidence to indict a Nespelem, Wash., man on charges of setting fire to tribal lands on the Colville Reservation last summer.

The Spokane Tribe of Indians has adopted new water quality standards aimed at protecting the health of members who eat a subsistence diet of nearly two pounds of fish daily.

Many of the gifts unwrapped this Christmas will be electronics. Laptops, cellphones, tablets and game consoles have transformed how we work and play, and they’ve changed our electrical use, too, said Tom Lienhard, Avista’s chief engineer for energy efficiency.