Gov names district court judge

CHEYENNE - Gov. Dave Freudenthal has named Laramie County Circuit Judge Thomas Eugene Campbell to the county's District Court bench.

Campbell replaces District Judge Edward Grant, who is retiring.

Freudenthal praised Campbell in a Friday release for his "quick, analytical mind."

Campbell holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Denver. He worked in the Carbon County attorney's office after receiving his law degree from the University of Wyoming in 1983.

He was elected Carbon County attorney in 1990.

Campbell also served as a municipal judge in the towns of Sinclair, Superior, Bairoil and Hanna before being named to the Circuit Court bench in 2001.

Wetlands faces overhaul

GILLETTE - Gillette plans to rebuild a wetlands at Dalbey Memorial Park's Fishing Lake and may dredge the lake because of a nutrient buildup that's harmful to fish.

Levi Jensen, a civil engineer for Gillette, said nutrients aren't being removed from the water because of cattails and sediment. The nutrients help wetlands plants grow but are harmful to fish and other aquatic life.

Jensen said the city plans to reconstruct the area so it can efficiently remove sediment before it flows into the lake. The lake has been dredged twice since 1973.

The lake also collects oil, fertilizer, sediment and other pollutants washed into street drains and Donkey Creek from the south half of Gillette.

Jensen is conducting tests to see what pollutants are n the water.

Seminoe 91 percent full

RAWLINS - High water in the North Platte is helping refill Seminoe Reservoir and other lakes on the river.

John Lawson of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation said Seminoe, about 30 miles north of Rawlins, stood at 91 percent of its 1.01-million acre-feet capacity early last week.

Lawson said a long drought had drawn Seminoe down to 37 percent of capacity by 2004 as irrigators in Nebraska and eastern Wyoming withdrew water for their crops.

Lawson said two consecutive good water years have helped Seminoe and other North Platte reservoirs recover.

Seminoe's highest-ever level was in 1983, when it actually hit 101 percent of capacity. Lawson said dam operators placed splash boards across the top of the spillway to raise the level.

Demo biofuel seed press on tap

GILLETTE - The Wyoming Business Council Agribusiness Division will use new grant money to help buy a demonstration mobile crushing processor that extracts oil from biofuel crops such as camelina.

The Business Council announced recently that it had received the nearly $50,000 grant from the Western Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program.

The three-year grant will help fund test plots of oifuel seed stock crops in Wyoming for plants such as canola, camelina and sunflowers. The plants can be processed into biodiesel or byproducts like livestock feed or lubricants.

Don Randall of the Business Council said the processor will be taken around the state as a demonstration for potential seed producers.

The University of Wyoming Campbell County Extension Office is also participating in the demo project.