December 1, 2013

Business
Sunday, December 1, 2013
Business Editor Susan Anderson may be reached at 307-266-0619, 800-442-6916 or [email protected].
MEET YOUR NEW
WYOMING TOUR GUIDE
GPS-triggered app takes travelers on tours of Cowboy State
Please see STORROW, C2
Please see CLINIC, C5
”
By LAURA HANCOCK
Star-Tribune staff writer
Highway 22 from the town of
Jackson to the Idaho state line,
and Teton Park Road from Moose
to Jackson Lake Lodge, which is in
Grand Teton National Park.
“It’s driven by my clients,” said
Story Clark, Travel Storys GPS’
founder and CEO.
Highway 22 is sponsored by
the Jackson Hole Land Trust, an
CONTRIBUTED
organization that works to preserve open space and wildlife
habitat, and Teton Park Road is
sponsored by Grand Teton National Park Foundation, which
raises money for projects to enhance the park’s cultural, historic
and natural resources.
Among the app’s features:
■ A written explanation, ac-
companied by an audio voiceover
that reads the explanation, of
each point of interest along a
tour. For instance, at South Jenny
Lake, travelers will learn about
how a glacier formed the lake,
and “an eerie underwater forest stands at the bottom of Jenny
Lake. Landslides swept trees off
the surrounding hillsides and
into the lake. .... This underwater
forest makes the lake a fun destination for divers,” the voice and
text says.
■ If you’re interested in history, the app provides fascinating insights into the past with
historical photos. For instance,
near the Teton Glacier point of
interest, travelers learn about
the Geraldine Lucas homestead.
“Born in Iowa City in 1886, Lucas
left an unhappy marriage to return to college as a single mother
and become a schoolteacher,” the
app says. “After retiring in 1913,
she joined her siblings in Jackson
Hole, built a cabin and established a homestead.”
Please see APP, C4
Those Colo. Greenies got one right
Benjamin
STORROW
Casper Star-Tribune
C
olorado Greenies are the bane
of Wyoming’s existence.
They clog Wyoming roads
and rivers. They consume
Wyoming water and buy Wyoming
land. Heck, some of those Coloradans even tried to join Wyoming earlier this year before Gov. Matt Mead
told them to go pound sand.
And that is to say nothing of
Greenie politics, which, it seems safe
to say, most Wyomingites generally
loath.
But two weeks ago the Greenies
did something we here in Wyoming
would do well to emulate. Colorado
Gov. John Hickenlooper (try saying
that one five times fast) proposed
new air quality standards that would
make the Rocky Mountain state
the first in the country to regulate
methane emissions from oil and gas
operations.
The Colorado Air Quality Control
Commission still has to approve the
plan, but it is nonetheless a groundbreaking proposal. The Environmental Protection Agency and the
states have never really regulated
methane. Instead, regulators have
focused on limiting a collection of
pollutants known as volatile organic
compounds.
Limit the VOCs leaking from
wellheads and pipelines and you
essentially limit the methane, they
reasoned.
The problem is that methane
leaks from wellheads, pipelines and
other stops along the production
By TOM DIXON
Star-Tribune staff writer
line wipe out natural gases’ “clean”
advantage over coal.
Coal produces twice as much
carbon dioxide as natural gas when
combusted. But methane is a far
more potent greenhouse gas than
carbon dioxide.
By the Environmental Protection
Agency’s estimate, it is more than
20 times as effective at trapping heat
in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.
New evidence also suggests
methane emissions are a bigger
problem than previously thought.
Last week, researchers at Harvard
University announced that U.S.
methane emissions are about
1.5 times higher than government
“
Story Clark, founder and CEO of Travel Storys GPS.
New health
clinic opts
for a family
approach
The managing partners behind revamped Cedars Health
Clinic are taking a new approach
to rural health care. Their newest clinic, opening on Durbin
Street in Casper on Monday, is
just the next step.
“We want to be everywhere
in Wyoming; that means we
can be accessible to local businesses, accessible to people
who travel across towns in Wyoming,” said Ziad Skaf, general
manager of the five, soon to be
six, clinics spread throughout
the state.
The reality of what their vision of accessible, affordable
rural health care could achieve
hit Skaf during a one-day trip
— seven-plus hours of driving
— to their Rock Springs clinic.
“What we are doing is actually going to help if there are
more people like me,” Skaf said.
“We have all your history at any
of our clinics. It’s a click away,
so you are basically familiar to
us anywhere you go.”
In a state where many people
live in one town and work in another, or travel often for business or pleasure, Skaf and his
partners are hoping that continuity of service helps the clinics
stand out from others.
That feeling of connection is
very purposeful for this family
business.
“I like to see it as a family thing … and because at the
management level we are family, it turns out the whole company became family,” Skaf said.
This is the Skaf’s first business venture with his brother
Michel, and Skaf believes they
work well together. Skaf called
Michel the visionary; he said he
simply executes the plan. He attributes the company’s success
to the ability of clinics hours
apart to still feel that sense of
family.
Cedars Health started out as
Big Horn Urgent Care in Sheridan. Under previous management, the company expanded
to locations in Cheyenne, Rock
Springs and Rawlins, but in May
2012 Michel saw a company
running out of steam.
“We took over a company we
thought would not survive under current management … we
restructured everything,” Skaf
said. “We were successful revamping the company as it was
before.”
Part of that restructuring involved adding family care to the
original clinic’s focus on urgent
care and occupational medicine. In addition to family care,
urgent care and occupational
care, the new facility will offer
audiograms, safety tests, physicals and drug and alcohol tests.
They also contracted with
a number of major insurance
providers to offer discounts for
patients in those networks.
“This presents a challenge;
we accept a lower margin on our
services, but at the same time
we’re offering affordable care
Coming up is a turn-off
to a scenic drive that winds its
way up Signal Mountain. We
recommend that you take the
four-mile drive to the top for a
spectacular, panoramic view of
the valley and mountains.
The road through Grand Teton
National Park will be a little less
lonely with a new app that guides
tourists to points of interest, with
a chatty voice to boot.
“Coming up is a turn-off to
a scenic drive that winds its way
up Signal Mountain,” the app,
called Travel Storys GPS, tells
travelers along Teton Park Road.
“We recommend that you take
the four-mile drive to the top for
a spectacular, panoramic view of
the valley and mountains.”
Travel Storys GPS, which was
released in beta in August 2012, is
available for download on iTunes
for Apple products and Google
Play for Androids. The Wilsonbased business behind the app
seeks to tell travelers stories along
the roads of Wyoming, with tours
triggered by phones’ global positioning systems. Profits are
expected to come from sponsorships of the tours.
The app currently has two
tours near Jackson: Wyoming
C1
Wyo Business Council will review $15.3M in grant applications
The grant applications the and a grain receiving area to enboard will review are:
hance the business development
of gluten-free oats. (Staff recomThe Wyoming Business Counmended in full).
cil board will review 13 business- Business Ready
ready community grant applications for 13 projects in Wyoming, Community Business
Community Readiness
totaling $15.3 million, at its Dec. 5 Committed applications
applications
meeting in Cheyenne. The board
will forward its recommenda■ Powell requests a $946,404
tions to the State Loan and In- Business Committed grant to
■ Amoco Reuse Agreement Joint
vestment Board, which will make construct an 8,000 square foot Powers Board requests a $5 milthe final decision on the grant steel frame warehousing facility, lion Community Readiness grant
funding.
additional grain storage facilities to install infrastructure in Platte
By the Star-Tribune staff
We are
River Commons Opportunity Area
located on the old Amoco Refinery
property in Casper. (Staff recommends a $3 million BRC grant and a
$2 million BRC loan).
■ Casper-Natrona County, Wyoming Economic Development Joint
Powers Board requests a $999,953
Community Readiness grant to
construct a 30,000 square foot
speculative building that will be
expandable to 60,000 square feet.
(Staff recommended in full).
■ Jackson Hole Energy Sustainability Project Joint Powers Board
requests a $766,665 Community
Readiness grant to install a compressed natural gas fueling station
at Shervin’s Independent Oil. (Staff
recommends a $766,665 BRC loan).
■ Laramie County requests a
$1 million Community Readiness
grant to construct a 4,354-squarefoot medical clinic and pharmacy
Please see GRANTS, C3
CommerCial
The C mmercial Leader
1.877.284.5480
C4
b u s i n e s s
Casper Star-Tribune
app
Continued from page C1
n Kids’ content is available for each
point of interest. For instance, at the
Trail Creek Ranch along Highway 22,
kids learn about elk. “If you see a male
— or bull — elk, count the points on each
antler. The more points on an antler and
the thicker they are, the older the bull is,”
the app says.
n Travel stories are triggered by a
phone’s GPS location. In places in which
a phone has no service, content can be
downloaded beforehand and cached on
the phone.
n Travelers can donate to organizations that are helping conserve history
and landscape. For instance, along Highway 22, travelers can text a donation to
the Jackson Hole Land Trust. The donations appear on wireless bills.
n An interactive element in which
travelers can share their own stories.
Clark came up with the idea for the
app through her other job about five
years ago, before phones even had GPS.
She has a consulting business in which
she helps organizations find money for
conservation. She has written a book on
the topic, “A Field Guide to Conservation
Finance.”
“There’s so many wonderful quality stories that are collecting dust in the
archives of historical societies, in people’s minds, in history books, in geology
books,” Clark said. “But very few people
are using that. If it was on an app they
could get it out to everybody. We’re really
trying to get high-quality information
available to travelers and to communities.”
The company received some money
through the Wyoming Cultural Trust
Fund, a state board that gives grants to
innovative projects that promote and
protect the state’s arts, cultural and historic resources. The company also received money from the Jackson-based
Lor Foundation, which supported its
efforts to help nonprofits and communities, Clark said.
“Right now we’re actually looking for
foundation funding because of the mission, which is really to help nonprofit organizations tell their stories. But we are
also looking for venture capital funding.”
It costs a lot of money to develop an
app. Story has a partner who does the
programming, Madi Quissek, who took
classes from Brigham Young UniversityIdaho in Rexburg, Idaho.
Clark said her company will do some
marketing to promote the app but the
tour sponsors will also market it, as well
as local businesses, such as restaurants.
At the end of some of the travel stories
are advertisements for discounts at local
restaurants.
Sunday, December 1, 2013
“
There’s 78 sites
along those trails through
Wyoming. And if people
knew about that they
would stop, they would
learn and they would have
a meal. And they might
stay the night. And they
might basically enrich
our economy and their
own experience.
”
Story Clark
Travel Storys GPS founder and CEO
She is looking for Wyoming writers,
historians, geologists and other experts
to help with the app.
“We really want to keep it a Wyoming-based company,” she said. “We
have plenty of resources in this state to
build this company.”
In the future, the company plans to
have a historic walking tour of the town
of Jackson, which will be sponsored by a
local historical society, a tour of the Jackson Hole Airport and a gallery tour that
will be sponsored by Jackson-area galleries, Clark said.
“A gallery tour is like a gallery walk
where the galleries are all open and you
can visit them,” she said. “This is a gallery walk but you can do it at night. You
can do it when the galleries are shut. And
at each gallery a story is triggered about
that gallery by the owner of that gallery.
And in addition ... there are pictures,
there are images, that you can see of the
collections, and there’s text and links to
the gallery websites.”
The company is working with the
Wyoming State Historical Preservation
Office to expand the app to include the
Mormon, Oregon, California and Pony
Express trails.
“There’s 78 sites along those trails
through Wyoming,” Clark said. “And if
people knew about that they would stop,
they would learn and they would have a
meal. And they might stay the night. And
they might basically enrich our economy
and their own experience.”
■■Reach state reporter Laura Hancock at
307-266-0581 or at laura.hancock@trib.
com. Follow her on Twitter: @laurahancock.
Study: U.S. spewing 50 percent
more methane than EPA says
By SETH BORENSTEIN
AP Science Writer
WASHINGTON — The
United States is spewing 50
percent more methane — a
potent heat-trapping gas
— than the federal government estimates, a new comprehensive scientific study
says. Much of it is coming
from just three states: Texas,
Oklahoma and Kansas.
That means methane may
be a bigger global warming
issue than thought, scientists
say. Methane is 21 times more
potent at trapping heat than
carbon dioxide, the most
abundant global warming
gas, although it doesn’t stay
in the air as long.
Much of that extra methane, also called natural gas,
seems to be coming from
livestock, including manure,
belches, and flatulence, as
well as leaks from refining
and drilling for oil and gas,
the study says. It was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Science.
The study estimates that
in 2008, the U.S. poured
49 million tons of methane
into the air. That means U.S.
methane emissions trapped
about as much heat as all
the carbon dioxide pollution
coming from cars, trucks,
and planes in the country in
six months.
That’s more than the 32
million tons estimated by the
U.S. Environmental Protection Administration or the
nearly 29 million tons reckoned by the European Commission.
“Something is very much
off in the inventories,” said
study co-author Anna Michalak, an Earth scientist at
the Carnegie Institution for
Science in Stanford, Calif.
“The total U.S. impact on the
world’s energy budget is different than we thought, and
it’s worse.”
EPA spokeswoman Alisha Johnson said her agency
hasn’t had time to go through
the study yet, but hopes it
will help “refine our esti-
File | AP
This undated handout photo provided by the Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory/Energy Department shows a
Cessna plane, making continuous observations of carbon
dioxide, flying over an Atmospheric Radiation Measurement
tower used by the Energy Department near the town of
Lamont, Oklahoma.
mates going forward.”
While the world has a
good handle on how much
carbon dioxide is pumped
into the air, scientists have
been more baffled by methane emissions. They have
had to use computer models
to estimate how much methane is going into that air.
This study, however, was
based on nearly 13,000 measurements from airplane
flights and tall towers, the
most used in any such research.
The information was collected in 2008. Scientists
have yet to analyze their data
from 2012, and that will capture more of any impact of
the natural gas boom from
hydraulic fracturing, Michalik said. Studies recently
have shown conflicting results about how much methane escapes during fracking
and other forms of fossil fuel
drilling.
Outside experts praised
the study. Robert Howarth
at Cornell University called
“it very compelling and quite
important. This is the most
comprehensive study yet.”
Michalak said because
of the way they measured
methane — just looking for
it in the air as opposed to
tracking it from a source — it
is hard to say what is putting more methane into the
air. But she said by looking at
concentrations — especially
within Texas, Oklahoma and
Kansas — the scientists have
a good idea: Cows, oil and
gas.
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