Waste dump plan advances

COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho - State and federal environmental regulators have entered the final stages of planning a mining waste dump less than a mile from the oldest standing building in Idaho.

The Idaho Department of Environmental Quality and the federal Environmental Protection Agency Thursday released their latest report on the 19-acre East Mission Flats Repository near the 155-year-old Cataldo Mission.

The document includes alterations from an earlier plan to help reduce its visual impacts.

Officials say the site is ideal for toxic Coeur d'Alene Basin material because its soil is already contaminated, though some environmentalists want it moved elsewhere.

The repository would provide additional space for contaminated soil from Shoshone County. That's now trucked to a dump that's only a few years from reaching capacity.

Man wants his peyote back

PROVO, Utah - A Utah County man wants federal authorities to give him back his peyote.

James "Flaming Eagle" Mooney fought in court to be able to use the hallucinogenic drug in religious ceremonies.

The Utah Supreme Court threw out a drug conviction against Mooney, but a lawsuit he filed against the county was thrown out of federal court two years ago.

Mooney says the U.S. attorney's office returned a peyote cactus that can be used in religious ceremonies, but not ingested. He says the federal investigators never returned the 15,000 peyote buttons that were seized from his church.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office in Salt Lake City says the peyote is contraband and will not be going back to Mooney.

Boy dies in watercraft accident

AMERICAN FALLS, Idaho - A 13-year-old boy is dead after being struck by a personal watercraft piloted by a participant in an Idaho State University summer program for disabled people.

Erik Simnitt died in the accident.

Authorities declined to release the name of the watercraft rider, who was among 16 people at the American Falls Reservoir who were part of the school's Cooperative Wilderness Handicapped Outdoor Group.

Graham Garner, an ISU spokesman, said the rider was disabled, but maintained the disability didn't lead to the accident.

Judge lifts restraining order

GREELEY, Colo. - A judge has ruled that a temporary restraining order against Greeley Mayor Ed Clark should not be made permanent.

Fifteen-year-old Remington Stitt had sought a restraining order against Clark in June after the mayor allegedly threw the boy to the ground when Stitt wouldn't get off a motorbike he was riding in a neighborhood.

Stitt was cited for operating a motor vehicle without a license and driving an off-road vehicle on city roads. The Larimer County district attorney's office declined to criminally charge Clark.

Weld County Judge Timothy Kerns ruled Thursday that using force to stop a traffic violation when there is no imminent threat of bodily harm is unreasonable but that a repeat of Clark's actions was unlikely.