Я на машине!

Jerry Nivens lives in a trailer in Caballo, N.M., 165 miles south of Albuquerque. As we drove around, Nivens marveled at artesian pools supporting desert wildlife, exclaimed as a squadron of baby quail crossed our path, and wondered over underground rivers that run to the nearby Rio Grande. Retired from the refrigeration business, he earns money from an invention of his used for water purification. The dairy industry is New Mexico's largest agricultural sector and an influential lobbying force. He enjoys driving into the mountains, where he used to while away afternoons panning for gold. A bulky Texas transplant who chain-smokes American Spirits, Nivens cares as deeply for his mesquite-speckled patch of ground as any rural New Mexican. He goes fishing Lone Star-style -- in reservoirs, not rivers.

On the sunny May day I met him, he spilled out of his GMC Jimmy sporting a National Rifle Association ballcap and Magnum P.I.-style sunglasses. He spends much of his time alone. He wore brown corduroy pants hung from suspenders with a matching jacket over a plaid shirt. A giant Marlboro belt buckle completed the ensemble. "I'm kind of an old hermit," he says.

Which, in a way, was why I had come -- to learn how and why this loner became the driving force behind a movement that brought the state's mega-dairies to heel. Although the state Environment Department has long worked with dairies to reduce pollution, change has been slow: Almost 60 percent of the state's dairies have polluted groundwater with manure runoff, yet not one has begun the required cleanup.

A hole in a house has revealed a loophole in Manitoba’s public insurance policy.

As you read recently in the Brandon Sun, a city couple is angry at Manitoba Public Insurance because the company says it’s not going to cover the damage done when a reportedly stolen vehicle ran into their home.

A GMC Jimmy ran through a deck and a cement step before crashing into the living room and kitchen of a house on the 1700-block of Stickney Avenue on Nov. 11, causing considerable damage.

But surprisingly, Manitoba Public Insurance says it will not cover the damage because the vehicle was said to be stolen.

MPI’s strange position is that because the Jimmy was stolen, the crash wasn’t the vehicle owner’s fault.

But that means the homeowners will have to make a claim against their house insurance, which could wind up costing them thousands of dollars for a mess they didn’t create.

It just doesn’t make sense.

Given that Manitoba is as well known for vehicle thefts as it is for mosquitoes, the province needs to close this loophole to stop victimizing any victims of crime.