Politics News

WyoFile Column

The Obama administration’s announcement last week to dump the so-called “wild lands policy” was not unexpected. The policy was already dead in April when the GOP successfully barred the Interior department from spending money to implement the program.

“I am pleased the Administration appears to finally understand that bypassing Congress and ignoring input from local officials is the wrong way to go,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyoming) said in a prepared statement.

Some critics say the GOP bypassed the executive branch, preventing federal land management professionals from doing their jobs by defunding the program. Which is more politically motivated; Congress or the Interior department?

The answer to that question depends on whether your party holds sway in the White House or in Congress.

New West Feature

After strong opposition from several Western states and a pending lawsuit, Department of the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is backing down from his controversial “Wild Lands” policy. 

The announcement comes on the heels of a law suit proposed by Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, which was also supported by governors from Wyoming and Alaska, as well as the recent budget deal which prevented the Interior Department from funding the plan.

“I am confirming today that the Bureau of Land Management will not designate land as ‘Wild Lands,’” Salazar said in a memo to Bob Abbey, director of the Bureau of Land Management.

Instead, Salazar said he would work with locally supported efforts to preserve wilderness. 

Guest Opinion

The Environmental Protection Agency is currently working to establish common-sense standards for pollution such as smog, particulate matter, carbon dioxide, mercury, and arsenic. The agency is gathering public comment on its Mercury and Air Toxics Rule, greenhouse gas standards are nearly finalized, and an ozone and smog rule is under development. These measures will protect public health, save millions of dollars on health care costs, improve workplace safety and productivity, and create much needed jobs.

Mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants contributes to the contamination of our fisheries and puts Montanans at risk, especially women and children. And although Montana is one of 19 states that have a standard for mercury emissions, mercury pollution does not respect state boundaries, which is why it is so important that the EPA regulate coal-fired power plants throughout the United States, because many states have not developed their own mechanisms for reduction. According to the EPA, coal-burning power plants contribute more than 50 percent of all domestic human-caused mercury emissions in the U.S., making them the largest source of such mercury pollution in the country.

New West Feature

A watchdog group of Forest Service employees is taking federal officials to task for the way they dispense fire retardants from the air while fighting wildfires, but insists it has no desire to prohibit the use of firefighting chemicals.

Andy Stahl, executive director of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, says federal officials took “some baby steps in the right direction” with last week’s release of a new draft environmental impact statement on fire retardants.

The statement calls for better mapping of areas where endangered species might live, so firefighters can avoid dispensing retardant in those areas. Under the draft document’s preferred alternative, language that presently allows retardant to be dropped in those locations to protect human life and property would be changed to saving “life” only.

New West Feature

After 40 years of divorce, the Colorado Division of Wildlife and Colorado State Parks are set to become a single agency again, joined at the hip as a way to save money and create efficiencies in state government.

The two agencies, formerly hitched together in the 1960s and split in 1972, manage more than 300 state wildlife areas, 42 state parks and Colorado’s hunting and angling programs. They will become the Colorado Division of Parks and Wildlife on July 1, consolidating all their operations under a single umbrella.

Colorado isn’t the only Western state to consider shuffling around its parks and wildlife agencies this year in an effort to save money.

New West Column

After the last election, Wizi Garriott, a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, who was then working for the Obama campaign, told Indian Country Today, “For us, the campaign has always been about community empowerment. We’ve tried to put as many resources as possible into Indian communities so we can help our own people organize and empower themselves. That’s what this is all about.”

That’s still what it is about. The type of change that’s required is not going to come from any presidential administration. It will require more people to organize and empower themselves at the community level. To my way of thinking the Obama administration’s policies have complemented that very notion. If that message is clear—especially if it is accompanied by specific Obama administration policies and actions—then there is a good chance Indian Country will turn out and vote again.

High Country News Feature

Last January, three endangered California condors were found dead in Arizona. The cause of death: lead poisoning. After eating carrion riddled with spent lead ammunition, the birds’ digestive systems likely shut down, starving them to death. Since condor reintroduction began in Arizona in 1996, 15 have died of lead poisoning; in California, 18 condors have bit the bullet. After 25 years spent trying to recover the condor from near-extinction, the birds remain imperiled by lead in their scavenged prey. Despite growing concerns about health effects on both humans and wildlife, however, lead ammunition still flies widely unregulated across the West.

Sen. Jon Tester, D-MT, wants to keep it that way. With a bill introduced last month, Tester hopes to amend the Toxic Substances Control Act to permanently exempt lead bullets, shot and fishing tackle from regulation. 

Public Works

When the famous photographer Margaret Bourke-White made her iconic 1936 Life magazine cover shot of the still under construction spillway at Fort Peck Dam – the very first cover of the magazine – the country had no environmental impact statements. A cost-benefit analysis? Huh, what’s that?

There was no Fish and Wildlife Service in the 1930s to assess how the massive dam across the Missouri River would impact fish or whether whole species might be endangered by drastically altering habitat. The Fort Peck Tribes weren’t consulted. The states of Montana and North Dakota had little roles beyond having their federal elected officials weigh in on the project.

In fact, Fort Peck was constructed with no Congressional authorization whatsoever. Franklin D. Roosevelt simply decided to build the dam after he was lobbied by Montana Sen. Burton K. Wheeler and others. Roosevelt could do that because the Congress had granted him, and him alone, the authority under New Deal-era relief legislation to spend billions of dollars building things and putting thousands of the unemployed back to work.

Construction began on Fort Peck late in 1933 and by 1936 more than 10,000 were laboring on the massive project in the far northeastern corner of Montana. They built a town – Fort Peck – as the administrative center of the Corps of Engineers project, but many workers preferred to set up housekeeping in haphazardly constructed shanty town with names like New Deal and Wheeler. The booze ran day and night in these places even though Montana was still legally dry. The prices were sky high but you could buy anything, including certain services in an area known as Happy Hollow. Over the course of construction at Fort Peck, it was largely finished by 1940, it is estimated that 50,000 different people were employed on the dam.

News Briefs

Utah legislators hope a new law will keep a steady stream of film productions working in the state, according to the Daily Universe at Brigham Young University. The new law offers a partial rebate on in-state expenses made during the filming of the production, as well as other incentives designed to coax filmmakers to the state.

The filmmakers behind recent movies like “True Grit” and “Cowboys and Aliens” eyed Utah but later opted to film in New Mexico, the Universe reports.

New West Column

Republican Party unity on the issue of a massive restructuring of Medicare and Medicaid (if there is such a thing) ended this weekend. Presidential candidate and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said on NBC’s Meet the Press that he opposed the House budget proposal designed by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin.

“I’m against Obamacare, which is imposing radical change, and I would be against a conservative imposing radical change,” Gingrich said. “I don’t think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering. I don’t think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate.”

I take issue with the notion that the Affordable Care Act is “left-wing” social engineering. To my way of thinking it’s just a baby step toward the type of reforms that are required by the country’s changing demographics. A radical left-wing solution would be single-payer health care system, not one where private doctors and insurance companies are guaranteed profits from the individual mandate.

But the country also needs a real debate about the hard reality of demographics—there are more seniors than ever, plus we all live longer—and it’s those facts that call for some sort of radical restructuring of Medicare. At least Ryan’s plan does that, even though I disagree with it. His idea is to essentially protect current seniors, shifting the burden to people my age (just under 55) and to younger workers. But this a really tough issue and there ought to be a consensus solution.