New West Network

My Page: Courtney Lowery

Are We Stimulating Sprawl?

A report out this week from the national Smart Growth America group takes a look at where transportation stimulus money is going on the state level and it found that in most cases, especially in the West, states are spending too much on new roads and not enough on maintenance and repair of existing infrastructure or on public transportation options.

The report is exhaustive, and you can read the whole thing here, but two main points from the group are these:

Not enough money is being spent on repair and maintenance: “Despite a multi-trillion dollar backlog of road and bridge repairs, states committed almost a third of ARRA STP money—$6.6 billion—to new capacity road and bridge projects rather than to repair and other preservation projects”

Not enough money is being spent on public transportation: “By allocating few funds (3.7%) to public and non-motorized transportation, states made less progress on modernization, rapid job creation, enhancing public transporation, long-term economic growth, reducing greenhouse gases, oil dependence and providing low cost transportation choices,” the report states.

Read on to see the report’s findings on how specific Western states rank in the group’s assessment.

"How else would we feed the world?" is an easy defense for keeping the status quo of the commodity-led American agribusiness system. It's also a good way to encourage genetically-modified crops in the U.S.

But, according to a new study from the climate change research division of Deutsche Bank, increasing commodity crops, GMO crops and irrigation alone aren't going to feed our growing planet.

The report does highlight the need for increasing acres in cultivation and yes, it recommends GMO technology and investing in better irrigation systems, but it also recommends at least considering a return to small, diversified, local farming.

From Mark Fulton, Global Head of Climate Change Investment Research, in his editorial letter in the report:

To feed and fuel 9 billion people ... farmers, markets and governments will look at a whole host of options. Alternative approaches are being researched and tested in development such as the reemergence of small, self-sufficient organic farms, characterized as, local, multi-crop, energy and water efficient, low-carbon, socially just, and self-sustaining.

Hat-tip to the New York Times' Green Inc. blog.

Click here to read the full report (PDF). [more]

News Bite

Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch says he, his fellow Senator Bob Bennett, Idaho's Jim Risch and Wyoming's John Barrasso have created the Western Senate Caucus because: "We have to fight very, very hard to make sure that the West is being treated fairly."

In an announcement yesterday, the three Senators detailed a plan that Hatch likened to the Sagebrush Rebellion during the Carter years.

Barrasso says in the Salt Lake Tribune: "We believe in Western values, values of rugged individualism, of self-reliance and economic freedom," said Barrasso. "We oppose the federal intrusion in the everyday lives of the people of our great country. The government should get out of the way of prosperity and liberty."

The Senators times the formation of the caucus with its introduction of the Clean, Affordable, and Reliable Energy, or CARE, Act, legislation that Hatch described in a press release as, "A comprehensive energy bill... aimed at ensuring that all the energy tools are in place to fuel our economy and fix our nation’s dangerous overdependence on foreign oil."

Hatch also said in the release, "One of the aims of the Senate Western Caucus is to thwart the anti-oil agenda of the Washington elite and their extreme environmentalist allies, while at the same time promoting alternative energy," and he referenced Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's decision this week to repeal oil and gas leases in Utah. You can read some of the details of the CARE act on Hatch's Web site.
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New West Blog

SEED magazine calls it a "scientific flip-flop." Why?, writer Maywa Montenegro asks, do environmentalists champion science when it comes to issues like climate change buy decry it when it comes to genetically modified crops?

"Is the fear really about the technology itself or is it a mistrust of big agribusiness?"

Montenegro's question sets up a fascinating collection of essays by five experts that is aimed at getting to the root of the cacophony over GM.

Included in the collection is an interesting piece by Pamela Ronald, a professor of plant pathology at the University of California, Davis, and also the wife of an organic farmer. She writes:

"My overwhelming sense is that public skepticism about GM crops, and the foods derived from them, is not about the science—it is about US corporations. Some consumers have not forgotten that Monsanto was a producer of Agent Orange for the US military during the Vietnam War. Others worry that corporations will control the global seed supply." [more]

When news broke late last week that the City of Bozeman was requiring online social media passwords from job applicants, it ignited a veritable firestorm.

See Sharon Fisher's story here on the controversy.

The city was inundated with feedback and, according to KBZK in Bozeman, officials immediately took heed. From Dan Boyce at KBZK:

The City of Bozeman has decided it will no longer ask job applicants for social networking user names and passwords following a worldwide outrage to the hiring policy.

"Effective at noon today, the City of Bozeman permanently ceased the practice of requesting that candidates selected for positions under a provisional job offer to provide their user names or passwords for candidates Internet sites," Bozeman City Manager Chris Kukulski said Friday.

Click here for the story. [more]

New West Blog

Sometimes, what you don't do can be just as telling as what you do. In a report today the Chicago Tribune's Jim Tankersley makes that case in detailing what Bush-era environmental policies the Obama administration is "backing" via inaction in the courts.

From the story:

"... five months after he entered the White House, Obama has done nothing to defend the so-called roadless protections in a court case that could soon decide their fate — tacitly maintaining the legal position staked out by the Bush administration, which tried to scrap the plan to curb construction of new roads in national forests.

Obama administration officials say they’re committed to roadless protections and are aggressively pursuing them through policymaking rather than in the courts. They say their actions in the "roadless" court case reflect legal tactics, not the real thrust of their policy."

Tankersley also highlights drilling on the Roan Plateau as another example.

"As a junior senator from that state in 2008, Ken Salazar called the plan "the unsound product of an administration that has lost sight of the balance" between developing and conserving public lands. Now Salazar is interior secretary and negotiating with environmentalists and industry to settle a lawsuit challenging the leasing plan. His lawyers told a court this spring that the plan was legal."

Click here for the entire story. [more]

From WyoFile

Wyoming Governor Dave Freudenthal says the state should review Wyoming’s participation in a federal minerals royalty program that has come under increasing Congressional scrutiny.

In an interview with WyoFile, the governor said he would ask the director of State Lands and Investments to check into the performance of a federal “Royalty in Kind”program for natural gas launched in the state three years ago.

In 2008, $290 million, or about 53 percent of the state’s share of federal royalties from natural gas on federal land in Wyoming was collected under a “Royalty in Kind” system managed by the federal Department of Interior’s Minerals Management Service. [more]

Hop on the Bus Gus

Grist.org this week takes a look at 10 public transit projects that, despite not being the big systems, in Chicago, San Francisco, etc., are beacons for how to get people from A to B in urban centers. Two Western cities are at the top of that list.

From Grist:

As cities big and small rethink how their residents get around, new systems are taking shape—and as gas prices and paychecks fluctuate, riders are responding in droves. While the current economic crunch is forcing many cities to hike fares and cut back on service, innovations continue, and the tracks are laid for a bright future.

Coming in at No. 3 is Denver, where Grist says FasTracks and the Rocky Mountain Rail Authority plan makes: "Denver’s mile-high sprawl is a lot easier to navigate thanks to one of the leading transit systems in the West."

No. 4 on the list is Salt Lake City and light rail, TRAX, and its bus system. The city also gets props for plans to "build seventy miles of rail in seven years; officials are also studying the possibility of adding a downtown streetcar and a bicycle transit center."

Click here for the full list from Grist. [more]

Preview: Planning in the West Conference

That's the question Rich Franko, a principal at the Seattle design firm Mithun, Architects+Designers+Planners, would like to answer.

"As things drive to denser, more urban, more city development," Franko says, "Making them great places to live, bringing nature into the city is going to be important."

"Just density alone is not good," he says. "You have to find out how natural systems work into it as well. That's a cutting edge."

Take for example, one of Franko's projects in Seattle -- Higher Points, a lower density project that has, as part of its integrated design, a restoration of a salmon watershed within the neighborhood. Or, in Portland, Oregon, Franko is working on finding ways to reincorporate elements of a conifer forest into a high-density neighborhood. Both are examples of weighing a balance between nature and the urban landscape.

Part of the challenge, Franko says, is exploring "what are the limits to that? What makes for clean water and ecosystems while still having that urbane sense of community?"

The communities of the future -- urban or rural -- Franko says, will have to address the natural environment in which they are built, especially as energy, transportation and water become bigger and bigger issues.



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New West Blog

Here's an idea: Instead of attempting to play the middle on the tug-of-war on who gets to do what on the city's prized open space, planners at the city of Boulder in Colorado have decided not to decide.

Instead, they're telling the public to work it out amongst themselves.

From Heath Urie in the Boulder Daily Camera:

Beginning next month, the city's Open Space and Mountain Parks division will select up to 18 Boulder residents, representing various interest groups and viewpoints, and ask them to reach a consensus on how Boulder's most expansive and heavily trafficked trails should be used.

It sounds like a good idea, although, as Peter Bakwin of the Boulder Trail Runners and president of the Boulder Area Trails Coalition says, "I think it's potentially a very good idea, but the devil will be in the details." [more]