My Page: Guest Writer
NRDC Study
Oil Shale Mining Would Suck the West Dry, Report Warns
At a time when management of the Colorado River Basin water supply is facing unprecedented challenges due to over allocation and climate change, energy companies are proposing to move forward with oil shale development—a water-intensive, inefficient source of energy that could become a major producer of greenhouse gas pollution.
A new report from the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Between a Rock and a Dry Place, explores the potential impacts of oil shale development on water supplies in the basin and on the region’s agricultural economy, water quality, protected species and natural environment.
High Country News Feature
A Monumental Fight over Otero Mesa
The decade-long tussle over energy development in New Mexico’s Otero Mesa has been reinvigorated recently, as hardrock mining claims now threaten the region for the first time.
The area, sometimes referred to as the “Southwest’s Serengeti,” is a 1.2 million-acre stretch of undisturbed Chihuahuan Desert grassland. The sprawling but sensitive expanses of black grama are home to more than 1,000 species of native wildlife, including a genetically-pure herd of pronghorn antelope, the endangered northern aplomado falcon, mountain lions, mule deer, bald and golden eagles and hundreds of species of plants, insects and migratory birds.
[more]Guest Opinion
Has David Slain Goliath Again?
Right in the midst of their battle against ExxonMobil, residents along Idaho’s Highway 12 received an email from an unlikely but eminently appropriate source. An Israeli activist fighting gas exploration in the Elah Valley found their website, FightingGoliath.org, and wished them well in their struggle.
The Elah Valley was the site of the famous duel between a young shepherd boy and a giant warrior 3,000 years ago. Visitors can stay walk along the brook where David chose five smooth stones for his trusty slingshot.
[more]WyoFile Feature
Speedy Drilling Gets Green Light
U.S. Federal Judge Nancy Freudenthal last week struck down the Interior Department’s 2010 instructional guidance meant to curtail the use of “categorical exclusions” in permitting oil and gas drilling.
The plaintiff, industry trade group Western Energy Alliance, successfully argued that the guidance was invalid, in part, because it wasn’t created under a formal process that includes public comment. Yet the “categorical exclusion” itself is a procedural tool that allows industry to bypass—at the permitting stage—a formal National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) analysis that includes public comment.
[more]Guest Comment
Haze Be Gone
When I started researching regional haze rules a few months back, a source warned me that I was wading into the Clean Air Act’s wonkiest, most technically complicated depths. I remember her asking me something like, “Are you sure you want to go there?”
Which is to say, you’d be forgiven if you paid little attention to regional haze. Eyes tend to glaze over at mention of the term.
Telluride Daily Planet Feature
Colorado Residents Chastise DOE over Uranium Plans
In its second public meeting reviewing uranium mining in southwestern Colorado this week, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) received a sharp mandate from Telluride residents: any mining is too much, and its leasing program should be disbanded.
DOE is conducting a series of meetings to take the pulse of people in the Colorado towns of Telluride, Montrose, and Naturita, and in Monticello, Utah, concerning the federal program that leases land to mining companies.
[more]Summit Daily News Feature
Has the Beaver Become an Intruder?
It’s been said that the West as we think of it—the “fast-flowing streams and invitingly open banks, celebrated in photographs and songs and pickup truck commercials,” as Kevin Taylor wrote in 2009 in High Country News—is an illusion.
In Taylor’s article, the message of this illusion was preached by Grand Canyon Trust project manager Mary O’Brien, who said the species that could bring us back to a wetter landscape that existed before white settlers arrived.
New West Photo Essay
Photos: Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo
Here are some wild images from this year’s 115th annual Cheyenne Frontier Days rodeo, which finished at the end of July.
SolveClimate News Feature
Carbon Storage Drilling Underway in Wyoming
On a mid-June afternoon in the dusty plains of southwest Wyoming, a team of oil drillers got the final thumbs-up to begin boring deep into the earth. By this week, they were more than 90 percent of the way to reaching their goal of drilling a test well 2.5 miles below the surface.
But this is not any old well.
[more]Idaho Fish and Game Feature
Hate Those Junk Fish
Lake Lowell in southwestern Idaho has been much in the news lately. The state government is fighting a federal proposal to limit longtime recreational uses on the huge reservoir, which was built for irrigation in the early 1900s.
Federal officials want to restrict water sports to about a third of the lake and ban dogs and horses, to protect wildlife in the Deer Park National Wildlife Refuge, which incorporates the lake. Idaho Gov. Butch Otter insists the state should manage the wildlife. Amidst this debate, Idaho Fish and Game announced this week it was considering how to reduce a carp infestation that has disrupted the reservoir’s aquatic systems.
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