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OF PIPELINES AND POWER LINES

The issue of energy corridors and the impact on private property is increasing in the West, as growth occurs in areas where older pipelines are located and new transmission lines are under consideration to carry power produced in the Rocky Mountain West to new markets.

Two stories today – one about a pipeline route in Utah and another about a proposed power line in Montana and Idaho highlight different aspects of energy development and growth.
In Utah, where crews are clearing trees and brush from Chevron’s pipeline route that stretches 200 miles between Rangeley, Colo., and Salt Lake City, homeowners have been surprised and dismayed to find cutting crews and felled trees in their backyards.

The Salt Lake Tribune reported today that the pipeline has been in place since the early 1950s, but a new federal regulation that requires the entire route be visible from the air for monitoring purposes has required the removal of trees that are literally decades old. The new rule stems from a 1999 incident in Washington where tree roots caused a gasoline pipeline to rupture, setting off an explosion that killed three and injured several others.
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TOO GRAND TARGHEE

A plan to develop the base of Grand Targhee resort in Alta, Wyo., is just too big, four of five Teton County Board of Commissioners said. The Jackson Hole News & Guide reports on a meeting at which George Gillett offered his plan to build 775 free-market housing units and rezone 120 acres at the base of the ski resort from rural to resort.

The presentation, commissioners said, deserves praise for its thoroughness, especially concerning traffic on the long mountain road to the resort, impacts on backcountry areas and employee and affordable housing. But it’s just too much, they said.

Gillett tried to counter by saying the proposed housing density was still less than that of nearby Jackson Hole Ski Resort and Snow King ski area. But commissioners didn’t buy that reasoning, saying that the Jackson Hole resort is surrounded by private land and Snow King is already located in an urban area, while Grand Targhee is at 8,500 feet in an alpine setting and on public land. [more]

BIGHORN BATTLEFIELD

The water dispute between Wyoming and Montana regarding flows in the Powder and Tongue Rivers is so contentious, one Montana official said it is almost enough to start a war, to which the Billings Gazette responded with a story lead that provides a visual of a gunned stand-off at the border. But does this scenario over-dramatize the situation?

The situation revolves around an age-old battle over limited water supplies, a 50-year-old water compact, and modern-day technology and industry. In 1950, the two states created the Yellowstone River Compact, which sought to manage the water in these two basins, which cross state lines. But it didn’t dictate how much water each state was to receive. And now with highly efficient irrigation systems that return less than 10 percent of the water used to the rivers and 23,000 coalbed methane wells that discharge millions of gallons of groundwater that isn’t always fit for irrigation, but still has to go somewhere, the compact is out of date. [more]

Western Waters

In Wyoming, water is a wild and scenic issue. In Arizona, ground and surface water apparently never meet in the Legislature. And in New Mexico – if it’s visible at some point in the year, the state can regulate it.

Water – it’s the stuff legislation is made of today.

At a Senate subcommittee hearing in Washington, D.C., Wyoming Sen. Craig Thomas' bill to designate 443 miles of waterways in northwestern Wyoming as "wild and scenic," played to an appreciative audience. The Casper Star-Tribune reported that the nation’s top fly fisherman, Jack Dennis, coach of Fly Fishing Team USA and honorary chairman of Campaign for the Snake Headwaters, gave the bill a big thumbs up – as did officials from the Agriculture and Interior Departments. [more]

OLD ECONOMY

The General Mining Act of 1872 is perhaps the oldest operating legislation significantly affecting the environment and economy in the West on a daily basis. Numerous attempts have been made to update it, but have thus far failed. The most recent attempt looks like it might work, though.

West Virginia Democratic Rep. Nick Rahall, also the current U.S. House Natural Resources Committee Chairman, submitted legislation to rework the 1872 law. Proposed changes include an 8 percent net royalty on minerals mining on public lands, creation of a fund to clean up abandoned mines and a provision to forever ban mining on some federal lands. [more]

GLOBAL WARMING

On Tuesday, the governors of 31 states announced an effort to create a standardized system of monitoring and tracking greenhouse gas emissions by major industries.

The Los Angeles Times reports that state and industry officials said The Climate Registry is an important first step in the process to eventually create limits – whether mandatory or market-based – on gases linked to global warming. The Registry, which has been called by some as the “free-market Kyoto,” after the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement to limit greenhouse gases—and one that the United States has declined to take part in.

The pact puts states ahead of the federal government once again in the effort to slow global warming. Although the federal government launched a similar voluntary program in 2002 to monitor such pollutants, the Climate Registry requires third-party verification of the efforts, a key difference. Another key difference to the federal program, are the standardized reporting guidelines used by the multistate registry.

The Registry will be headquartered in Washington, D.C., and will have regional offices. Reporting is set to begin on Jan. 1, 2008. [more]

AFFORDABLE GREEN

In Colorado, affordable housing has a noticeably green hue, as both a metaphor for environmentally friendly building and as an issue completely about money, or lack-thereof.

In Denver, reports the Denver Post, a committee within the Denver Housing Task Force wants all developers working on city-funded affordable housing projects to build "green." The committee is now reviewing several sets of standards to determine which will fit the city best, though some say the city should wait for national green-building standards to venture down that path. [more]

WHEN THE WELL RUNS DRY

Thanks to a recent court ruling, the state of Idaho could call for the largest curtailment of groundwater pumping in its history. The Twin Falls Times-News has been reporting for about a week now that if junior water rights holders don’t find a way to provide water for senior water rights holders, the state will shut off the wells of those junior water users.

Water allocation in Idaho and other Western states is tied to a system called prior appropriation, in which water claims are issued in the order they were first asked for — older rights holders can use all of their water before newer, or junior water rights holders, can use their allotment. [more]

COLORADO’S ‘YOGI BERRA’ MOMENT

This is like déjà vu all over again,” Yogi Berra, famed New York Yankees catcher, once said.

But he wasn't speaking about oil shale in Colorado. Today, the state's West Slope communities are revisiting that old boom from two and a half decades ago.

On May 2, 1982, tumbling oil prices, escalating costs and high interest rates forced Exxon to close down its Colony Oil Shale Project, putting thousands of employees out of work and shutting down the hopes and expectations of businesses that built their future on Exxon’s rosy prognostications about that project.

A quarter century later, the Bureau of Land Management has approved research projects – five in Colorado and one in Utah – to showcase new technology for getting oil out of the stubborn rock that encases it. The Grand Junction Sentinel reported that on Monday, the BLM gave Oil Shale Exploration Co. the go-ahead to reopen the White River mine near Rangeley, Utah. That mine, which has been closed since 1985, will originally send its oil shale to Canada for processing, but eventually a “surface retort,” the processing plant will be moved to the mine site.

In Colorado, the five companies that will be conducting research operations on oil shale deposits in that state will take lessons learned from the Exxon project all those years ago and use them as a foundation for the new projects. Royal Dutch Shell and some of the other companies operating research sites in Colorado are considering projects that pull the oil out “in situ,” or process it where it is.
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URBAN MIGHT

Open space, wild places and vast, undeveloped landscapes may be what makes our region unique, but our citizens are primarily city dwellers. According to the 2007 State of the Rockies Report (pdf), issued in early April, in 2000, 83 percent of Rockies residents lived in urban areas. That’s higher than the 79 percent national average. So, while public lands management and wildlife may sometimes steal the show, urban issues are perhaps just as pressing, if not more so.
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