My Page: Ken Wright

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Clarifying Wolf Creek Criticism

I’ve written many letters to the editor in my day, but I’ve never written one in response to my own editorial. But this was a good time to start, because I needed to object to the headline to an editorial I wrote that was published last Sunday (April 23) in the Durango Herald regarding the proposed Village at Wolf Creek and its developer, billionaire B. J. McCombs. The headline I suggested when I submitted the editorial was “A Resident Responds to Wolf Creek Developer McCombs.” (Which was also posted on NewWest.net.) But when the editorial ran on the Herald’s Opinion page last week, the headline capping the piece was “Why I Hate His View of Wolf Creek.” [more]

The Good, the Bad, and the Debatable

The vision of a respite from the Southwest’s drought came from an unlikely source lately. Outspoken global warming alarmist James Hansen, head of the NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in New York City, is projecting that warming water in the Pacific Ocean will yield a wet winter in the Southwest," according to the Associated Press.

In fact, Hanson is calling it “a super El Niño.” He argues that warming off the coast of Peru and other conditions are like those leading up to the strong El Niño winter of 1997-98. El Niño drags the jet stream south, and so storms enter the U.S. through California and over the Four Corners. La Niña, on the other hand – which we’ve been experiencing for the last six years – is a weather pattern that pushes the storm track toward Canada, and the Southwest is left high and dry.

That’s the good news. [more]

The view from the Four Corners

"All my life I have always wondered why there is antagonism toward developers," moaned billionaire B.J. "Red" McCombs last Friday at a forum on his proposed massive resort development atop remote Wolf Creek Pass in southwestern Colorado. His quandary was, of course, rhetorical, because nobody on the panel would disagree with his disillusionment. The event, held in isolated Creede, Colo., was boycotted by the only critics of the project invited to the panel discussion. In the spirit of soothing some of the antagonism, then, I’d like to relieve Mr. McCombs of his life-long befuddlement. [more]

Wolf Creek Controversy

"All my life I have always wondered why there is antagonism toward developers," moaned billionaire B.J. "Red" McCombs at a one-sided "debate" over his proposed massive resort development atop the remote Wolf Creek Pass in southwestern Colorado. The event was boycotted by the only critics invited to the panel discussion -- Sen. Jim Isgar, D-Hesperus, and Rep. Mark Larson, R-Cortez, announced they wouldn't attend after no other critics were invited. Despite the sanitized event, the antagonism McCombs frets over was present. Inside the room, a standing-room-only crowd of nearly 300 listened to the speakers while protesters with signs made their point outside, watched over by a heavy police presence. The event was held in the shadow of two other developments this week. [more]

Update

Legislative sponsors have withdrawn a controversial "Surface Owners Protection Act" bill for Colorado, again sinking legislation that legislators have tried to enact for more than two years. The present form of the bill initially had been supported by environmentalists, property owners, and the real estate industry for strengthening rights of "split estate" landowners -- those who own the property but not the mineral rights under the property.
In its initial form, the legislation would have required energy companies to work with landowners on the placement of facilities, use the best practices available to minimize impacts, and to fairly compensate surface owners for use and damage of the property. Supporters, though, turned against the bill after they claim it was re-written by the oil-and-gas industry to the point where it actually undercut existing property-owner rights. Supporters then turned critics, urging the bill's defeat, after it passed the Colorado House last week and was set for a vote before the full senate on Friday. Sponsors Sen. Jim Isgar, D-Hesperus, and Rep. Kathleen Curry, D-Gunnison, pulled the bill before it could be voted upon. [more]

When nothing is better than something

It started out with seemingly reasonable aims, but it has ended up with the very folks who pushed for it clamoring for its defeat, and the oil and gas industry advocating for its passing with radio ads across western Colorado. Pushed for two years by Rep. Kathleen Curry, D-Gunnison, the “Surface Owners’ Protection Act” for Colorado has continually failed under stiff opposition from the state’s strong oil and gas industry. In Curry’s original vision, the legislation would have required energy companies to work with landowners on the placement of facilities, use the best practices available to minimize impacts, and to fairly compensate surface owners for use and damage of the property. The most recent version of the act, though, is none of that, critics – and its former advocates -- claim. [more]

Wolf Creek Controversy

A public debate on the proposed Village at Wolf Creek to be held in Creede, Colo., tomorrow looks like it will be a cheerleading rally instead. The two politicians most critical of the project announced yesterday that they will boycott the event after the group leading the opposition wasn’t invited to attend. Also invited to speak at the forum are Village at Wolf Creek president Bob Honts and representatives from the Forest Service, Mineral County, and the Upper Rio Grande Development Council, which is sponsoring the forum.

“They steadfastly rejected any attempt to allow people who understood the issue,” Mark Larson, R-Cortez, explained on KSUT radio. He also noted that Colorado Wild, the uninvited environmental group, were “the ones who exposed the collusion with the developer and contractor on the EIS that was recently released.” [more]

License to Shill

My family and I recently visited Sedona, Arizona, land of pinion-juniper forest, redrock spires and bluffs, resorts and spiritual energy-field vortexes. The only vortex we found, though, was the one our credit card number went into. [more]

It's a powder day!

I really had planned on growing up some day. Instead, here I am, in the middlest of my midlife, standing in a mostly empty parking lot at our local ski area on a weekday morning, pulling on my ski boots. I’m supposed to be working. But it’s a powder day. I won’t be growing up today. [more]

Four Corners Stew

Let’s face it: We in the American West are blessed. No need to be shy, humble, or coy about this. We know it. We are blessed. Sure, sure, there are mountains and deserts and valleys in other places. Some really pretty ones, even. But what makes the American West a place like no other is that this landscape is still largely undeveloped and unprofitable, and still mostly accessible and egalitarian. And outside of widely spaced outposts of urbanity, it is populated mostly by small, scattered villages and towns build on and around the big open around us. And this is not by luck. [more]

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