Judge Blocks Drilling Plan in Mich. Forest

[Clara T]

Judge Blocks Drilling Plan in Mich. Forest


Wednesday December 7, 2005 6:16 PM

By JOHN FLESHER

Associated Press Writer

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) - A federal judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked an energy company from clearing land in preparation for oil and natural gas drilling near a forest and a river.

Judge David M. Lawson issued a preliminary order halting Savoy Energy from cutting timber, building a road and taking other steps to get the project under way in northern Michigan.

Lawson said the order was necessary ``to prevent irreparable harm'' and give the court time to review decisions by the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to permit the exploratory drilling.

The Sierra Club and Anglers of the Au Sable, a fishing group, filed suit last June to stop the project.

``The courts are showing what Michigan anglers have known all along: that the Au Sable River is one of the most special places in our state and shouldn't be hastily destroyed,'' said Rusty Gates, president of the fishing group.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5463716,00.html

[HereSince1628]

1. The Au Sable was a much better place before it was so popular

Oh, well. Better people than oil wells.

Folks seem to forget the oil fields in the lower UP. The fight never ends. A few years ago we were trying to prevent slant drilling under Lake Michigan.

[SharonRB]

2. Well, the good guys finally won one -- for now, anyway

Let's see what happens when it's all over.

[texpatriot2004]

3. Save the Forests and the Rivers. Stop big oil and business nm

[5thGenDemocrat]

4. I own a one-fifth interest in two natural gas wells in this area

My sibs' and my 40 acres includes a branch of the AuSable and lots of second-growth timber. Great-grandpa bought the property at a tax sale in 1919, after it had been detimbered and abandoned.
The road out front (to the south) has been upgraded in the past ten years and the actual size of the area cleared and deforested for our two wells, half the size of a football field, is located on the very front of the property (the southern end). The AuSable crosses our land near the northern border of the tract -- several hundred feet from the wells.
Our immediate neighbor to the east is a hunting and fishing club. To the west is another 40 acres owned by my second cousin in San Diego. Across the road to the south is a Christmas tree farm owned by an old-money family here in Saginaw -- and to the north are 40 acres, owned by a family in downriver Detroit, which are inaccessable save by crossing another person's property.
On any side of all that are many square miles of state-owned forest to the north and east and the (largely federally-owned) safety area for the artillery range at Camp Grayling (ANG), to the south and west.
As you can probably tell, this is really as Michigan boondocky as you find. It is isolated and clean and damned fine territory to get primitive in. I wouldn't mind building a cabin on it someday.
Anyhow, the rod and gun club is still there (as it has been since 1920 or so) and the AuSable is important to those of us who have property along its banks.
I believe the natural gas drilling can be done with sensitivity for the environment because it has been done on our land. And I'm glad the Sierra Club and the Anglers are out there keeping everybody honest. But there will be more wells because this part of the state is where the gas is.
If the experience is as positive as it has been in my family's case, I think everything will work out A-OK.
John
Landowner and financially-interested party
Chester Township, section 23
Otsego County, Michigan

[amandabeech]

5. There is a capped natural gas well on some of my family's property

in Newaygo County. The area is a mix of farms and forests and contains a wetland and small mud lake.

The well's environs were already cleared, but the road in and the area around the well quickly regrew the local plant life and the site resembled the rest of the cleared area. At some point the cleared area will revert to woodland again, I imagine.

Oil wells, however, area a much different story, IMHO, as far as I can see. There is so much more stuff to spill all over everything and contaminate the site for decades if not centuries.

I'd be much, much more upset by an oil well so close to the Au Sable.

[newswolf56]

6. Sounds as if you're on the North Branch (see below).

Edited to correct reference to other post.

[newswolf56]

7. I knew the Au Sable country when much of it was genuine wilderness:

no electricity, no telephones, no running water, no indoor plumbing -- this during the 1940s and 1950s, before the Rural Electrification Administration brought in their accursed power lines and made the area comfortable for chechaquo city dwellers. The South Branch in those days (where my mother's family had acreage dating from a post-Civil-War land grant that rewarded a great-grandfather's heroism) had only about a dozen dwellings -- two or three year-round homes, the rest cottages -- all the way from Roscommon to the Narrows. Under my grandfather's tutelage I caught my first fish from the South Branch in 1947: three trout, one each Rainbow, Brook, German Brown, all nine-inchers (keepers were seven inches and above), all delicious when fried in batter by my grandmother (heads on of course). Later in the surrounding forests I had my first experiences with love: the puppy-love of a seven-year-old for a girl of similar age who summered nearby and became, for a month, my constant companion; the hot teenaged lust of a 14-year-old for the slightly-older young woman with whom I experienced my first impassioned kiss.

Indeed I spent the very best times of my boyhood there -- its only truly happy or contented times -- and (had I been able to figure out how to finance it), I would have returned years ago to live there permanently: it is truly my most favorite part of the United States. Not only is the AuSable Country breathtakingly beautiful -- the river is cold and swift and in the summer so clear that from a canoe or river-boat you can see the monster trout finning along the bottom even when you're eight or 10 feet above them -- but the country has its own special scent too, a subtle unique perfume of pine and spruce and sweet-fern and untainted water, and there is also magic there: sometimes -- especially in the stillness of the early morning or the slow quiet heat of the long afternoons -- the murmur of the current takes on the sound of women's voices, and then sometimes these become a solitary voice -- soft as a caress and scarcely above a whisper -- a voice you'd swear had called you by your name.

Others who have spent time in that country tell similar stories, especially about the water voices. The destruction of such a holy place -- by oil drilling or any other means -- would be a tragedy beyond comprehension: the modern-day equivalent of Romans maliciously clearcutting the sacred groves of Britian.