Western Drilling Opposition Intensifies - CSM

[hatrack]

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"The reasons for opposition vary. Much of the landowner resistance is toward private-land drilling. In the West, many properties fall in a "split estate" category, where one owns the surface land but not the mineral rights. As a result, gas companies can get leases and drill wells on land even if owners are opposed. Landowners worry about falling property values or the effects on aquifers when saline water is removed. And they are often dismayed at drilling's noise and smells.

Carol and Orlyn Bell, who raise hay and keep horses on their 110-acre ranch just south of Silt, Colo., once counted 42 semis on the quiet dirt road that cuts through their land. They point down the hill to six or seven wells, one of which gives off a high yellow flame. In January, the separator in a well a few hundred yards from their home blew up, covering the fields around it with paraffin wax. Last year, their neighbors' horses were cut up when the wells' sudden noises made them bolt through the fence. Still, the Bells say they realize the gas company has a right to drill on their land, and they're willing to compromise. What they don't want to see is drilling on top of the Roan Plateau, the huge, mostly untouched land that rises 3,000 feet above Rifle and is this county's most treasured wilderness.

That's the other half of the drilling debate in the Rockies, where nearly half the land belongs to the government. Resistance to public-land drilling has been fiercer than normal, in part because so many previously untouched lands are being considered for new leases. Some call the Bush White House the most pro-drilling administration since the 1980s, when huge tracts of land were leased under Secretary of the Interior James Watt - a process that grew so fraudulent that Congress eventually passed legislation to rein in sales.

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But the local opposition is rooted in economics as much as aesthetics. Residents here still remember "Black Sunday" in 1982, when Exxon Corp. closed its oil-shale development and 2,000 jobs were lost. The value of the Bells's ranch was halved overnight. Energy in the west is a boom-bust business by nature, and some residents wonder if it isn't wiser to rely on more constant, long-term income streams like recreation - an industry that's been steadily growing. What will happen, they wonder, 20 years from now, when the gas companies leave but the landscape is scarred. "I've seen oil shale go bust, uranium go bust, hard rock go bust," says Keith Goddard, who runs Magum Outfitters in Rifle, and worries how drilling on the Roan will affect his business. "The bottom line is, when they go bust, you still have recreation. is a short-term resource."

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http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0308/p01s01-ussc.html

[ochazuke]

1. The Bushdozer. Some thougths on stopping it.

Leasing for natural gas drilling is already set to go ahead -- think it's in June -- on BLM land on the Utah side of that general area (near Dinosaur National Monument).

Extraction industry lobbiests are the majority stockholders in shrubco. This, I think, is FACT ONE when reporting on their actions, or trying to understand their misadministration.

On the other side, us enviros are pretty much shut out. But with the growing recreation industry, we may have a countervailing vested interest.

Kerry should go to Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and Montana and make conservation of our natural heritage a top campaign issue. I recall Clinton carried Arizona in 1996 after creating the Escalante-Grand Staricase National Monument in Utah (just north of Arizona's Grand Canyon). In the west, only Idaho and Utah are out of reach.

A couple of western states could make up for Kerry's weakness in the south. Kerry has a very good environmental record, I recall.