NEWS ROUNDUP

Land war goes before Supreme Court A fight by homeowners to save their New London, Connecticut, neighborhood from city officials and private developers -- an important property rights case with an unusual twist -- will reach the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday. At issue is whether governments can forcibly seize homes and businesses, for private economic development. Under a practice known as eminent domain, a person's property may be condemned and the land converted for a greater "public use." It has traditionally been employed to eliminate slums, or to build highways, schools or other public works. The New London case tests the muscle of local and state governments to raise what they see as much-needed revenue, which they argue serves a greater "public purpose." Legal analysts said they see the case as having major implications nationwide in property rights and redevelopment issues....
Comments support wilderness area Bighorn National Forest officials are considering creation of a new wilderness area based on public support for the idea. Nearly twice as many people submitting comments from the four-county area surrounding the forest favored an option designating additional wilderness than those who did not. "There was a little bit more local support than we expected (for the wilderness option)," said Bernie Bornong, forest planner. As a result, the Forest Service is considering revising its preferred management plan - which originally did not call for further wilderness designation - to include a new wilderness area near Rock Creek, he said....
Seismic-test questions asked Dan Renner's 300 acres on the Beartooth Front are going to undergo seismic testing to see if oil and gas lie under the land where his horses now graze. But before he signed the release allowing Quantum Geophysical Inc. to set off explosive charges to conduct the 3-D seismic mapping for Windsor Energy Group, Renner asked some questions. "What happens if one of the charges doesn't detonate?" he asked. "Who is liable? Is that covered under my property insurance?" The answers he got back surprised him. Not only would his insurance be canceled, but no one had asked this question before. And under Wyoming law, if Renner didn't sign the release, his property could be condemned under eminent domain and the testing could be conducted anyway. "I'm faced with a Catch-22 - I either allow them on my property or get condemned. If I let them on my property, I lose my insurance," Renner said. "So what do you do?"....
County rejects methane company's road request County commissioners turned down a drilling company's request to open a remote private road to the public, rejecting the contention that the road was illegally abandoned by Campbell County 30 years ago. Williams Production RMT Co. sought to overturn the action of the Campbell County Commission in 1975 because it wants access to the road, which leads to the company's nearby coal-bed methane leases. The company has been unable to reach agreement with landowner William P. Maycock regarding access....
Threatened sturgeon could delay beach project The five-mile beach renourishment project, expected to start here next month, could be delayed because of a fish. The Gulf sturgeon, a threatened species of fish that can grow to 8 feet long and weigh more than 200 pounds, is why the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has asked the Board of Supervisors to delay the $500,000 project. "We have a letter that's telling us not to do anything," said board President Rocky Pullman. Pullman said the National Marine Fisheries Service wants more time to study the sturgeon population near the Bay of St. Louis. The fish is regulated by the Fisheries Service, according to the Endangered Species Act....
School district faces habitat penalties The Escondido Union High School District contends it misunderstood the city's directive to clear a 100-foot-wide fire break when it bulldozed 10.7 acres of land, including 1.45 acres of coastal sage scrub, home of the endangered California gnatcatcher bird. To attempt to make up for the damage, the school district must either buy occupied sage scrub land in a conservation area, or buy similar land that will be independently preserved and managed, said Barbara Redlitz, principal planner for the city. Redlitz said California Department of Fish and Game and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service guidelines for destroying coastal sage scrub without a permit is for the culprit to buy four acres of habitat for preservation for every acre that they damage. The stiffer penalty discourages others from grading sensitive habitats without permits, Redlitz said....
In Fish vs. Farmer Cases, the Fish Loses Its Edge Legal fights over water in the West are as common as summer rains are rare. But a flurry of cases in California is attracting intense attention from scholars and state officials who see them as an extraordinary assault by agricultural interests on protections for endangered fish and other wildlife. In a series of lawsuits, including one to be argued before the United States Supreme Court on Wednesday, farmers and water districts are pushing property-rights claims to the forefront of the debate over how to divvy up water among farms, cities and the environment. In doing so, they are demanding compensation from the government for irrigation water diverted for environmental purposes, calling into question rules mandated by Congress under the Endangered Species Act that favor the protection of fish over the growing of food when water is in short supply. It is an approach that has won sympathy from the Bush administration, which in December agreed to pay $16.7 million to farmers in Tulare and Kern Counties in one lawsuit over reduced water supplies. But the claims have alarmed California officials and many conservation groups, who fear that demands for payment for lost water could spread to other Western states and undermine protections for wildlife....
A Big Bump on the Road to Riches There is just one problem. The family - some named Sharpe, some named Hill - do not technically own the land. It seems that their patriarch, Louie Sharpe, neglected to have an official witness sign the deed to his homestead 60 years ago, and now the federal government has restaked its claim to the family's home. "Mr. Sharpe never completed his application," said Kirsten Cannon, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Land Management. "The family doesn't have true title. I know this sounds like evil government trying to kick these poor Native Americans off their lands, but that's farthest from the truth. No action has been taken to remove them." The bureau says it cannot overlook the forgotten signature and simply award the family its ancestral land, because homesteading was abolished by the federal government in 1976. The family does have the first right, however, to buy the land. "I'm scared," Ms. Hill said, standing in the wind dressed in thin shoes and an old sweater. "We have nowhere to go if they throw us off. There's nothing left for the grandchildren."....
Editorial: Environmentalists must alter tactics Almost 35 years after the first Earth Day, U.S. environmentalists are in a fix. Membership and donations are up for many organizations, but broad support for the movement appears to be stagnant, if not retreating. In the last four years, membership in the Sierra Club increased by 22 per cent. Revenues and membership in other environmental groups also grew, apparently mobilized in opposition to Bush administration environmental policies. Yet there are not many recent accomplishments environmental organizations can claim for all that influx of money and members. There may even be an erosion of public enthusiasm for environmental causes....
Noise makers Every 20 seconds, a boom like a whale striking its hull rips through the research vessel Maurice Ewing as the ship's powerful air guns fire deep into the ocean's floor. For the last month, the US vessel has been conducting seismic tests of a meteor crater off Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula in hopes of cracking the mystery of why the dinosaurs went extinct. But the study has triggered heated protests from environmentalists in the latest in a growing international debate over underwater testing. Advocates say the research has crucial applications, including helping to predict underwater earthquakes like the one that caused the devastating Dec. 24 tsunami in Asia. They also argue that there is little evidence that the tests cause widespread harm to marine mammals. But critics say that underwater testing is responsible for dozens of whale strandings over the past decade and should be banned....
Column: Be honest about Kyoto pact How important to the world's future is the Kyoto global-warming pact, which went into effect last week? It can't be that important, since Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, told the Washington Post: "The greatest value is symbolic." Symbolic is the word. The Kyoto treaty won't reduce emissions in America, because this country never ratified it. What's more, negotiators at Kyoto in 1997 had to know the United States never would ratify the pact. Before Vice President Al Gore left to attend the Kyoto summit, the Senate voted 95-0 in favor of a resolution warning that the Senate would not support a global-warming pact that exempted developing nations such as China and India. Kyoto won't make a difference in those developing nations because they don't have to reduce emissions or even agree to curb how much their pollution grows. While 141 countries ratified the pact, Kyoto's emission caps apply only to some 35 countries....
Nuclear waste pile worries western U.S. The Bush administration is risking yet another nuclear controversy in the West as the president's Energy Department hems and haws over what to do about a huge pile of radioactive waste rock heaped uncomfortably close to the Colorado River. The Energy Department and its incoming secretary, Samuel Bodman, have yet to give any solid reassurances to area governors that their concerns that the Moab, Utah, site won't be pushed aside as they were when the president pushed ahead with the controversial nuclear-waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev. "We cannot afford to assume the risks associated with having uranium tailings strewn along river banks and bars of the Colorado River below Moab," Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman insisted in a letter sent last week to the Moab project manager. "Good science and good sense tell us the tailings must be moved."....
Sempra Energy buying up water An energy company’s recent purchase of options on water rights on the Smoke Creek Desert — where a coal-fired power plant has been proposed — is drawing opposition from area residents. Sempra Energy officials said they have rounded up options on 25,000 acre-feet of water, a crucial step toward building the proposed $2 billion plant in northern Washoe County. The amount is 9,000 acre-feet more than is naturally replenished each year, according to a 60-year-old U.S. Geological Survey....
A vision to share logging's history Inside the banquet room of a 1922 Colonial mansion built for a lumber baron, an intimate gathering hears a pitch about creating a larger-than-life bronze sculpture to memorialize the thousands who have died while logging in Washington. "I'm not a logger and I'm not an artist," Enumclaw jewelry-store owner Tom Poe tells about 20 prospective donors. A full-color rendering of the sculpture is projected onto a screen beside him — a man driving two oxen pulling a log with a chain. Poe then delivers the punch line: the "Logging Legacy" monument is budgeted to cost $450,000....
Colorado ranchers head for Wyoming The Isaksons are part of a trend of northern Colorado farmers - and ranchers in particular - who are moving their operations north because they are finding it more and more difficult to keep those operations running around encroaching urban sprawl. And they can get good ranch land on the high plains of eastern Wyoming at a good price. Sidwell Herefords, with a main ranch between Nunn and Carr in Colorado just south of Cheyenne since 1941, is in the process of moving north across the border. Harold Sidwell said development led to the decision to make the move. "For every acre we sold down here we were able to buy five acres in Wyoming, which is another reason for the move," Sidwell said, noting new homes going up in northern Weld County and escalating cost of land made it impossible to enlarge the main ranch....