NEWS ROUNDUP

CBM opinions vary at panel hearing A Montana legislative panel studying oil and gas issues heard mixed views Thursday from Wyoming and Montana residents on whether the state needs better laws to protect surface landowners facing mineral development. Some ranchers said their experience with developers has been good and that Montana doesn't need more regulations. Others said they've lost wells and worry about drained aquifers and long-term damage. Members of the Montana Environmental Quality Council subcommittee met at Sheridan College to hear about Wyoming's split-estate law, which went into effect in July, and to gather comments from the public. More than 50 people attended the session, which lasted all afternoon. The panel will tour coalbed methane sites in both states today. The subcommittee was formed by the passage of House Bill 790 in the 2005 Legislature and is charged with studying surface-use agreements for all mineral development as well as reclamation and bonding for coalbed methane operations. Study results and possible recommendations will be presented to the 2007 Legislature....
Montana panel hears about BLM-Wyoming feud Western states need to band together and oppose a federal move to disregard state laws protecting the rights of landowners affected by mineral development, an advocate for landowners in Wyoming said. Laurie Goodman of the Landowners Association of Wyoming told a Montana panel Thursday that the Bureau of Land Management was attempting to avoid applying a new Wyoming law to lands where it owns the mineral rights. The Wyoming law gives surface owners more bargaining power and rights when dealing with oil and gas producers seeking to extract the minerals owned by someone else under their land. When the land surface and minerals underneath are owned by two different parties, it is known as a split estate....
Departing Interior official says demand drives drilling As long as natural gas prices remain high, the push to drill in the Rocky Mountains will continue, said a former Montana lawyer who is stepping down today as a high-level Bush administration appointee in the Interior Department. Rebecca Watson, assistant secretary for land and minerals since January 2002, leaves her office to take a position with a Denver law firm. "This job is a very high-pressure, demanding job," Watson, a former Helena attorney, said Thursday. "It's time for me to let someone else bring their perspective." She said she and her husband are looking forward to returning to the West. Watson was put in the spotlight regularly while at the Interior Department, especially in connection with the Bush administration's drive to accelerate oil and gas development....
The Elk Problem Meanwhile, thousands of elk freely move around the Greater Yellowstone area, and some of them carry brucellosis, the same dreaded livestock disease that has caused decades of political gridlock over bison management. We have been brought to our knees trying to keep bison away from cattle in two relatively small areas on the boundary of Yellowstone Park. Imagine the controversy trying to keep elk away from cattle throughout the Greater Yellowstone area! So why isn’t everybody suffering from high blood pressure over our “little” elk problem? Why aren’t agencies worried about elk transferring brucellosis to cattle? Or Montana losing its coveted brucellosis-free status? Or what we’d have to do to fix the elk problem? To get these answers, I had a long chat with Keith Aune, chief of wildlife research for the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks. Aune has studied the brucellosis situation for years and is now deeply immersed in the bison controversy....
Ski resort planner at odds with conservationists For now, the ski trails on the Maclay Ranch are just freshly turned bands of brown earth. But they are the beginnings of what Tom Maclay hopes will someday be a world-class resort rivaling Vail, Sun Valley or Lake Tahoe. In Maclay's vision for the mountains south of Missoula, skiing would extend beyond the 2,960-acre ranch where his great-grandfather settled in 1883. Maclay wants to put skiers on Lolo Peak in a national forest near the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, and market an extraordinary vertical drop of 5,342 feet. Skiers - possibly as many as 7,500 a day - would descend north- facing slopes to the ranch and its alpine and Nordic skiing, 2,200 houses and condominiums, and a resort village. Golf, a hotel, conference and sports centers and access to excellent fly fishing are part of the four- season Bitterroot Resort plan....
Burton accepts temporary Interior post One of Wyoming's own has accepted a temporary appointment to a key energy post at the U.S. Department of Interior. Johnnie Burton will be acting assistant secretary of Interior for land and minerals management while the White House searches for a permanent replacement for Rebecca Watson, whose resignation is effective today. The appointment means Burton will serve double-duty, because she will maintain her current position as director of the Minerals Management Service....
NPS looks to add genetically pure trout to Yellowstone Park The National Park Service is proposing to poison all the fish in a high mountain lake and about 17 miles of connected streams in the northwest corner of Yellowstone National Park and replace them with genetically pure westslope cutthroat trout. Some of the fish to be poisoned in the Specimen Creek drainage are Yellowstone cutthroat. Others are hybrids or rainbow trout. Both westslope and Yellowstone cutthroat are dwindling native species in and around the park and environmental groups have pushed to have them listed under the Endangered Species Act. However, while the health of a fish population is important, its location is also important to fishery managers....
Delta smelt in deep decline, survey says New data indicate that a tiny fish used to gauge the health of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta may be on the brink of extinction, portending a grim future for the vast, brackish waterway contiguous to the San Francisco Bay. The delta smelt, an aquatic canary-in-the-coal-mine for the bay-delta system, may be suffering from multiple factors, including fresh water diversions, toxic chemicals and invasive species, scientists say. Early results from a California Fish and Game trawl survey show that the smelt -- listed as threatened under the U.S. and state endangered species acts -- is at its lowest level since the surveys began in 1967....
Pre-hearing set on rural Nevada water The state Division of Water Resources plans a Jan. 5 conference to work out details for a hearing that could decide the fate of a $2 billion plan to slake the Las Vegas Valley's growing thirst with groundwater from rural Nevada. "We're going to figure out our game plan - when are we going to hearing, who is going to participate," said Susan Joseph-Taylor, chief of the division's hearings section. At issue are 33 Las Vegas Valley Water District applications for groundwater rights in Lincoln and White Pine Counties. The applications were filed in 1989 and later transferred to the Southern Nevada Water Authority, of which the water district is a member. Water authority officials expect the applications to produce up to 180,000 acre-feet of water a year, a total they hope to expand through reuse or other means to about 300,000 acre-feet a year. That's enough water to supply almost 600,000 households....
Idaho Power aims to relicense dams after settlement talks fail Idaho Power Co. is asking federal regulators to resume a review of a new license for its Hells Canyon dam complex, after yearlong negotiations with state and federal agencies, Indian tribes and environmental groups failed to result in a settlement over issues including whether the company should erect fish ladders for migrating salmon. The three 50-year-old dams, located along a 25-mile stretch of the rugged Snake River canyon dividing Idaho from Oregon, are Idaho Power's largest, with a combined output of 1,167 megawatts, capable of lighting nearly 900,000 homes. The last license expired in July 2005, and a temporary license is now in place as the utility asks the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for permission to operate them for another 30 years. In an Oct. 20 letter, Idaho Power told the commission its talks with more than a dozen government agencies, including the National Marine Fisheries Services, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Forest Service, Idaho and Oregon state environmental quality offices, and the Nez Perce and Shoshone-Bannock tribes, had ended without a pact....
E.P.A. Backs Bush Plan to Cut Air Pollution by Power Plants After its apparent demise in Congress six months ago, the Bush administration's plan to reduce air pollution from power plants returned to life on Thursday as the Environmental Protection Agency said the plan would cost less than competing proposals. The assessment came after Stephen L. Johnson, the agency administrator, presented members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee with a detailed comparison of the administration plan, known as Clear Skies, and several others. All of the bills that were analyzed by the E.P.A. staff are intended to curb emissions of nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide and mercury. Mr. Johnson concluded that any legislation was preferable to the current regulations, which apply only to the eastern half of the country and have come under a barrage of legal challenges. But in defending legislation as a preferred alternative to regulations because statute is less vulnerable to litigation, he argued only for the administration approach although he hinted that he would be open to compromise....
Louisiana horseman wins RTCA White Horse Award Louis Pomes, who lost 26 of his own horses in the flooding caused by Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana then worked to rescue an estimated 100 other horses following the storm, received the Race Track Chaplaincy of America’s third White Horse Award at an awards luncheon on Thursday at Belmont Park. The award is annually presented to recognize a member of the horse industry for an act of bravery. Pomes, a rancher and government worker in rural St. Bernard Parish near New Orleans, lost mostly Paint horses, whom he had bred for years for ranch work and sold for showing. He helped rescue abandoned horses, many of whom had become dehydrated after drinking contaminated water....
Column: Windmill man preserves country icon Most folks call him the windmill man. For years he was a common sight around town, and along miles of country roads, in his rusty pickup with its bed piled high with pump jacks, wheels and windmill heads. That was before the county commissioner ran a stop sign and slammed a front-end loader into the driver’s side of his pickup while he was wheeling home from repairing a windmill. The old truck rolled, tools scattered and when the dust settled he pulled his crumpled 88-year-old body out of the mangled cab. A Mediflight ride and a battery of x-rays would later determine he had a slew of snapped ribs and a broken neck....

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