NEWS ROUNDUP

Gas wells: Too close for comfort? Brandi Hughes first noticed a field of gravel taking shape just two houses away from her home northwest of Fort Worth. Then came the semi-trucks. Before she knew it, a hulking drilling rig climbed into the sky. "I knew what it was, but I couldn't believe that it was right there," she said, standing on the front lawn of her brick home, craning her neck to take in her giant new neighbor. The rig belongs to Devon Energy Corp., and soon it will begin drilling for natural gas on the grounds of Crossroads United Methodist Church. The landowner who sold the property to the church years ago retained the mineral rights and sold them to Devon for drilling. Ms. Hughes and other residents of the Avondale Ranch subdivision say they had no idea that they would someday live in the shadow of such a formidable drilling operation. Now they have questions about safety, noise and traffic. And they're not alone. Throughout North Texas, but particularly near Fort Worth, homebuilders, developers and natural gas companies jockey for any spare scrap of land....
Huge power rate hike hits Klamath farms Klamath Water Project farmers and ranchers have experienced many challenges over the years, most notably the federal government's shut-off of water to their farms and ranches in 2001. Now they face another major challenge. Farmers in the region are being hit with a ten-fold increase in the price they pay for electrical power following the expiration of a 50-year-old contract between the U.S. Department of the Interior and PacifiCorp, the utility company that provides power to the region. "If they can do it here, they can do it anywhere," said Scott Seus, a diversified farmer in Tulelake who chairs the power committee for the Klamath Water Users Association. "What is happening here is a significant measurement tool of what could possibly happen in the rest of California."....
Scientists check preserve's readiness A sensitive decision now depends on a final appraisal of range conditions at the Valles Caldera National Preserve. The question of cattle grazing on the preserve, what kind and how many, has occupied the preserve's governing trust for several months and drawn scrutiny from a deeply involved public. The question has now given way to whether or not to go ahead with the steer program that has been chosen and, if so, how many steers to run. The trust has notified ranchers that it is entertaining applications for up to 1,500 steers over a 120-day season this summer, beginning June 1. The preserve's chief scientist Bob Parmenter said forage conditions, combined with data on weather and moisture to be gathered this week would be available to inform a decision on Monday. Parmenter reported a number of discouraging omens. Recent stream run-off data came in most recently at 13 percent of normal. "And we've had zero rain since then," he said. Upland stock tanks were reported to be down to a foot of water, which meant they would be dry by early June, he added. The lack of moisture meant that the elk herd, estimated at about 3,000 head has hung around all winter, grazing grass from last year....
Sheep assume fire-prevention duties in Carson This weekend, the 1,500 sheep on a capital city hillside were hard at work doing what they do best - chomping on grass. But their mission is greater than just grazing. The animals are reducing fire fuels, said John McLain of Resource Concepts Inc., an engineering, surveying, resources and environmental services firm in Carson. Sheep tenders and herding dogs have their work cut out for them, however, as they need to keep the sheep eating, but not eating too much in one place. Removal of too much vegetation, for example, could result in soil erosion, McLain said. Rancher Ted Borda called the grazing plan a win-win situation. "It's good for us, good for the community," he said. Borda has taken a week's vacation from his day job at Galena High School to get the work started. He and his two sisters, all teachers, also run the third-generation family business, Borda Land & Sheep. "We wanted to do this because the community has treated us very well," Borda said....
Forest Service: No management-cost analyses on lands being sold The U.S. Forest Service has no specific documents supporting the argument that isolated parcels of land it wants to sell to maintain payments to rural schools are expensive to manage, according to the agency's response to a Freedom of Information Act request. "The Forest Service has undertaken no analyses of the management costs associated with each parcel of land proposed for sale in the Secure Rural Schools Bill," Gregory C. Smith, the agency's director of lands, wrote in an April 19 response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics. "It's a scam," Andy Stahl of Eugene, director of the environmental group, said Wednesday from his office in Eugene. "In the main, these lands are less managed than the contiguous national forest lands, and therefore cheaper."....
Sheep grazing prevails A dispute over the potential conflict between bighorn sheep and domestic sheep in the Sierra Madre Mountains of southern Wyoming reached the upper peaks of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. To the consternation of some conservationists, the interests of domestic sheep producers have prevailed. U.S. Agriculture Undersecretary David Tenny last week overturned a decision that state officials say would have essentially eliminated domestic sheep grazing in the Sierra Madres. The earlier decision was made by U.S. Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth, in response to an appeal of a portion of the Medicine Bow National Forest plan by the Laramie-based Biodiversity Conservation Alliance. Essentially, Tenny determined that questions about the long-term viability of the small Encampment bighorn sheep herd -- and the presence of two other bighorn sheep herds in the Medicine Bow -- meant that no special protection should be provided for the 50 or so Encampment animals. Game and Fish Department Director Terry Cleveland joined state Department of Agriculture Director John Etchepare in petitioning the USDA to overturn Bosworth's decision. The two directors argued that keeping domestic sheep away from the Encampment bighorns due to disease transmission concerns would have likely eliminated "long-standing and historic domestic sheep operations" in the Sierra Madres. Erik Molvar of the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance said Tenny's ruling could be a death sentence for the Encampment bighorns....
Lawsuit challenges forest-thinning project in Montana Environmental groups asked a federal judge Wednesday to stop the Forest Service from beginning a Montana forest-thinning project under a wildfire prevention law, contending it amounts to industrial logging. The project the Forest Service wants to undertake in the Bitterroot Valley this summer jeopardizes the environment, three groups said in the suit filed Wednesday against the Forest Service and two of its officials. Plans call for burning and logging on almost 5,000 acres near the East Fork of the Bitterroot River, where beetle infestations have killed many trees. The project was prepared under the Healthy Forest Restoration Act signed by President Bush in 2003....
BLM director hopes to speed up gas permits The director of the Bureau of Land Management said the nation's high demand for energy underscores the importance of speeding along natural gas permitting for producers in the Powder River Basin. During a visit to the Buffalo field office Tuesday, Kathleen Clark touted the creation of programs that bring together officials from several federal agencies in an effort to speed up gas permits. Among the agencies that will be involved are the Army Corps of Engineers, the Environmental Protection Agency, Fish and Wildlife Service and the Forest Service. “We are really working to set up what can be a one-stop shopping center (for permits) ... all for the purpose of helping us meet demand.” In addition, Clark hoped the seven energy pilot BLM offices in five Western states would help to maintain air and water quality more effectively. There also will be a push to look at alternative energy sources such as wind, solar, oil shale, tar sands and geothermal energy, she said....
Federal Judge Validates Form Letters In his April 25 summary judgment, Chief U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy rejected Bush administration regulations that for three years have shielded Forest Service projects from public scrutiny and appeals. The ruling came out of a lawsuit filed by EarthJustice on behalf of the Wilderness Society, American Wildlands and Pacific Rivers Council. Molloy issued a nationwide injunction against the regulations. His judgment immediately replaces the illegal rules with the previous rule that governed the FS appeals process before the Bush administration revised it in 2003. This rule considers all public comments significant. A major impact of the ruling is the validation of form letters. The 2003 Bush administration rule revision declared that public comments must be “substantive” to be considered or give the sender a right to appeal the decision later. In essence, this revised rule gave the FS the right to disregard form letters or e-mails send in by groups opposing proposed actions on public lands such as timber sales....
Political Leaders Gather Friday to Oppose N-waste Utah political leaders will join community activists and business owners in Salt Lake City on Friday to speak out against nuclear waste storage in the state. Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. and U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, among other elected officials, will use the event to urge Utah residents to say "No Way" to proposed storage of 44,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste in the state's West Desert. Styled as a "rally," the public event is planned for noon at the State Office Building, in the Capitol Complex. The leaders will urge residents to write to the Bureau of Land Management to oppose a proposed transfer station on federal property to transport nuclear waste to the Scull Valley Goshute Reservation. "Utah is not a dumping ground for the country and I will not allow this to happen on my watch," Huntsman said in a statement. "We must join together and say 'No Way' to nuclear waste."....
With oil at $70 a barrel, firms try coal, shale, even turkeys At more than $70 a barrel, the price of oil is causing angst for millions of Americans. But for some others it's an opportunity to move the United States beyond conventional oil: • In Carthage, Mo., a company is turning the inedible parts of Butterball turkeys into up to 350 barrels of biodiesel per day. • In Gilberton, Pa., businessman John Rich is planning to convert huge piles of low-quality coal into diesel. The state has promised to buy the production of 5,000 barrels per day, once it starts. • In Utah and Colorado, four companies are preparing environmental assessments to show the feasibility of producing oil from shale. With gas now becoming as pricey as a gallon of milk in some places, the economics of energy production is changing. Processes that didn't make any sense in the good old days of $30-a-0barrel oil are now being pulled out of filing cabinets. From the tundra of Alaska to the depths of the Gulf of Mexico, energy dreamers are trying to tap into new frontiers....
Court Puts Teeth in 'Notice' Needed to Seize Property "An elementary and fundamental requirement of due process," the Supreme Court ruled many years ago, is that the government must provide "notice" and an opportunity to be heard before it seizes property. On Wednesday, the court added teeth to that requirement, ruling that Arkansas violated a homeowner's right to due process when it sold his house for nonpayment of taxes after sending him two certified letters that came back "unclaimed." Writing for a 5-to-3 majority, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said that "it is not too much to insist that the state do a bit more" before using its "extraordinary power" to take and sell a person's house. The Constitution does not require "actual notice" like personally handing the letter to the homeowner, the chief justice observed. But he said that once the state became aware, as in this case, that an effort at notice had failed, it must take "additional reasonable steps to attempt to provide notice to the property owner before selling his property, if it is practicable to do so." Justices Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia and Anthony M. Kennedy dissented, the latter two signing a dissenting opinion by Justice Thomas. The state did all that was constitutionally required, Justice Thomas said, adding that it was the homeowner's responsibility to make sure that the authorities knew how to contact him. The court was imposing a "burdensome" and "impractical" requirement on the government, he said....
RFID 'Til the Cows Come Home The national ID system is going to the dogs -- and the pigs, and the sheep and the cows and the chickens. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns this month released a government road map that would see most farmers voluntarily tag their animals with wireless radio chips by 2008 as part of an ambitious electronic disease control system to prevent outbreaks of hoof and mouth disease and avian flu, among other things. The system will not address the spread of "mad cow" disease, as it is transmitted through feed rather than animal commingling. By 2007, the program will ask farms or households that house chickens, ducks, turkeys, cows, pigs, goats or horses to register with a database and obtain a 15-digit identification number and GPS coordinate. Beginning in 2008, animals under the proposal would carry a radio frequency identity, or RFID, tag. One part of the plan is not voluntary: By 2009, farmers will be required to report the movement of any animal from the registered premises that commingles with other animals. Those who do not comply within 24 hours will face fees as high as $1,000 a day. Industry officials say they understand the need for a system to stop the spread of disease, but they show little trust in the federal government's ability to carry out the task without burdensome requirements. An industry database already exists to record the animals' location from the farm to the slaughterhouse, and 30 percent of the nation's producers have already registered, said Jay Truitt, vice president of government affairs for the National Cattleman's Beef Association. The private database acts like a 911 system to get an instantaneous trace without the wait, and does not require RFID technology. Truitt worries the government will eventually mandate the use of RFID tags, a step that would benefit the producers of the technology and not consumers. He said RDIF technology is "a big scam." "The government has done a wonderful job of eradicating diseases, that's why we don't have outbreaks like they do in Europe," Truitt says. "But the government is looking at a purely electronic solution that fits into one box."....
Thousands of cattle, sheep killed in storm Thousands of cattle and sheep worth millions of dollars died on the plains north and west of the Black Hills during last week’s howling blizzard, agriculture officials say. In Harding County, ranchers lost an estimated 1,500 to 2,500 cattle and 5,000 to 6,000 sheep, according to Kelli Willey, county executive director for the U.S. Farm Service Agency in Buffalo. On the Roger and Penny Gunderson ranch west of Ladner in far northwestern Harding County, between 450 and 500 sheep piled up against a fence and suffocated. The loss amounted to about a third of his herd, Roger Gunderson said Wednesday evening. Gunderson also estimates they lost 40 calves and five or six cows. “I figure it’s about a $120,000 loss,” Gunderson said. The wind also took off about half the tin on the barn he built after the storms of 1997. In Carter County, Mont., preliminary estimates put losses at 4,000 cattle and 6,000 sheep, FSA county executive director Ronelia Parry said. Parry said her estimates were based on contacts with producers, who reported averages of 10 percent calf losses and 15 percent lamb losses. Many area ranchers were still lambing and calving when the storm smashed into the area with high winds and dropped as much as 24 inches of snow on the prairie April 18 and 19. Willey said most of the sheep that died were buried by the snow....
A whoopin', hollerin western-style rodeo IBOR Hommer's nom de plume is Dust Cloud. It has nothing to do with his character, but a lot to do with his passion for western America. The manager of Silverado, a western-style ranch (also called the Crazy Cowboys' Club), Hommer speaks limited English except when it comes to obscure horse terms like Appendix. (Appendix horses are quarterhorses, with thoroughbred breeding in their bloodlines. A quarterhorse, if you didn't know, is a full-sized horse known for its heavily-muscled physique, even disposition, athletic ability, and versatility. The American Quarterhorse Association is headquartered in Amarillo, Texas. Several of Silverado's horses are quarterhorses.) The 40-hectare (98-acre) ranchresort will be the venue for a whoopin', hollerin' American-western-style rodeo May 1, the first of four competitions to be held in Hungary this year. Starting at 10 in the morning, it will feature typical rodeo events, such as roping, racing, bronco and 700-kilogram (1,543 lbs) bull riding, and cattle herding techniques (ie, cutting and separating, calf roping). At 5pm, the competition stops and the festivities start - country music, line dancing, drinking, and a buffet featuring chili bableves. It may be the next morning before it all stops....
Tintypes of Texas cowboys show photographer's mettle The National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City has named Revealing Character: Texas Tintypes by Robb Kendrick its outstanding Western photography book for 2005. The award ceremony Saturday was emceed by retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Kendrick's book has also been honored by the Texas Association of Museums. It was called the best Western book of the year by Reader's Digest. The book's subjects -- tintypes of working cowboys from Texas ranches -- have been on display at the Witte Museum in San Antonio and the Panhandle Plains Historical Museum in Amarillo. The photos will continue to be exhibited throughout the state and will make a stop in Fort Worth at the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in October....