NEWS ROUNDUP

Coalition urges BLM to revise regulations In the face of mounting natural gas drilling in the West, a coalition of ranchers, farmers and conservationists Wednesday petitioned the Bureau of Land Management to revise its regulations to lessen the impacts to landowners. The Western Organization of Resource Councils (WORC) and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) petitioned the BLM to change its regulations to improve reclamation standards, increase financial assurance bonds, and provide oversight of oil and gas development. Currently, the BLM requires a $10,000 bond for individual oil and gas wells, a blanket statewide bond of $25,000 and a $150,000 nationwide bond. The two organizations contend those bond amounts are not sufficient to cover reclamation of well pads, pipelines and roads and associated installations. "Current regulations do not ensure that oil and gas operators pay the full costs of minimizing environmental damage, or remediating the land, during and following development," said David Newman, NRDC attorney. "This leaves local landowners, itself to bear the costs, rather than the developers responsible for such impacts. This is both irresponsible and unfair." For the "hundreds of thousands of (new) wells" projected to be drilled in the future, "the cost of reclamation will be astronomical and likely beyond the means of the federal government," said Bob Elderkin, spokesman for Western Colorado Congress. Specifically, the petition calls for the BLM to require Geographic Area Development Plans for all oil and gas activity with site-specific reclamation plans and full-cost estimates of reclamation. The new regulations would also specify performance standards for reclamation. In addition, bond amounts would increase to $20,000 for individual wells with an option for a site-specific reclamation bond in lieu of the bond. The new regulations would also improve inspection, monitoring, and enforcement....
Tests won't hurt Utah, Army says After five years of deliberation, the Army has decided that continuing chemical and biological defense tests at Dugway Proving Ground will not hurt the Utah environment. The Army gave public notice Wednesday that it has adopted a "programmatic environmental impact statement" that it began in 2001 to look at cumulative effects of such testing at numerous sites nationally, including Dugway. It finds no dire impacts. The Army said in a record of decision that environmental impacts of continued biological and chemical defense testing at Dugway and other sites nationally "will be negligible to minor and mitigable." In reaction, Erickson said sarcastically, "Gee, they've never had problems at Dugway before, so why should they in the future?" Several problems have occurred there, ranging from a 1969 nerve gas accident that killed 6,000 sheep in nearby Skull Valley (which some ranchers say also led to health problems for their families) to disclosures that the base secretly aimed some biological arms at human volunteers to test effects....
Column: Gale Norton in Slacks - Dirk's Dirty Money After serving for five years as Interior Secretary in the Bush Cabinet, Gale Norton, protégé of James Watt, quietly stepped down from her post overseeing the ruination of the American West. Norton's sudden exit was almost certainly hastened by the widening fallout from the corruption probes into Jack Abramoff and his retinue of clients and the politicians and bureaucrats he held on retainer. Abramoff, it will be recalled, performed some of his most extravagant shakedowns of clients, many of them destitute Indian tribes, seeking indulgences from the Interior Department. To replace Norton, Bush called upon his old pal Dirk Kempthorne, the Idaho governor and former US Senator, who once cherished notions, fantastical though they may have been, of the occupying the White House. In picking Kempthorne, Bush has once again demonstrated that mindless consistency which will be one of his hallmarks as president. Far from moving to clean up an office sullied by corruption and inside-dealing, Bush tapped a man, who has over the course of his 20 years in politics, taken more money from timber, big ag, mining and oil companies than any governor in the history of American politics. Unlike many other western conservatives, Kempthorne doesn't hit up the religious right for money. He goes to straight to the corporations who want something done in Boise: JR Simplot, the potato king; Boise-Cascade, the timber giant; mining companies, such as ASARCO, Hecla, and FMC Gold; and the power companies. And Kempthorne gives them what they want. Kempthorne is Jack Abramoff without the middleman, decision-maker and lobbyist rolled into one....
The Interior Department's 'Relief Pitcher' Even in a big bureaucracy, some things can happen fast. On his first day on the job this week as secretary of the interior, Dirk Kempthorne found out he is already a defendant in thousands of lawsuits, give or take a few. Interior's deputy solicitor, David L. Bernhardt, tried to break the news gently, noting that Kempthorne's name was simply replacing that of his predecessor, Gale A. Norton. And in some cases he's not formally named, or the Justice Department is taking the lead. "Don't take it personally," Bernhardt said. Resolving the long list of lawsuits -- including one accusing the government of cheating American Indians out of as much as $137.2 billion over the past 118 years -- is one of many tasks the former Idaho governor and senator faces as the nation's 49th interior secretary. With 30 months before the administration ends, he must confront everything from a huge maintenance backlog at the national parks to a contentious debate over how to best protect endangered species. "I'm coming in in the seventh inning. I'm the relief pitcher," Kempthorne, 54, said in an interview in the midst of his first official day, which began at 6:30 a.m. Tuesday, when he left his apartment for a Fox News interview, and ended at 9 p.m., after he polished off Costco sandwiches his staff had brought in and did some paperwork. "I'm going to come in there, and I want to make sure it's a winning series."...
Editorial: Changing nation's fire plane plan This year's battles against the biggest wildfires will be waged a little differently. The federal government is contracting nationally for large air tankers and, after a safety review, is allowing fewer of these aging former military aircraft to fight fires. Is this summer's fleet of firefighting air tankers up to the task? The fleet of 16 aircraft expected to be available this year is half the size it was in 2004 and former National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Jim Hall told the Associated Press that the federal government still hasn't addressed serious safety concerns that grounded the aircraft two years ago. The duty to safeguard firefighters while protecting life and property on the ground demands that the federal government require high standards for safety and performance in these aircraft. Tragic loss of firefighters' lives in air tanker crashes prompted the NTSB to take a closer look at safety. Safety concerns have been recognized in these aircraft that were first in military use 50 years ago. However, there hasn't been progress in getting new aircraft into the nation's air tanker service. As a result, there are no new planes and fewer old P-3 and P-2V air tankers available for firefighting nationwide. What this means for Montana is that no large air tankers will be based in the state....
Governor asks feds to protect 1.6 million acres Gov. Bill Richardson is asking the federal government to protect all 1.6 million acres of roadless national forest in New Mexico -- and to throw in 100,000 acres of the Valle Vidal as well. Adding the Valle Vidal to the protected acreage would create "another stumbling block" to proposed drilling on the renowned elk and trout habitat, he said. New Mexico becomes the fourth state -- and the first Western state -- to petition the Bush administration for roadless-area protection under a new rule established last year. "I call on other Western states to follow New Mexico's lead," Richardson said Wednesday at a news conference at the Randall Davey Audubon Center, at the edge of the Santa Fe National Forest. The petition was applauded by hunters, anglers and conservation groups including The Wilderness Society, which said Richardson was trying "to make the best of a bad federal policy."....
Radical turn to terror Reared in Westchester's culture of plenty, Lauren Weiner shunned the perks of wealth for the life of a left-wing radical - calling herself "Fireflie" and hitchhiking and train-hopping around the country in search of a "beautiful romantic culture." Her journey into one of radical culture's darkest corners led her to plead guilty to charges of conspiring to blow up federal government buildings in California in an eco-terror plot. In detailed writings posted on the Internet, Weiner, 20, stated she's "anti-society" and spent her time rubbing elbows with fellow "radicals, runners and romantics," and clashing with police at anti-corporate protests. That journey led her to join a plan formulated by a hardened environmental extremist, Eric Taylor McDavid, 28, to turn the anarchic protests more violent, California prosecutors said. McDavid, Weiner, and a third radical, Zachary Jenson, 20, planned to meet in California after Christmas to bomb a U.S. Forest Service genetics lab, a fish hatchery, the Nimbus Dam and other sites near Sacramento, according to testimony from a confidential federal informant and wire-tapped conversations from a house the three rented. The tipster said they were going to act in the name of the Earth Liberation Front, a shadowy group of left-wing extremists wanted by the FBI for setting fires to developments and causing damage to millions of dollars worth of property. The informant told authorities that the three said that human casualties in the bombings "would be acceptable," according to a criminal complaint....
Appeals filed over access to Village at Wolf Creek Two foes in a dispute over the proposed Village at Wolf Creek resort are appealing a U.S. Forest Service decision on access to the site. Two environmental groups and a citizens organization on Tuesday filed an appeal of an April 3 decision by Peter Clark, Rio Grande National Forest supervisor, approving two access roads to the site across Forest Service land. Colorado Wild, the San Luis Valley Ecosystem Council and San Juan Citizens Alliance allege that the Forest Service made major errors in its analysis of the project and failed to live up to its responsibilities to the public. “The Forest Service continues to ignore major problems raised by the public as well as other state and federal agencies,” said Ryan Demmy Bidwell, Colorado Wild executive director. Bob Honts, who is developing the village along with Texas billionaire B.J. “Red” McCombs, said the appeal came as no surprise and that the developers filed an appeal of their own Friday maintaining that Clark’s requirement for a second access road could risk the feasibility of the project....
California Company Develops New Way To Fight Fires They are a common sight if you are flying to Europe or some other long-distance destination. But what if you took a 747 airliner and converted it into an aerial firefighting machine? One company did just that. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Well, it is a plane, but if the designers have their way it will be the world’s first air super tanker. The idea is the brainchild of Evergreen International, a company well versed in producing firefighting aircraft. The passenger seats were replaced with a number of interconnected tanks. The super tanker is capable of carrying more than 20,000 pounds of water or retardant, but it is designed not to drop it all at once. The makers do not want Noah’s Ark coming out from the belly of the beast. So the liquid inside is pressurized to come out like rain. “That is the whole idea behind it, to make it rain,” said Evergreen Vice President Sam White. Retardant is also released in the same manner, in very large amounts. The company claims it can release seven times the amount that current air tankers can drop....
Gov. Agencies Contending with Carp Government agencies are trying to fix what they call an "ecological disaster" in Utah Lake, but they have a huge job ahead of them. They have to contend with an estimated 100 million carp! A small fleet of fishing boats is trolling the waters of Utah Lake with a net 400 feet long. They're commanded by commercial fisherman Bill Loy. His family has been pulling carp out of the lake for generations. Bill Loy, Commercial Fisherman: "I mean, this is nothing but a big carp pond basically." The lake has about 7.5 million big ones, 100 million if you count the little ones. Fish experts hope to make a dent in the population. Reed Harris, June Sucker Recovery Program: "It's going to be a tough job, but we can do it." The goal is to restore a natural ecosystem, in particular, a native endangered species called the June Sucker. The federal government threw nature out of balance in the first place. In the 1800's carp were planted all across America as a food source....
River Revival Most people probably don't think about lush, green ecosystems dependent upon flowing water when conjuring images of the Sonoran Desert. Yet in the early 1900s, many regional rivers--now mostly quiet and desiccated, such as the Santa Cruz--always had flowing water, supporting dense forests of willow, cottonwood and mesquite. However, decades of floodplain development, the introduction of invasive species and, in particular, groundwater pumping powered by gasoline turbines destroyed these habitats. "That has not only sparked endangered-species issues and made Tucson an uglier place. It also struck at the heart of the agriculturally based river community that we had here with the Tohono O'odham Nation," said Julia Fonseca, environmental planning manager for the Pima County Flood Control District. "At San Xavier, there was a community of people who lived there and farmed for thousands of years. When they couldn't divert the Santa Cruz River anymore, they lost their way of life." Pima County's Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan is the blueprint for preserving what's left of riparian areas and reconstructing some of what has been lost. The plan uses a variety of measures, including government acquisition of sensitive lands and the introduction of effluent (treated sewage) to riverbeds in order to recharge aquifers....
Companies eye elk habitat Federal regulators are considering stipulations to protect crucial winter range and calving areas for a rare high plains elk herd in preparation for impending industrial coal-bed methane development. Initial development plans for the 100,000-acre Fortification Creek area located 25 miles northwest of Gillette call for 158 wells to tap the prolific Big George coal seam. "There will be more development in there," said Paul Beels, project manager for the Bureau of Land Management's Buffalo Field Office. In recognition of the area's special resource values, the coal-bed methane companies have offered to coordinate their plans and consolidate roads, pipelines and power lines into corridors, according to the BLM. Fortification Creek has several special resource values, according to the BLM, including the isolated elk herd and its habitat, high visual quality, steep slopes with erosive soils, and cultural, historic and paleontological features....
Senators kick off tours of oil shale sites Two senators praised the promise of oil shale on Wednesday as Shell Exploration & Production Co. led a federal delegation on a tour of experimental works meant to bake oil from the ground. Shell is providing the reality check that will determine if any oil company can profitably extract shale oil from layers of hard rock, said Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. "They are not here to throw their money away," Domenici said at a test site 60 miles from Meeker, the nearest town, in the middle of desolate Rio Blanco County. Shell is poised to snap up leases on federal lands in western Colorado rich in kerogen, a fossilized material in rock that yields oil when heated. Shell has been working in Meeker for 10 years, and has invested tens of millions of dollars, trying to perfect a method of baking shale oil from the ground using heating rods drilled into layers of rock -- an alternative to mining. Shell is still four years from proving the technology or deciding whether to build a commercial-scale operation, said Terry O'Connor, a company vice president for external and regulatory affairs....
Park nitrogen levels twice 'critical load' Nitrogen compounds from cars, farms and power plants along the Front Range are saturating the soil, plants and water of Rocky Mountain National Park at levels at least twice the "critical load" the ecosystem can tolerate, according to documents made public Wednesday. So potentially damaging is the nitrogen overload on Colorado's signature national park that its superintendent, for the first time, has proposed emission limits on the chemical - a limit that could require dramatic changes for regional agriculture and industry. In a letter to state health officials, Rocky Mountain National Park Superintendent Vaughn Baker called for a new standard that would slash allowable nitrogen deposition rates in half, or even more, to halt the acidification of streams, lakes and plant life in the park. Baker called on the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, along with the Environmental Protection Agency, to work with the National Park Service to confront the problem and reduce the impacts on the park. The proposed limit on nitrogen - 1.5 kilograms per hectare (100 acres)per year - is half, or less, of current fallout levels, which range from 3 to 4 kilograms per hectare. The limit would establish the nation's first critical load of a pollutant to protect a national park environment. A similar approach has been used to protect parks in Canada and in Europe. While Baker said the limit wouldn't represent a "regulatory standard" enforceable by the National Park Service, regulators say it is a goal that would carry weight in developing plans to reduce pollution. It also would give environmentalists a figure to build political and, possibly, legal arguments around....
Park Service Rejects Redskins Owner's Bid To Fix Retaining Wall The National Park Service, which according to a federal investigation improperly helped Redskins owner Daniel M. Snyder cut down more than 130 trees behind his Potomac estate, has denied his request to rebuild a crumbling retaining wall on his property. Like the cleared trees, the wall is within a federally protected scenic easement, which buffers the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historical Park and does not allow any structures to be built or rebuilt within 200 feet of the canal. Because the wall is within the easement, it may not be repaired, Park Superintendent Kevin D. Brandt wrote in denying Snyder's request last week. In an earlier letter to Brandt, an attorney for Snyder said the wall needs to be repaired immediately. "Further collapse of the wall and the slope above it threatens damage to the reforested area below the wall in the easement area and to the Canal itself, as well as to the foundation of the Snyders' home," David P. Donovan wrote....
Parks get new rules about donations Yosemite benefits from private contributions more than almost any other park. Most dramatically, with big contributions from the likes of Chevron, the Yosemite Fund raised more than $11 million for restoration of the park's Lower Yosemite Falls area. One of the few organizations of its kind larger than the Yosemite Fund is the San Francisco-based Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, which has contributed more than $80 million since 1981. The much more modest Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park Foundation has contributed about $500,000 to the two parks in the past two decades. Depending on how contributions are counted, between $75 million and $100 million in private funds and donations annually supplement the National Park Service's budget. Following intense scrutiny by Yosemite aficionados and members of the public, the Bush administration earlier this month issued new rules governing this private fundraising. Cue the nightmare visions of tacky ads dotting park landscapes and Ronald MacDonald embracing the Statue of Liberty. But after fielding some 1,000 public comments over the past year, park service officials retained most of the conservative rules protecting parks from overt commercial exploitation....
Governor Murkowski Defends National Park Inholders Right to Access Under ANILCA Provisions Governor Frank H. Murkowski on Tuesday submitted comments to the National Park Service, defending the rights of park inholders to access their properties across park lands as guaranteed by section 1110(b) of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980. Murkowski has a long history of fighting for inholder rights, both as governor and during his 22 years in the U.S. Senate. The Park Service is currently in the process of adopting a "User's Guide to Accessing Inholdings in a National Park Service Area in Alaska." The governor's 5-page letter to Marcia Blaszak, Alaska Regional Director of the National Park Service, covers numerous issues of concern to Alaskans who own parcels of land and/or homes within the boundaries of NPS-managed parks, preserves and other conservation system units. Murkowski asserted to Blaszak that the present draft, although improved over the first, "falls short of appropriately recognizing the inholder access guarantee provided in section 1110(b) of ANILCA. In addition, the process to define and document the access appears to lack sufficient long-term stability to assure individual landowners and other valid occupants they indeed have the access promised to them by ANILCA."....
Arctic "Noah's Ark" Vault to Protect World's Seeds A frozen "Noah's Ark" to safeguard the world's crop seeds from cataclysms will be built on a remote Arctic island off Norway, the Norwegian government said on Tuesday. Construction of the Global Seed Vault, in a mountainside on the island of Svalbard 1,000 km (600 miles) from the North Pole, would start in June with completion due in September 2007. "Norway will by this contribute to the global system for ensuring the diversity of food plants. A Noah's Ark on Svalbard if you will," Norwegian Agriculture and Food Minister Terje Riis-Johansen said in a statement. The doomsday vault would be built near Longyaerbyen, Svalbard's main village, with space for three million seed varieties. It would store seeds including rice, wheat, and barley as well as fruits and vegetables. It would be a remote Arctic back-up for scores of other seed banks around the world, which may be more vulnerable to risks ranging from nuclear war to mundane power failures....
Producer group questions Canadian cattle imports in light of OIE changes The World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) last week voted unanimously to revise the three definitions of risk categories for countries affected by bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). Those categories are negligible, controlled, and undetermined. Before the definition change, a country with a case of BSE had to wait seven years from the date of the last discovery of the disease to be eligible for the "negligible risk" classification given to countries with the least amount of risk. Now, the date of birth of the diseased animal, rather than the date of discovery, is the determining factor. Countries with adequate testing programs with no cases in cattle born in the past 11 years are eligible for negligible risk status, provided there is no evidence the disease has been recycling in the feed supplies in those countries. With the old guidelines in place, the U.S. would have had to wait until 2013 to be classified as negligible risk, following the March 2006 discovery of a BSE-infected cow in Alabama. But since that cow was born an estimated 10 years prior to the discovery of the disease, that waiting period is cut significantly."Scientists have determined that BSE is caused by feeding contaminated animal-based feed to cattle, and that cattle are most likely to become infected with BSE during the first year of their lives, so using the infected animal's birth date as a reference point allows countries to determine how recently contaminated feed may have been circulating within their feed system," Bill Bullard, CEO of Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America (R-CALF USA), in a statement. "OIE's decision also allows countries to determine how effective their feed bans have been in arresting the spread of BSE within their borders."....
No go on the buffalo: Deadwood decides against Main Street bison run There won't be any buffalo running down Deadwood's Main Street any time soon - at least that's what the Deadwood City Commission decided on Monday evening. Around 40 people showed up for the hearing Monday, when city commissioners allowed the public to voice their opinions on the buffalo run proposed for July of 2007. Commissioners listened to strong sentiments from both camps dividing the issue, before they voted 4-1 to deny the application. "In my heart I felt I couldn't put the people of Deadwood at risk," Mayor Francis Toscana told the Pioneer after the hearing. The views expressed during the hearing covered the whole spectrum of considerations. There were volunteers from Twin City Animal Center in Lead who were concerned about the welfare of the buffalo; business owners who welcomed the increased publicity and visitors; buffalo ranchers who wanted to preserve the integrity of the bison industry; citizens who saw a need for more tourism revenue; and others who worried about public safety, liability and negative publicity...
Ranch Rodeo returns to fairgrounds this weekend It's rodeo time. The Coors Ranch Rodeo, now in its 19th year, will take place this weekend at the Tri-State Fairgrounds. The rodeo, slated from 7 to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday at the Amarillo National Center, will include riders from 14 ranches in Texas and neighboring states. "The rodeo is just good, clean fun for the whole family," said Michelle Reed, Coors Cowboy Club communications director. Individuals who attend the rodeo can expect to see a variety of events, Reed said. Both nights, ranchers will participate in wild bronc riding, cattle doctoring, cattle sorting, cattle branding, a cow milking competition and other stock events. Rodeo awards will be presented at noon Sunday. Awards will be presented to the ranch with the highest score from both nights. An award is also given the All-Around Cowboy....