NEWS ROUNDUP

Industry braces for political fallout For years a number of residents of the Line Creek Wilderness subdivision west of Clark in Park County have fought deep-well natural gas development in the area, often expressing concern that gases and chemicals might seep into the local water supply. Then a major leak did happen. While drilling at 8,030 feet on the Crosby Ranch Friday afternoon, a crew working for Windsor Wyoming LLC shut off gas flow through the well bore. Gas and mud began oozing out of a nearby hillside, and the crew didn't have enough heavy mud to pump down the bore and stop the leak. The event led to a voluntary evacuation of 25 residences and a major "I told you so" from some locals who have been opposed to oil and gas activity in the area. "We've been asking for safety plans over and over again," said Deb Thomas, an evacuee who had formed the Clark Resource Council to fight the industry. "Do we have to wait until somebody gets killed? Is our water safe to drink? Who is now responsible?" On Monday, folks in Wyoming's oil and gas industry prepared for public opinion fallout from the event....
New BLM Rules will Provide Long-Term Benefits for Rangeland Health A federal district court judge decided August 11 to move forward with substantial portions of new grazing regulations released last month by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). In Western Watersheds Project v. Kraayenbrink, U.S. District Court Judge B. Lynn Winmill issued a preliminary injunction blocking only the part of the grazing rules that deal with public participation in the rulemaking. But Judge Winmill upheld all other aspects of the regulations - a victory for public lands ranchers. "BLM's new regulations strike a balance between resource conservation and sustainable public lands ranching," says Jeff Eisenberg, executive director of the Public Lands Council. "The Western Watersheds Project fails to recognize the progress that can be made on the land by promulgating these new rules. It's unfortunate that they want to waste time with a frivolous lawsuit, but we are pleased that Judge Winmill decided to allow substantial portions of the regulations to be implemented." The PLC, an organization of public lands ranchers throughout the West, has joined BLM in the lawsuit to help defend the final grazing regulations. The PLC represents the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, the American Sheep Industry and the Association of National Grasslands....
U.S. Army Wants Your Colorado Ranchland Western states are no longer the remote havens for industries and military exercises they used to be. The nuclear waste repository planned for Nevada’s Yucca Mountain is still tied up in protests and litigation. The proposed “Divine Strake” exercise set for June at the Nevada Test Site, which was to test the bunker-busting ability of 700 tons of the same explosive mixture that was used to blow up the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, was also torpedoed by both public and political opposition. With energy development proceeding great guns, even some political stalwarts who have normally been on the side of such development, have come out against drilling on all public lands, i.e., Wyoming Sen. Craig Thomas' opposition to drilling on the Wyoming Range and Montana Sen. Conrad Burns' agreement that no drilling be allowed on that state's Rocky Mountain Front. Two stories today reflect a change in attitude about some areas of the West being used as testing grounds for military firepower and as the nation’s source of domestic energy. In Colorado, the Denver Rocky Mountain News reports that the small towns and ranches in the southeastern corner of the state are definitely not putting out the welcome mat to the U.S. Army’s proposed expansion of its existing Piñon Canyon maneuver site. When the Army built the site in the 1980s, it used eminent domain to condemn the 250,000 acres just south of LaJunta that it needed for the military training grounds. But a lot has changed in the last couple of decades, and the resistance to the expansion plans has already begun to grow, despite the Army’s insistence that such resistance is premature. The Army still needs to secure funding for the expansion and Army officials have promised the public will be allowed to comment on the plan once the Pentagon approves it....
Forest thinning in Western states comes under fire The U.S. Forest Service spends about $1 billion a year fighting wildfires, mostly in the West. But when it comes to thinning forests to help them withstand fire, the Forest Service is all over the map. The Forest Service cleared flammable brush and small trees from more acres in Kentucky last year than it did in Nevada, where 17 times more land was burned by wildfires. It did more thinning in Mississippi than in California and about as much in Arkansas as in Oregon. "The only way you can describe the system, as it's been related to us, is it's bizarre," said U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. "Clearly some areas of great need have been shorted." Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth explained his agency distributes thinning dollars based on the individual forests' ability to get the work done, the amount of hazardous vegetation and how close the forestland is to developed areas....
Editorial - A ruinous land rush NEAR THE majestic canyons of Zion National Park in southern Utah is the fifth-fastest-growing county in the United States, a monument to suburban sprawl and strip development. To help Washington County grow even faster, one of Utah's senators, Republican Robert Bennett, is sponsoring a bill that would sell off a parcel of federal land almost as large as the city of Boston to developers. Some of the proceeds would go not for conservation but to such local projects as an off-road-vehicle trail and a water pipeline. The bill has set off alarm bells all over the West for the worrisome example it sets. Because Utah was originally a territory, the federal government owns about two-thirds of it, and the Bureau of Land Management periodically sells off properties. The money from the sale is supposed to be spent on conservation projects in the affected state. Instead, this bill encourages the wasteful use of land. It specifically earmarks money for an off-road-vehicle trail, which would destroy fragile desert habitat, and for a portion of the cost of a $500 million, 120-mile pipeline to draw water from Lake Powell in Arizona. Getting a straw into Lake Powell would spur further growth in Washington County, a center for resorts and retirement homes. A spokesman for Bennett points to a similar federal land sale in Nevada as a precedent for this kind of allocation of land-sale funds. Conservationists say the Utah proposal is worse than the Nevada one because the proceeds would directly benefit local government, giving local officials a strong incentive to push for the sale of lands that would be better left under the protection of the federal government....
Ranch beckons them home Along the back living room wall of the Springsteen home in Browns Valley, Dick Springsteen points to a strip of wood branded with the marks of neighboring ranches. Among the series of squiggles, numbers, letters and lines are the letters “SV,” the brand his grandfather used during his days as a cattle rancher. Springsteen's brand is also on the wall, marked as an “S” laying back. The strip was given to him in honor of his 60th birthday. The brands are more than just marks, however. They are a sign of a close-knit community and a way of life that they've come to know and love. “I don't really know where I'd go to,” said Springsteen, 70, when asked if he ever thought of leaving the hills where he grew up. Dick and his wife, Roberta, have lived in other places, but they were needed to work the ranch with other family members, so they moved back....

Not much out there, plus been having a problem with my browser all night. Will catch up tomorrow night.