NEWS ROUNDUP

Senate Is Close to Passing Bill for Gulf Drilling The Senate moved closer Monday to passing a bill that would open vast new areas of the Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas drilling, voting to cut off debate before a final vote, expected no later than Wednesday. The vote was 72 to 23, well over the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster and a clear sign that the bipartisan bill had enough support to move it into negotiations with the House. But that may be the only thing that is clear about the measure’s future. The House has passed a drilling bill that would open the nation’s entire coastline to drilling, a prospect that sponsors of the Senate bill regard as too ambitious. President Bush has expressed eagerness to sign a new drilling bill into law, and a failure by the House and the Senate to agree on a compromise would probably doom all prospects for major energy legislation this year. Yet for now, the chief sponsors of the bills do not sound as if a compromise is imminent. Senator Pete V. Domenici, chairman of the energy committee and the Senate bill’s lead sponsor, told reporters before Monday’s vote that he was confident that negotiations would produce a final bill that more closely resembled the Senate’s version than the House’s....
Talk of eminent domain stirs fears in Ogden This pocket of Ogden probably isn't the vision of the American dream. It's old. Two sets of bone-rattling railroad tracks cross the street. Some yards are unkempt, and several homes are deteriorating. For Christina Rodriguez, this is home. She has no plans to leave. But Rodriguez could be vetoed in months to come. The Utah League of Cities and Towns, along with a handful of the state's most influential communities, is studying a way to bring back the power of eminent domain - the tool that allows government to force sales of land - to spur private development. "It makes me sad to even hear that," Rodriguez said. "If we had wanted to be rich, we'd be up there negotiating, negotiating and renegotiating." League officials argue they don't plan to try to bring eminent domain back as it was. They suggest language that would add more protection for property owners. For instance: Two-thirds of the property owners within a project area would have to be willing sellers, cities would have to comply with a "necessity test" to ensure a project's need, and a supermajority of a city council must endorse the use of eminent domain....
DNRC working on post-fire range rehabilitation On Wednesday afternoon, Conrad Yerger thought the Pine Ridge fire of two weeks ago had flared again as black smoke issued from his timberland northwest of Hardin. Instead, the wind was blowing soot clouds from the charred remains of the 122,000-acre fire that straddled the Yellowstone County-Big Horn County line. The fire began July 11. Where the fire had swept through the timber, there was nothing to hold the ground down. In an adjacent wheat field, where the fire had singed the stubble down to the dirt, clouds of dust, several hundred yards in length, pushed across the landscape. Yerger's land needs rain and rehabilitation now....
Builders behind habitat proposal The bugs, frogs and oaks in the hills surrounding this residential boom town have some new friends: The builders behind the boom. Ryan Voorhees, the builder of the Gold Creek Estates subdivision, and golf course designer Dave Tanner are leading a loose coalition of developers and landowners in an effort to help Calaveras County set up what is known as a habitat conservation plan, or HCP. They are putting up money toward the estimated $500,000 cost of crafting such a plan and have hired a former legislative advocate for the Audubon Society to facilitate the work of creating the plan. Such a plan takes fees from developers for every acre covered with houses and uses that money to set up wildlife preserves somewhere else. State and federal wildlife officials and environmentalists praise HCPs already operating in Southern California, Sacramento County and San Joaquin County for ensuring that development will not entirely eliminate the places where birds and animals can live. Developers like HCPs because the plans allow them to know how much it will cost to make up for habitat loss. Also, an HCP means developers do not have to do detailed habitat plans for every separate project....
American Indians protest biker rally nearing sacred site Once a year, amid the hammering August heat, this Black Hills hamlet becomes a bikers' paradise by hosting the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally — a weeklong celebration of leather, bikes and beer that draws as many as 500,000 riders. That's in a town of 6,400 in a state of only 776,000 people. It's also a tradition for local critics to decry the increasing size and commercialism of the 66-year-old event, which once again will congest highways and hotels (and jails) when rally week starts Monday. This summer's clamor is louder and more emotional, however, mainly because of a clash that pits Native American heritage against chrome-and-steel capitalism. The battle is being waged over Bear Butte, a mountain 6 miles outside Sturgis that the Plains Indians have long considered sacred. Indians from across the USA are gathering today for a four-day summit, and protests — including efforts to deflect biker traffic from the site — are planned....
Powerful water interests sure to focus on Yampa River Standing in a high-mountain meadow on a June morning in the summer of his 94th year, John Fetcher likes what he sees. Sand Mountain — and its lingering snowfields — dominates the view from the upper Fetcher Ranch. Fetcher is irrigating his cattle pasture, and the world seems right. But the early summer breeze that rustles the willows along the creek whispers of changes to come. “Isn’t that beautiful?” Fetcher says with a note of boyish enthusiasm. “I get water up here to the pasture from the creek by gravity. In three weeks, or two weeks, this creek will be way down. We usually run out of water on July 4. Pretty soon, we’ll start haying.” Never one to not work, Fetcher still goes to his office at the Upper Yampa Water Conservancy District several days a week — when he isn’t working on the ranch. Lanky and with powerful hands, he expresses dismay at the dead timber he encounters near one of his irrigation ditches. He threatens to return the next day and clean it up with a chain saw. Fetcher’s adult life has been devoted to ensuring and enhancing the water supply for the people of the Yampa Valley. His work has done more to shape the future of the Yampa River Basin than that of any other person. He’s had a hand in damming rivers and building reservoirs for agriculture, municipal consumption and power generation....
Talks cool ballot hopes Backers of a ballot initiative on oil and gas surface rights are scrambling to get petition signatures after homebuilders abandoned their cause in favor of joining Gov. Bill Owens in talks with the gas industry. The lead proponent of the initiative, John Gorman, said there is a "low probability" that his volunteers will be able to get the required 68,000 signatures by Aug. 7, the deadline to get the measure on November's ballot. "I have to give credit where credit's due. The oil and gas industry did a superb job of maneuvering," Gorman said. The talks convened by Owens effectively splintered an unusual coalition of Realtors, developers and environmentalists, who joined last year to support state legislation to give landowners more power when gas companies want to drill wells on their property. The bill - by Rep. Kathleen Curry, D-Gunnison, and Sen. Jim Isgar, D-Hesperus - set off one of the biggest fights of the 2006 Legislative session. Isgar ultimately killed the bill when environmentalists and the real-estate industry pulled their support. That shifted the action to the ballot initiative sponsored by Gorman's group, Colorado Land Owners for Fairness. After Isgar's bill died, Owens summoned developers and the Colorado Oil and Gas Association and urged them to work out their differences, said Dan Hopkins, Owens' spokesman....
In Fort Worth Neighborhoods, Residents Know the Drill Gary Hogan bought his Spanish-tile-roofed stucco house on the western edge of the city in 1992 because it offered the perfect combination of city and country living -- only 10 miles from downtown, yet surrounded by pasture land roamed by gentle cows. But now the pasture is gone. So are the cows. Today Hogan's backyard gate opens onto a huge natural gas well site that, not long ago, kept him up nights as roughnecks drilled 50-foot-long pipes more than a mile underground, aided by industrial spotlights that lighted up the neighborhood. A second well is being drilled 1,500 feet away; 10 more wells are planned in and around his neighborhood. "I used to open this gate and sit on my patio and look out, and I felt like J.R. Ewing. I had cattle out there and I didn't even have to take care of the critters," Hogan said. "I was used to very quiet countryside. Then it was bing! Bam! Boom!" Welcome to the newest, largest, most productive and most urban natural gas drilling site in the nation. As a huge billboard ad for drilling services just south of downtown Fort Worth says: "If you want a gas well . . . get one!"....
Resources stretched, feds call up reinforcements Federal land management agencies are being asked to make more employees available to fight wildfires because existing crews and equipment have been stretched to the limit by nearly 60 major blazes burning around the West. For the first time since 2003, the National Interagency Fire Center raised its response status to the highest threat level over the weekend, a move triggered when nearly all available crews and firefighting resources were committed. ''Preparedness Level 5'' allows federal firefighting coordinators to summon additional federal employees, military reinforcements and foreign fire crews if necessary. ''It's a proactive move that kicks in the thinking about where the next round of resources is going to come from,'' said Randy Eardley, U.S. Bureau of Land Management spokesman at the federal firefighting center headquartered here. ''It frees up what we call the militia, agency employees whose regular job may be as a biologist or realty specialist but who are trained in fire duty and can now be called up to help.'' While military firefighting mobilization coordinators and a liaison for the Canadian government's firefighters can now participate in national fire response planning, Eardley said there are no current plans to summon those reinforcements. More than 24,000 firefighters were working on fires across the West on Monday, including 58 large fires of 500 acres or more. The biggest active fire in the country was the Winters fire in northern Nevada, which had burned nearly 300 square miles of grass and sagebrush....
New rumbling over salvage logging Oregon State University scientists who tried to delay publication of a study that found logging after wildfires both delayed forest recovery and increased the risk of future fires said Monday they were following their code of ethics and trying to clarify the findings. In peer-reviewed papers to be published in the Aug. 4 edition of Science, researchers from OSU and the U.S. Forest Service criticized the original study on areas burned in the 2002 Biscuit fire as lacking context and supporting information. "I hope the record is clearer now on why we did what we did," Mike Newton, OSU professor emeritus of forest ecology, said from Corvallis. "We were following our professional code of ethics and attempting to instill rigor" in the findings of the original study. The brief description of the study as it was originally published, "left the reader, whether it be the public or the policy makers or the land managers, vulnerable to misinterpreting the results that the scientist found," Steve Tesch, head of OSU's Forest Engineering Department, said from a conference in Idaho. The authors of the original study published in January, OSU graduate student Daniel Donato, Forest Service researcher Boone Kauffman and others, defended their work with an expanded explanation....
Port plan to cut trees in flight path gets OK Multnomah County officials have given permission to cut hundreds of cottonwood trees jutting into the flight path of airplanes using Troutdale airport, but no chain saws can rev up until a 14-day appeal period runs out. The trees make it impossible for large firefighting air tankers to use the airport, causing the U.S. Forest Service to close its air tanker base at the airport until the trees are cut. But county officials say if a major wildfire creates an emergency, the trees could be cut so tankers could use the airport and a permit issued later. The problem surfaced in 2002 when the Federal Aviation Administration notified the Port of Portland, which runs the airport, that a few trees along the Sandy River were too high. But Port officials later realized many more trees were on the verge of infringing on planes, too. Many of the trees are growing on state land, and the Port has an easement allowing the trees to be cut to keep the airport approach clear. But the trees also stand inside the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area, where special rules apply to protect the scenic and natural conditions....
Forest Service seeks a more rustic design at Sam's Knob The Aspen Skiing Co. must redesign its new restaurant at Sam's Knob at Snowmass after the U.S. Forest Service found the initial architecture "too contemporary and modern." "It's not that we denied the design. We just asked them to bring it up to our standards," said Sally Spaulding, public affairs specialist for the White River National Forest. The Skico can alter its design or submit a new one, she said. "The net effect was to send us back to the drawing board," said David Corbin, Skico vice president of planning and development. The Skico hoped to start construction this summer on a new 250-seat, 13,000-square-foot restaurant on public land leased from the Forest Service. The old restaurant - which many people, both inside and outside of the company, believed was outdated and dysfunctional - was demolished prior to last ski season. The Skico was going to pour the foundation of the new structure this summer, then complete the restaurant prior to the 2007-08 ski season. But White River National Forest Supervisor Maribeth Gustafson sent the company a letter June 22 asking it to alter the design to comply with the agency's criteria....
Investigators find weaknesses in munitions storage on Forest Service land Terrorists could arm themselves with howitzers, recoilless rifles and explosives stashed on Forest Service land, federal investigators fear. The weapons and munitions are stored in 335 sites nationwide, including a number in California and other Western states. Ski resorts and federal land managers use the equipment to blast boulders and control avalanches. But three years after they first pinpointed potential weaknesses in the Forest Service's munitions security, investigators found that important reforms remained unfinished. "We attributed this inaction to lack of accountability at the national level for security over the agency's munitions (and) explosives program," investigators with the Agriculture Department's Office of Inspector General noted in a new report....
GAO urges more post-fire restoration A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released Monday shows that federal agencies need to put more emphasis on restoring and rehabilitating forests after wildfire. According to the report, which was requested by the Resources Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health, “wildland fires can sometimes leave behind a burned landscape that threatens human safety, property and ecosystems. In areas of steep terrain, post-fire rainstorms can cause mudslides that bury homes, destroy roads and clog streams.” The GAO recommends that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the United States Forest Service do a much better job at tracking and reporting the extent to which they are restoring forests. The report identified the Forest Service, in particular, as having “no national guidance on how to identify, prioritize and fund post-fire rehabilitation and restoration work,” and recommended that the agencies do more research in restoration techniques....
Controversial Fence Through Independence Mall Could Go Up Next Spring The National Park Service's plan to build an 8-foot fence across the middle of the city's most historic square is drawing renewed complaints from local lawmakers. Funds for the $2 million Independence Square security plan have been included in the Bush administration's budget for next year. If approved by Congress, construction could start as early as next spring. "I don't like the fence," said U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, a Republican. "I'm troubled by the proposal, and I'm more than troubled by the apparent intransigence of bureaucrats and their unwillingness to listen to the community." The plan has emerged as the most visible element in the National Park Service's response to post-Sept. 11 security directives from the Bush administration. Criticism was leveled since the Park Service in 2004 unveiled its plan to erect a wrought-iron fence through the middle of Independence Square, the tree-shaded park behind Independence Hall and the site where the Declaration of Independence was first read to the public on July 8, 1776....
Radicals in the Woodwork His daddy was doing time for armed robbery, and Jacob Ferguson grew up on the streets of New York, sleeping on sidewalks, squatting in abandoned buildings, stealing cars, selling heroin and ripping off suburban kids who came into the big city to score dope. At 19, Ferguson hit the road, hopping trains to New Orleans, Minneapolis, the West Coast. In 1996 he jumped off a train in Eugene, Ore., and bummed a meal at a place called Food Not Bombs, where he fell in with a crowd of self-styled anarchists and radical environmentalists. Soon he was leading an eco-arson group that torched forest ranger stations, car dealerships and corporate offices around the Pacific Northwest. Ferguson is the main character in Vanessa Grigoriadis's excellent article "The Rise and Fall of the Eco-Radical Underground" in the Aug. 10 issue of Rolling Stone. It's a fascinating update of the old American story of idealists who turn violent, set in a subculture of anarchist coffeehouses, heavy-metal bands, radical vegans, neo-pagans and women who are herbalists by day and arsonists by night. Ferguson joined a group of environmentalists who were camped in an old-growth forest in Warner Creek, Ore., in a successful attempt to prevent logging of ancient trees. There, Ferguson found an outlet for his antisocial inclinations....
The Rural Vote - More Important Than Ever in '06 During the 2004 presidential election, slightly more than 50 percent of registered voters went to the polls to choose our nation’s leader for the next four years. That contrasts with years without a presidential election on the ballot, when poll turnout typically drops to about one-third of eligible voters. The same scenario is likely to play out in November, which presents an incredible opportunity for rural voters – farmers and non-farmers alike – to make their voices heard. This year Americans will elect 36 state governors, 33 seats in the U.S. Senate, the entire House of Representatives. This year, there is considerable speculation regarding the partisan balance of Congress. In addition, hundreds of officials at the state, county, parish and township levels will be selected. Although residents of rural America make up 20 to 23 percent of our nation’s population, research shows they tend to turn out at the polls in far greater numbers then their urban and suburban counterparts. If the overall voter apathy trend continues among urban and suburban residents, while rural residents come out to the polls in droves, each vote cast becomes even more significant....
Agency moves on disease plans The Wyoming Game and Fish Department's approach to eliminating brucellosis in western Wyoming elk is drawing mixed reviews. Some say the approach is inadequate and exclusionary. Others see it as a step forward. The plan offers a series of options to help eradicate the disease, which is a major headache for Wyoming cattle producers. The Game and Fish Department is holding public meetings focusing on the nine options for each of the seven elk herds that use state-run feedgrounds during the winter. Options are tweaked for each herd unit based on input from livestock producers in the area. Some are concerned Game and Fish is working in cooperation with ranchers and federal officials only, not others who may be considered "stakeholders" in the fight to end brucellosis....
Horse-Eating Foreigners Finding Friends In United States Congress For a while, this newspaper was one of the lonely few covering the fervid national debate over horses and whether they are just livestock and food for foreigners, or something more respected and treasured in American culture. Now, reporters and columnists all over the country are weighing in on the issue, and Congress took up the matter last week. As usual, Congress screwed it up beyond belief. Here’s an update. Three Belgian-owned horse-killing plants -- two in Texas and one in Illinois -- slaughter about 95,000 American horses a year, mostly for export to Japan and several European countries, where the flesh is considered a delicacy and goes at retail for about $15 to $23 a pound. When you get that kind of a profit spread described above, you know someone is going to fight to keep the system going -- and the three foreign-owned slaughterhouses have and are. Collectively, they sold about $60 million worth of horsemeat for foreign consumption last year. The House and Senate are scheduled to vote soon on a bill that would make such slaughter permanently illegal -- a vote which probably will occur during the first week of September when members of Congress return from their August recess vacations....
Canadian Co Sees New BSE Test Available Within 2 Years An Edmonton-based company is hoping to have a new, inexpensive test for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, on the market within the next two years. Ron Arnold, of BSE Prion Solutions, says the urine test will be able to detect BSE as well as other prion diseases such as chronic wasting disease (CWD) in deer and elk, scrapie in sheep, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) and Alzheimer's disease in humans. He explained that the test will detect prions as well as the precursor prions, which, when found, indicates a susceptibility to BSE. "If everything goes well, it could be less than two years until the test is available," Arnold said. "It depends on how fast the data is accumulated." "If we can show through routine testing that every animal in Canada can be tested - and there's no reason it can't be - it will enhance risk management, food safety, consumer confidence and the marketability of the product," he said....
How the west was fun It is said that necessity is the mother of invention. With respect to the rodeo, the old axiom certainly holds true. While rodeos are a summer tradition in the West which draw spectators to events as small as the Brule Ruff-Out Rodeo and as large as the internationally recognized Calgary Stampede -- the idea of jumping on the back of a bucking bronco originated out of practical necessity. Back in the days when the west was young, roping steers, branding cattle and breaking in a bucking horse were all part of the daily routine of those early cowboys who made the West their home. However, as with many occupations, the ability to do something well is soon challenged by someone who feels they can do it just a little bit better. Soon the practical need of breaking in new horses and managing herds of cattle became a matter of bragging rights around the camp fire as to who could stay on a new horse the longest or rope and tie a cow the fastest. The path from bragging rights to wagering was perhaps a brief one, but somewhere along the line cowboys began putting their money where their talents were and into an upturned Stetson for the winner to take home. Today that prize money has evolved from wagers stuffed into a cowboy’s hat to some pretty large purses offered at rodeos throughout North America, including the Mary Reimer Memorial Rodeo, which runs from Aug. 4-6. The largest rodeo in Canada -- billed as the Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth -- is the Calgary Stampede, which was started in 1912 by an American trick roper by the name of Guy Weadick. But while rodeos are now a long-standing North American tradition, the word itself actually owes its origin to the Spanish, who brought horses to Mexico in the 16th century....
Trew: Texas, Oklahoma line ever-shifting until 1930 A study of a Texas Panhandle survey map of private property reminds the examiner of a jigsaw puzzle. Originally, all survey lines were square sections laid out by the State Land Office in 1876. What happened since to these originally neat, square metes and bounds is recorded in the "Shattuck, Oklahoma, History Book." The town is on Wolf Creek very near the Texas-Oklahoma state line and experienced many boundary problems. History states the entire area was home to the Indians until the 1500s when the Spanish Conquistadors began passing through in the years 1541, 1601 and 1634. England, Spain and France all claimed the area at various times until the Louisiana Purchase in 1819, making the United States the new and final owner. During all changes in previous ownership, the boundaries had been loosely defined, but in 1819 the first defined wording was introduced. A part of the eastern boundary of the purchase was described as "starting at a point on the Red River where the 100th meridian crosses the stream, thence north to the Arkansas River."....