NEWS ROUNDUP

Democrats to elevate global warming, other environmental issues The Democrats who will steer environment issues in the new Congress are polar opposites of their Republican predecessors, but changing environmental policy is like turning around an aircraft carrier _ it's very slow. Sen. Barbara Boxer, a liberal California Democrat and one of the biggest environmental advocates on Capitol Hill, was named Tuesday to chair the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. She replaces Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe, who says global warming is a hoax and wanted to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency established by President Richard Nixon. On the House side, the approach to endangered species and opening public lands to private development will do an about-face with Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., expected to take over the House Resources Committee. He would replace GOP Rep. Richard Pombo, a California rancher, defeated for re-election last week after environmentalists spent nearly $2 million against him. "Our long national nightmare is close to being over," said Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, paraphrasing Gerald Ford on assuming the presidency after Nixon's resignation over Watergate. Democrats will focus on cutting pollution blamed for global warming, accelerating toxic waste cleanups, reversing Bush administration tax and regulatory breaks for energy producers and switching the government's course back to strict protections for endangered species....
BLM gets earful during session on oil, gas drilling permits The Bureau of Land Management billed meetings on a program for handling energy permits as listening sessions and it got an earful Tuesday from people who say the goal is speed above all else -- the environment, landowners' rights, wildlife. BLM officials scheduled two sessions at an east-Denver hotel to discuss and take comments on its year-old oil and gas pilot project, which beefed up staffs in seven regional offices in the Rockies to handle the explosion in applications to drill on federal land. Congress mandated the program in the 2005 energy bill, adding staffers and employees from other federal agencies in BLM offices in Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah in a kind of one-stop-shopping approach. "From a landowner's standpoint, there's no way for me to protect my land," said Steve Adami, a rancher near Buffalo, Wyo. Adami said energy companies were able to post a $2,000 bond when they failed to strike a deal with him and moved in rigs to drill 11 wells. He owns the land but not the minerals underneath, resulting in a so-called "split estate." Mineral owners can develop them or lease them to someone else. State and federal agencies encourage negotiations with landowners, but companies can post bonds and drill if an agreement isn't reached. Tweeti Blancett said the ranch she and her husband, Linn, have near Aztec in northwest New Mexico "is gone" because of impacts from oil and gas operations. Their ranch encompasses federal, state and private land. "There's plenty of money to do it right, but it's not being done right," Blancett said, whose husband's family has ranched in the same area for six generations. Speakers contended the pilot program's emphasis is on speeding approval of permits while well inspections, monitoring of water and other resources and enforcement go wanting....
Gas Prospectors Exploit Public Lands The first wave of the San Juan basin oil and gas boom came in the 1950s, and Linn Blancett's parents welcomed it. The oil and gas boys put money in the ranchers' pockets, and they opened roads into the backcountry that increased access to water and eased the hard work of tending and gathering cattle. The exploration drillers of that era sought petroleum and "sweet" gas, which is high-quality natural gas found in large reservoirs. The wells were widely scattered. The crews and pipelines were few. People like the Blancetts adapted and got along. Coal bed methane (CBM), which became a regional obsession in the late 1990s, changed everything. Every coal formation harbors a quantity of methane, the primary component of natural gas, but because the coal is dense and the seams and cavities in which the gas collects are small, each well taps a relatively small volume of the formation. It takes a lot of wells to pull the gas from a coal bed efficiently. In the canyons north and west of Aztec the wells go in on a grid so tight you can't stand at one and not see another -- even in broken country. It is the kind of density that in New York City would put about fifteen wells in Central Park, none much more than a quarter mile from its neighbors. And each well has to have a road and a pipeline, plus a compressor, probably a sump for the foul liquids that the drilling generates, plus maybe a pump jack, a dehydrator to separate gas from water, and a tank for still more foul liquids that come from the dehydrator once the well is producing. Before long, the sagebrush flats and junipered mesas of the San Juan basin groaned day and night with the rumbleroar of innumerable engines. The same region that bred the stoicism of the old-time Navajos and Utes had become a vast factory spread over hundreds of square miles, an industrialized wildland, no longer wild, producing hundreds of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars of pipeline gas. Amid the seeming prosperity, however, the hemophilic soil eroded from bulldozed drill pads and road cuts, antifreeze dripped and lubricating oil pooled, and the chemicals and effluents of the drilling trade stained the earth....
Grizzly soon to be delisted A year ago today, government officials gathered on a stage in Washington, D.C., to say it's finally time to remove endangered species protections from grizzly bears in Yellowstone National Park and the surrounding areas. Since then, more than 213,000 people - from scientists and schoolchildren to environmentalists and livestock groups - have registered their opinion of the idea. Sometime in the first half of 2007, the decision is expected to become final. But that won't be the end of the story for managing the estimated 600 grizzlies in and around Yellowstone. Instead, it will simply open the next chapter in the bears' long road to recovery, one that likely will include lawsuits, discussions of state-run grizzly hunts, intensified monitoring and state agencies deciding how the bruins should be managed....
Forest Service amends lynx plans The U.S. Forest Service on Tuesday amended its environmental impact statement for the southern Rockies Canada lynx to include White River National Forest. The amendment modifies eight forest plans with an eye to conserve the threatened lynx on national forests in Colorado and southern Wyoming, according to Bob Vaught, the Forest Service's renewable resources director. The conservation measures would maintain connected stands of dense, young trees that support snowshoe hares (the lynx's main prey) and limit expansion of over-the-snow trails that compact snow and give competing predators access to lynx habitat in the winter. The Forest Service will take comments for 90 days, until Feb. 17. A final environmental impact statement and decision are expected in the fall of 2007....
Agency to revisit land pact Explosive rural real estate development is forcing land and wildlife managers to reconsider Swan Valley conservation deals that were struck with industry more than a decade ago. Last week, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced it would revisit a major land-use agreement signed in 1995 with Plum Creek Timber Co. That company is selling substantial portions of its industrial timberland base for real estate development, a change big enough to trigger renewed talks. The initial 1995 deal included Plum Creek, the state Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, the U.S. Forest Service and FWS, the federal agency charged with oversight of threatened and endangered species. The intent was to “integrate timber management, recreational management and bear management practices in a manner that is both ecologically and economically sound in a mixed ownership environment.” But much has changed since the ink dried on that landmark Swan Valley Conservation Agreement.....
Four Caught In Canyon Avalanche, One Buried An early season avalanche on Tuesday swept away four experienced backcountry skiers, temporarily burying one. The skier, 27-year-old Salt Lake City resident Steve Lloyd, was among four in the upper Silver Fork basin, one mile west of Solitude Ski Resort. They were skiing more than a foot of fresh snow at an elevation of about 10,000 feet when an avalanche broke loose off a jagged ridge that separates Big and Little Cottonwood canyons. Authorities say Steve Lloyd was fully buried when his friends got to him. When they dug him out, he was blue and unconscious. However, rescue crews were able to revive him, and load him into an Airmed helicopter. Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office spokesman Lt. Paul Jaroscak said the skiers were experienced and had the necessary equipment to call for help.But much has changed since the ink dried on that landmark Swan Valley Conservation Agreement....
New bank angles for green niche The tide of green initiatives is set to wash over the Bay Area banking scene. New Resource Bank, which was founded by an East Bay entrepreneur, is formally launching a business that plans to finance companies and organizations that emphasize green or sustainable operations. "We want to finance sustainable resources in the community," Peter Liu, a Piedmont resident who is founder and vice chairman of the bank, said Monday. San Francisco-based New Resource Bank sees as inviting a number of industries in the green or sustainable arena, Liu said. "Organics, green energy, green buildings, are sectors that have been growing much more rapidly than the rest of the economy," Liu said. For example, the organics industry generates $15 billion in revenue and is growing at 20 percent a year, according to figures cited by the Organic Consumers Organization. Liu said the clean energy industry has been growing by 20 to 30 percent a year....
Slightly Higher Thanksgiving Dinner Cost This Year Despite a slight increase in price, a traditional Thanksgiving dinner with turkey, stuffing, cranberries, pumpkin pie and all the trimmings remains affordable, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. AFBF’s 21st annual informal survey of the prices of basic items found on the Thanksgiving Day dinner table pegs the average cost of this year’s feast for 10 at $38.10, a $1.32 price increase from last year’s average of $36.78. The AFBF survey shopping list includes turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, rolls with butter, peas, cranberries, a relish tray of carrots and celery, pumpkin pie with whipped cream and beverages of coffee and milk, all in quantities sufficient to serve a family of 10. The cost of a 16-pound turkey, at $15.70 or roughly 98 cents per pound, reflects an increase of 4 cents per pound, or a total of 59 cents per turkey compared to 2005. This is the largest contributor to the overall increase in the cost of the 2006 Thanksgiving dinner....
Earps, Clantons share county ties During my visits to Tombstone - most recently a couple of weeks ago during the 125th anniversary of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral - I've become increasingly aware of how much in common that famous Arizona silver mining town had with San Bernardino County. Tombstone, notorious for its rowdy, mining- camp reputation during its heyday, had such honky-tonk establishments as the Bird Cage Theater, the Crystal Palace, and the Oriental Saloon. The town of San Bernardino, a supply center for the gold mining ventures at Holcomb Valley during the 1860s, was noted during the same time period for its Whiskey Point at Third and D Streets - so named for hosting saloons at each corner. While Tombstone, with its thriving Chinatown, was infamously remembered for its prostitution district, San Bernardino's red-light district on D Street just below the city limits was pretty darn notorious, too. San Bernardino also had a flourishing Chinatown along Third Street between Arrowhead Avenue and Sierra Way. Tombstone was best known for its tough reputation with outlaws such as the Clantons, the McLaurys, Johnny Ringo and Curly Bill Brocius. To protect the town's citizens, there were such well-known names as Bat Masterson, Doc Holliday, Luke Short and, of course, the Earp boys. San Bernardino also had its outlaw element - Hell Roaring Johnson, the Mason-Henry Gang, the Button Gang, and the El Monte Boys. Its townsfolk were protected by men like Ben Mathews, Rube Herring, John Ralphs - and, for a short time, the Earp boys....