NEWS ROUNDUP

Aspenite's film shows what's at stake with energy boom Aspen native Mark Harvey has spent a lifetime traveling the West, and lately it's been disturbing for him. Harvey witnessed how the energy boom ravaged public lands in Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, Utah and Montana. He thinks more people would be upset with the Bush administration if they could see what he has seen. So he made a film to document how future generations will pay the price of coaxing natural gas out of the ground long after the wells play out. Some of the West's most sensitive lands are scarred forever; others are threatened. He hopes exposing the impacts will spur Americans, and particularly Westerners, to play a greater role in determining whether areas get drilled or preserved. "We're at the beginning of an energy boom that could last for years," Harvey said. Harvey is the director and co-producer, with Laurel Garrett, of "A Land Out of Time."....
'Collateral damage' -- residents fear murky effects of energy boom Other residents near the epicenter of the Rockies' energy boom are starting to worry about their health, too, and who, exactly, is looking out for them. The federal government leaves much of the regulation up to state officials -- and in Colorado, some residents fear there isn't nearly enough oversight to keep them safe. "We're collateral damage out here," said Bill Solinger, whose family has had respiratory problems, headaches and fatigue since gas drilling exploded in the Rifle area. Most of the regulation of Colorado's oil and gas industry falls to the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, a state agency charged with promoting energy development. The commission has agreements with the state health department to enforce clean-water and hazardous-waste laws, though it has no health experts on staff. The Oil and Gas Accountability Project in Durango and other groups recently asked the commission and the health department to require detailed disclosure of all chemicals used in oil and gas production, and to require that the effects of the chemicals be monitored. The health department said it doesn't have "the resources, capabilities or authority" to demand the information. The commission, meanwhile, said it believes it has the authority but "is not aware of a need for those requirements." Yet complaints -- from foul odors to bloody noses to fatigue and pain -- are increasing in areas around gas wells in Colorado, New Mexico, Alabama and Alberta, Canada, said Lisa Sumi, research director for the accountability project....
Bush Poised to Allow Oil Drilling in America's Fish Basket Sometime this week, President George W. Bush is expected to lift a presidential moratorium protecting Alaska’s Bristol Bay from oil and gas drilling that was imposed by his father. The presidential moratorium, banning exploration and production in the Outer Continental Shelf of the North Aleutian Basin was imposed in 1989 by President George H.W. Bush in the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound two years earlier. The area includes the commercial fishing grounds of Bristol Bay, described by Professor Rick Steiner of the University of Alaska's marine advisory program as "the breadbasket of entire Bering Sea." House Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, says lifing the moratorium would be a mistake....
Congress takes up offshore drilling bill Tuesday as it pushes toward adjournment Congress is making a final push to open a large area of the eastern Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas drilling, aware the Democratic majority next year is less likely to embrace new offshore energy development. The House was to vote Tuesday on a Senate plan to open 8.3 million acres of the Gulf that is now off limits to drilling and also steer hundreds of millions of dollars of federal royalty payments to four Gulf coast states — a windfall for Louisiana, which would get about half the money. The drilling bill is one of a string of measures House GOP leaders have readied for this week's "lame-duck" session under an expedited procedure that bars amendments, but also requires a two-thirds vote for approval. Environmentalists have lined up against the bill and some Republicans are cool toward the measure, favoring a more expansive offshore energy development plan that passed the House in June that would have lifted drilling bans along both the East and West coasts. Senate leaders said the House bill had no chance in the Senate....
BLM broke environmental law, appeals court rules A federal appeals court ruled Monday that the U.S. Bureau of Land Management violated environmental law when it sold old-growth timber in southwestern Oregon without considering the cumulative harm that so much logging was having on northern spotted owls and salmon. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco reversed the ruling of U.S. District Judge Michael Hogan in Eugene, despite the fact that the trees in the Mr. Wilson timber sale had already been felled. The panel sent the case back to Hogan with orders to have BLM revise the environmental assessment to take a "hard look" at past and future logging in nearby areas. In the majority opinion, Judge Alfred T. Goodwin wrote that BLM had violated the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to consider seven other past and future timber sales in the West Fork of Cow Creek watershed and what that would do to habitat for the threatened northern spotted owl and salmon. The ruling noted that BLM's environmental analysis was based on broader looks at the impacts of logging that did not specifically address the harm caused by past, present and future logging. It added that the BLM decided to log despite the fact that the environmental analysis found that four timber sales in the area would remove up 1,000 acres of old-growth habitat, and that future logging would remove some of the last old-growth in some sections....
Scenic AZ areas part of surge in land filings nterest in starting mines in Arizona has skyrocketed because of rising metal and mineral prices, leading to a sharp increase in the number of land claims filed in the state in the last 3 1/2 years, according to an environmental group's study. The claims have been most concentrated in Northern and Central Arizona, particularly in the Grand Canyon, Wickenburg and Superior areas. But companies and individuals have filed claims seeking mining rights across some of Southern Arizona's most mineral-laden and scenic areas: near Patagonia, west of Tombstone, the Santa Rita Mountains, north of Oracle Junction, near Safford, in the Altar Valley southwest of Tucson and near the Baboquivari Mountains. The possibility of more mines in the state raises the prospect of more jobs, more environmental conflict and more efforts to change the long-debated federal 1872 Mining Law. In a new study, the Environmental Working Group, an environmental research and advocacy group, says it found that companies and individuals filed claims in Arizona on 208,000 acres of Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management land from January 2003 through September 2006. That's more than the combined areas of Saguaro and Petrified Forest national parks....
High court to decide BLM case The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide some issues from a case in which a Wyoming rancher charges that employees with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management stripped him of his federal land grazing permits because he refused to give the agency easements over his land. The Supreme Court on Friday announced it will consider the case, which centers on whether BLM officials can be sued personally under federal racketeering law for their official actions. Thermopolis rancher Harvey Frank Robbins maintains that BLM workers pulled his grazing permits and otherwise persecuted him to try to get him to give the government road access. Cheyenne lawyer Karen Budd-Falen, who represents Robbins, said she has never argued a case before the U.S. Supreme Court. "I am very excited, and very nervous - especially a case that I believe is going to define private property rights vis-a-vis the federal government," Budd-Falen said. Budd-Falen said the Supreme Court will also consider whether citizens enjoy a constitutional right to be free from retaliation by government employees if they exclude the government from their property. Budd-Falen said the government argues that the federal employees shouldn't be sued even if they violated or conspired to violate Robbins' property rights because the government, and not the employees themselves, stood to gain by the action....
Return of panthers spurs contention Schoolteacher Theresa Ryan sensed an eerie presence behind her as she sat at a picnic table at her boyfriend's rural home. Then she heard the breathing. "I turned around and there was a panther 15 feet away. We were face-to-face," she said. "It had no place to go except at me or by me." She flailed her arms and screamed to scare the cat. "It just sauntered away -- no hurry. It was never afraid," she said. "It was very freaky." For decades, such encounters with Florida panthers were extraordinarily rare, like the endangered animals themselves. But in recent years, panthers have rebounded from the brink of extinction to about 100 on the southwestern edge of the Everglades, prompting officials to warn residents to be aware of the cats and to keep their children close at dusk and dawn. The big cats have since killed emus from a zoo, and goats and dogs from rural backyards. Documented panther attacks on livestock jumped from two in 2004 to six so far this year, and 10 panthers have been killed on highways this year alone....
Tree sitters protest plans to cut oaks at UC Berkeley Three protesters hoping to save a grove of oaks in front of UC Berkeley's Memorial Stadium held out hope Monday that the university today will drop its plans to remove the trees to build a $25 million sports training complex. American Indian leader Zachary Running Wolf, 43, and environmentalist Jess Walsh, 20, have been in the trees since early Saturday. UC Berkeley philosophy student Aaron Diek, 21, joined them Saturday afternoon. "I plan to stay up here until the university decides to build somewhere else and save this grove for the community or until I'm forcibly removed," said Running Wolf, who last month ran an unsuccessful campaign for Berkeley mayor. After three days, the trio, who had gone without much sleep because police were shining lights into the tree several times each night, said their spirits were high....
Environmental fears about chemicals grow Growing evidence that chemicals in the environment can interfere with animals' hormone systems — including the discovery that male Potomac River fish are growing eggs — has environmentalists and scientists focused on a new question: Are humans also at risk? A decade ago, the very idea that pollutants could interfere with a body's chemical messages was near the fringes of science. But now, it is an urgent topic around the world. In recent years, researchers have linked some common chemicals to troubling changes in laboratory rodents and wild animals, including reproductive defects, immune-system alterations and obesity. For now, no connections to human ailments have been proved....
National animal ID system argument flares up Incoming House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson, D-MN, supports mandatory National Animal Identification System (NAIS), but one state group is calling for an end to efforts underway to implement the national system altogether. Leaders of the Virginia Independent Consumers and Farmers Association (VICFA) say the NAIS is an "illusion of safety" and "destruction of freedom" that will expose private information to a federal agency and carry costs that will be too high for livestock producers to offset with questionable global market access. The Sauk Centre Herald in Peterson's home state of Minnesota recently reported the congressman said he finds the U.S. Department of Agriculture's current voluntary NAIS plan "screwed up" and he "strongly believes the government needs to set the rules and require standardization."....
Animal ID program not appeasing critics Sharon Zecchinelli raises a couple of pigs, lambs, turkeys and two dozen chickens in her backyard. The 50-year-old chef-turned-farmer says she knows more about her animals' health than she knows about her children's. To her, a federal government plan to require farmers and ranchers to register their animals in a national database goes too far. And she remains skeptical about it, despite a recent announcement by the U.S. Department of Agriculture that participation in the National Animal Identification System will be voluntary, not mandatory as originally contemplated. The premise registration and animal identification idea, which is aimed at tracking animals to help prevent the spread of mad cow disease, avian flu and other diseases, has divided the nation's livestock farmers. Some see it as necessary for disease prevention, others say it would be onerous and an unwarranted intrusion by government. Rick Parizo, a dairy and hog farmer in Milton, said he supports premise registration but not the tracking of every animal. "I'll sell my animals first before I let them come through and tag every single animal," he said. To date about 23 percent of ranches, farms, feed lots and other livestock facilities have registered their premises with the Agriculture Department. Vermont, Maine, Massachusetts and Texas have decided not to require premise registration, while Wisconsin, Indiana have mandatory programs. Michigan will require premise registration for cattle starting in March....
It's All Trew: Quirky gimmicks keep 'em coming I'm not sure whether some entrepreneurs are a bit more unique in their thinking, try a little harder or may be a little smarter, but I am continually amazed at the "gimmes and gimmicks" used to draw customers into their establishments. When Gabe Parson, inventor of the K-Bob's franchise, opened the Red River Steakhouse in McLean, Cozy made sure all change possible was in shiny 50-cent pieces and two-dollar bills. Seems both are highly collectible to customers. A unique feature of Cowboy Morning Breakfast in Palo Duro Canyon is Hodie serving an excellent meal atop white paper on a serving tray. All visitors there remarked and noticed this feature, plus it sure saved washing a lot of dishes. During our travels around the country, some experiences stick out in our minds. Usually it is a gimmick at a restaurant or bar. For example, at Cloudcroft, N.M., the Texas Bar and Restaurant has hundreds of one-dollar bills stapled to the ceiling with the owner's name written as an autograph. I believe the establishment has been operating some 30 years or more....