NEWS ROUNDUP

EPA takes up Calif. plan to limit greenhouse gases The Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday agreed to consider a California request to limit greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, a plan that has been on hold for more than a year. EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson said the decision to take up California's request was a consequence of the April 2 Supreme Court ruling that found the agency has the power to treat climate-warming gases as pollutants and regulate them accordingly. Speaking at a Senate hearing on the impact of that ruling, Johnson declined to set out a timetable for action on the California petition. He said the process begins with a period of public notice and comment that includes a May 22 hearing in Washington. California has passed a state law that would require new vehicles to meet gradually tightening standards for greenhouse gas emissions starting with 2009 models. But to put that law into effect, California needs a waiver from the federal government, which is what the EPA is now considering....
Little Help for Watersheds in the West The West’s already stretched water supplies received no relief in March, as near-record high temperatures and below-normal precipitation wilted crucial watershed lands from the Pacific Northwest to the Sierra Nevada and the deserts of New Mexico. Mountain snows melted and evaporated away with the wind and heat, leaving places like the Salt River and Verde River Basins in central Arizona with only about 30 percent of their historic average spring runoff. Runoff from the Colorado River that feeds Lake Powell, the reservoir that straddles the Utah-Arizona border, was projected to come in at 53 percent of average. In the drought that began in 2000 across much of the West, (with 2005 being the odd, near-normal year) 2007 is promising no relief: better than some years, but with no clear turning of the corner, either. “We always like to be optimists, and we were, and then comes March,” said Kip White, a spokesman for the federal Bureau of Reclamation, which manages dams and reservoirs in the West. Hydrologists say the dry heat of early spring this year echoed what happened last year. The snows were there, and then abruptly they were not. In the Southwest and in central Oregon, 30 percent of the snow pack — the crucial element for downstream water supply — melted in just that one month, according to a water supply report issued on Tuesday by the bureau....
ID elk rancher acquitted on misdemeanor A former eastern Idaho elk rancher has been acquitted on charges he poked a man in the eye and chin during an altercation last fall over elk. Rex Rammell was found not guilty of disturbing the peace Monday at the end of a daylong trial here in 7th District Court. "I'm happy with the outcome, but I never want to do this again," Rammell said. For Rammell, it's the second acquittal by a Fremont County jury in as many months in the wake of tussles with state wildlife officials and others after 120 elk escaped from his Chief Joseph hunting preserve near Ashton last year. After the animals fled, then-Gov. Jim Risch ordered an emergency hunt to reduce the chances they could spread inferior genes or disease to wild herds near Yellowstone National Park. Rammell has since filed a $1.3 million tort claim against the state, alleging it was negligent and capricious in its handling of the elk case. Rammell said a meeting with attorneys is scheduled this week to talk about a settlement in that case. Last month, Rammell was acquitted of obstructing an officer during the hunt of Rammell's lost elk last October....
Feds decide against protections for arctic grayling The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Tuesday decided against protecting the fluvial arctic grayling under the Endangered Species Act. Conservation groups called the decision "politically motivated" and said it could spell doom for the unusual, river-dwelling fish. Its numbers have been declining for years. "It's a species on the brink of extinction," said Noah Greenwald, a conservation biologist for the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups that pushed for federal protections. "They basically said that the existence of the grayling in the lower 48 states is not significant." An appeal by conservation groups is likely, he said. The ruling also raises questions about the future of a major conservation project in the Big Hole valley aimed at improving grayling habitat. Twenty-seven landowners controlling 130,000 acres have already enrolled, agreeing to improve their irrigation projects to help keep water in the Big Hole River, regional fisheries manager Bruce Rich said. In return, participating ranchers are assured they won't be saddled with other demands if the fish is listed....
Fee-for-all on public lands Amid all the hoopla, no one seemed interested in the whereabouts of recreation fee revenue collected from Sabino Canyon and Mount Lemmon visitors over the past decade. The Santa Catalina Ranger District office informed me that data on these and other allocated funds could not be made available in a timely fashion. I was not too surprised. Public lands advocates from around the country have been following the U.S. Forest Service's recreation fee program since its inception. I think most folks figure their fees at Sabino and Mount Lemmon are used for basic upkeep and to provide recreational opportunities. They'd be surprised to learn that the Forest Service is currently using $93 million of our fee money to "decommission" - i.e. close, gate, bulldoze or sell to private interests - thousands of Forest Service recreation sites that do not meet "full cost recovery" criteria. The fee program, it turns out, is about much more than trails, tram roads and toilet seats. It is a vehicle for transforming our Forest Service from a publicly supported public service agency into a business operation with corporate partners....
Senators advance fee for off-road vehicles on public land, roads State senators voted Tuesday to require owners of off-road vehicles to pay a new fee for the privilege of operating them anywhere on public lands or roads. HB 2443 would require off-road vehicles, all-terrain vehicles and off-road recreational vehicles to have a license issued by the state Department of Transportation. That would include "dirt bikes." The fee would be set by the agency, but is expected to cost no more than $25 a year, a figure legislative staffers estimate would bring in $6.8 million a year once fully implemented in 2009. The bill also would require those younger than 18 to have headgear that is properly fitted and fastened. All vehicles would need to have mufflers, spark arresters and, when operated on sand dunes, flags. And those operated from twilight to sun-up also would need headlights and taillights. The legislation also would make it a crime, punishable by 30 days in jail and a $500 fine, to drive off a marked trail in a way that damages wildlife habitat or natural resources....
Holden Village fees to Forest Service increase drastically Annual fees paid to the U.S. Forest Service by a north-central Washington Lutheran retreat will increase from about $700 to $50,000, due to a change in the way the federal agency assesses fees for camps. Holden Village has held a Forest Service permit since 1961 to operate the remote community for all faiths. The retreat sits above the western shore of Lake Chelan, in an old mining camp that is only accessible by boat or trail. In 2003, Congress passed the National Forest Organizational Camp Fee Improvement Act, charging all camps on national forest land 5 percent of their gross revenue. The act excluded camps that cater to youth or people with disabilities, Chelan District Ranger John Sheehan said. At Holden Village, the fee is being phased in over five years, and will reach about $50,000 next year, he said. Holden Village does not have regular phone service, but the village's co-director Carol Hinderlie wrote in an e-mail that the increase in fees "creates a severe hardship." Paul Haines, Holden Village's public works manager, wrote that the village will have to reduce operating costs, increase the amount of donations or increase charges to paying guests....
Mount Evans Fee Caught in Impasse The ever-escalating recreation fee program administered by the U.S. Forest Service (FS) is mired in controversy, and now, one of the most controversial fee programs of them all, the toll booth on the road to 14,126-foot Mount Evans, has become a flash point. The highway, the highest-elevation paved road in the United States, passes through the outstanding scenery of the Arapaho-Roosevelt National Forest in Colorado, but it isn’t a FS road. The road, State Highway 5, is owned by the State of Colorado and built and maintained by Colorado taxpayers. In the mid-1990s, using the now-defunct Fee Demo program as its authority, the FS signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) and has been charging fees to everybody who drove, cycled or walked past the toll booth built in the middle of State Highway 5. That MOU expired “sometime in 2004,” according to Lori Denton of the Clear Creek Ranger District, which includes Mount Evans, and the FS is currently negotiating with CDOT to “update it.” The FS has continued to charge fees on Mount Evans for at least two years after the original MOU expired....
State of Colorado Takes Charge It’s amazing what a little sunlight can do! And how fast it can change things. Yesterday, I posted a long article about the impasse between the U.S. Forest Service (FS) and the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) over signage of the controversial state highway to the top of 14,126-foot Mount Evans. Basically, the CDOT wanted a sign saying people did not have to pay a fee to drive on a state highway, but the FS refused to put it up, fearing that people would opt for a free trip. So, back at you, FS, says CDOT. We’ll put up our own signs. “CDOT is going to install signs instead of leaving it up to the USFS,” Jay Kramer, Region 1 right-of-way manager, notes in an email obtained by NewWest.net. “CDOT’s signs will go up as soon as possible, with our without a signed Memorandum of Understanding with the USFS.” The specific language of the sign will be: “No charge for travel on State Highway 5. Fees collected by USFS are only for those using amenities on USFS property.” According the FS spokesperson Donna Mickley, those “amenities” include only three sites--Summit Lake, Mount Goliath, and the Mount Evans Summit. This means visitors will be able to enjoy most of the Mount Evans road, using pull offs, parking at trailheads to go hiking without paying the fee....
Ecology lawsuit seeks to halt more drilling in forest Three environmental groups sued the U.S. Forest Service this week, hoping to block plans to expand oil and gas drilling in Ventura County's Los Padres National Forest. The lawsuit, filed by the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife and Los Padres ForestWatch, says additional drilling approved in 2005 would harm the forest, in particular the endangered California condor brought back from the brink of extinction at a sanctuary near Fillmore. The groups say the plan violates the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Forest Management Act because of potential damage to wildlife and deterioration of air and water quality, said John Buse of the Center for Biological Diversity. Oil and gas leases were expanded in July 2005 across 52,075 acres of the Los Padres near the Condor Sanctuary and the Hopper Mountain National Wildlife Refuge, two areas of condor habitat....
Bill has one-year more for timber payments to counties A $5 billion plan to extend payments to rural counties hurt by cutbacks in federal logging was left out of a massive spending bill agreed to by House and Senate negotiators. Democrats are preparing to send President Bush a $124 billion bill that pays for the war in Iraq but requires that troops begin pulling out if progress is not shown. The bill, which Bush has vowed to veto, includes $425 million for a one-year extension of the payments to timber counties, as well as $500 million to fight wildfires and $60 million for salmon fishers and tribes in Northern California and Oregon. But it does not include a Senate-approved plan to spend about $2.8 billion to continue the county payments law through 2011, and direct another $1.9 billion to rural states as part of a program to reimburse state and local governments for federally owned property. The failure to include the longer term solution drew fire from Republican Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., who said in a statement Tuesday that the "final county payment deal leaves rural Oregon out to dry."....
Forest Guardians threatens suit over grazing A Santa Fe environmental group is warning federal regulators it might sue over public livestock grazing on critical habitat. Forest Guardians says the U.S. Forest Service, which manages hundreds of grazing allotments in the Southwest, is violating the Endangered Species Act unless and until it consults with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service regarding how the grazing management practices are adversely affecting the habitat of two protected fishes -- the spikedace and the loach minnow. Forest Guardians is pushing for a review of grazing on more than 520 miles of critical habitat for these two species. The critical habitat designation took effect quite recently, but the nonprofit wants to move quickly to curtail land use practices it says have hurt the fishes' habitat. The two fish used to swim throughout the Gila River system all the way into Mexico, but they are now limited to several counties north of the border because of human-caused habitat modifications, according to Forest Guardians....
Oil-shale idea back in play One week before the 25th anniversary of Black Sunday, ExxonMobil is showing renewed interest in oil shale and may begin conducting research on in situ oil shale extraction on private land at its long-defunct Colony Project site near Parachute. It was on Black Sunday, May 2, 1982, when the former Exxon Corp. shocked the Western Slope with the news it was shutting down the Colony Oil Shale Project, snuffing out the dreams and jobs of thousands of Coloradans. ExxonMobil, to which the Bureau of Land Management denied a Piceance Basin oil shale in situ, or “in place,” research and development lease last year, will be “doing some research and development with its own technology on its own land,” BLM Colorado Solid Minerals Chief Jim Edwards said Monday. Company officials didn’t give a timetable for ExxonMobil’s oil shale testing when it met with faculty at the Colorado School of Mines last year, but “it could be pretty fast,” Dr. Jeremy Boak, Project Manager of the Colorado Energy Research Institute at the School of Mines, said Tuesday. Boak said ExxonMobil’s in situ oil shale test “presumably” will be at the Colony Project site....
BLM approves more gas wells near Meeker More natural gas wells will be drilled in northwestern Colorado under a plan approved Tuesday by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. The BLM approved a proposal by ExxonMobil for 20 new well pads about 15 miles west of Meeker. Each well pad could have as many as nine wells, which would be drilled at different angles. The company also plans to build a new gas processing plant. The wells will be in an existing gas field under development since the 1950s. Steve Smith of The Wilderness Society said he believes drilling in an already developed area is the right approach. He added, though, that his group will continue to monitor the work because as many as 1,100 new wells could be drilled over the next several years....
Salazar bill addresses reuse of gas-well water Congressmen from Rocky Mountain states, including Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar, have introduced legislation encouraging the recovery, treatment and reuse of water contaminated during the extraction of coal-bed methane gas. Currently, leftover "produced water" carries so many dissolved substances, including salts, that it's unsuitable for irrigation, drinking by livestock or wildlife or recreational purposes. An estimated 2 million gallons a day of "produced water" is pumped off coal beds or from oil fields for which there is little further use. Methane-gas producers extract water to free gas from coal seams. Most of that water is stored in deep wells. "The produced water is pumped into wells ranging around 4,000 feet," Walt Brown, a geologist with the San Juan Public Lands Center in Durango, said Monday. "The water must be pumped into formations where the quality of water is poorer than the quality of the produced water....
Interior creates Sand Creek historic site Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne signed the paperwork Monday to create the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site, just days before its official dedication. The memorial marks the massacre of nearly 160 Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians by at least 700 volunteers of a Colorado regiment in an early morning raid on Nov. 29, 1864. Many of those killed in the unprovoked attack were elderly, women and children. Plans for the historic site in Kiowa County, on the plains 180 miles southeast of Denver, have been in the works for about a decade. Former Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo., a member of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, had proposed establishing the memorial. Campbell will join National Park Service Director Mary Bomar, Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter, Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., and descendants of those massacred during a dedication ceremony Saturday....
Luthi removes self from wolf issue Randall Luthi, a former Wyoming state House speaker who was recently appointed to the No. 2 spot at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said he will not be involved in the dispute between Wyoming and the federal agency over wolves. Federal conflict of interest law prohibits him from working with the state of Wyoming, Luthi said Saturday at a Sheridan County Republican Party gathering. Wyoming has lawsuits pending against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over management of wolves and the Preble's meadow jumping mouse. The federal agency is in charge of enforcing the Endangered Species Act. Luthi, from Freedom, was appointed by President Bush to the Fish and Wildlife deputy director's post in February. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has 547 refuges across the country and controls more land than the National Park Service, Luthi noted at the GOP gathering....
Trouble in paradise over development plans Rancho Murieta is an anomaly in southeastern Sacramento County -- a gated island of clipped golf courses, man-made lakes and stucco houses surrounded by miles of open ranch land. Such a far-flung development "would never be approved today," said local land use lawyer John Taylor. Rancho Murieta is miles outside the urban growth boundary adopted by the county in 1993. But in the early 1970s, when building started on the land off Jackson Road, there was no growth boundary, and Rancho Murieta was billed in sales brochures as a resort-style community for people who wanted to get away from it all. Nearly four decades later, developers and Rancho Murieta residents are locked in a furious fight over the county's original vision for Rancho Murieta, and whether 1,800 new homes would fulfill it or violate it....
Editorial - Natural disorder It's supposed to be part of the natural order of things: Sea lions eat salmon. Lots of salmon. Unfortunately, the natural order gets skewed in the Columbia River when an overabundance of sea lions meets a run of salmon in the waters below Bonneville Dam. As the prized fish mill around prior to entering fish ladders, they're little more than a salmon buffet for the always-hungry mammals. Well-intentioned, and obviously effective, efforts to protect the once-threatened sea lion population have led to a sharp increase in their numbers and a major menace to still-threatened salmon. Now it's time to reverse the order and start reducing the sea lion population, resorting to lethal means on a limited basis to bring it back to manageable levels. Nonlethal methods are not working. Sea lions below Bonneville Dam have been blasted with rubber buckshot, chased by boats, harassed by firecrackers and rockets and subjected to noise from underwater speakers. None has deterred them....
Montana may nix grizzly monitoring program Montana is poised to end its grizzly bear monitoring program in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem at the year's end unless federal agencies pitch in, state wildlife officials said Tuesday. The decision was announced at a meeting of state and federal officials in charge of grizzly bear management and recovery in the ecosystem _ which includes Glacier National Park, the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex and surrounding lands. The state Fish, Wildlife and Parks Department has run out of money to continue the program, which involves as many as 25 collared female grizzly bears on 6 million acres, said Jim Satterfield, a regional FWP administrator in Kalispell. "This is not a bluff," he said. "Without federal partners, we're done with this project. We can't afford it." The monitoring effort costs about $250,000 a year, but a memo from Wildlife Division Administrator Ken McDonald states that money for the program has been exhausted, other than funds for the program leader's salary. If monitoring does not continue, grizzlies in northwestern Montana have "zero chance" of being removed from protections under the Endangered Species Act, Satterfield said program leader Rick Mace told the panel....
Dam's removal will have to wait The long road to dam removal on the Elwha River just got longer: Work may not even begin on the country's largest dam demolition until 2012, instead of 2009, as had been expected. The National Park Service now says that two water projects associated with the dam takedown may take as long as five years to complete. That pushes back the start date on dam removal, said Barb Maynes, spokeswoman for Olympic National Park. Two new water-treatment plants must be built to provide clean water for Port Angeles, a paper mill and two fish hatcheries....
U.S. canal project raises tensions with Mexico For decades, Mexican farmers and U.S. consumers have shared water from one of the world's largest irrigation canals running along part of the parched California-Mexico border. But a court decision that allows U.S. authorities to stop up the cracks and save water for thirsty farms and sprawling subdivisions in southern California is raising tensions in the borderlands. The ruling by a court in San Francisco earlier this month approved a plan to reline part of the All-American Canal with concrete, stopping accidental run-off from the waterway that has benefited Mexican farmers since it opened in 1942. The court ordered the refurbishment of around a quarter of the 82-mile (132-km) conduit to proceed "without delay," in an overhaul that is set to take up to two years to complete at a cost of some $250 million. The San Diego County Water Authority says the project is needed to recover some 22 billion gallons (83.5 million cubic meters) of water lost through the leaky canal bed each year that local consumers in the water-strapped area have already been billed for....
Column - Texas Chainsaw Management The verdict of history sometimes takes centuries. The verdict on George W. Bush as the nation's environmental steward has already been written in stone. No president has mounted a more sustained and deliberate assault on the nation's environment. No president has acted with more solicitude toward polluting industries. Assaulting the environment across a broad front, the Bush administration has promoted and implemented more than 400 measures that eviscerate 30 years of environmental policy. After years of denial, the president recently acknowledged the potentially catastrophic threat of global warming, but the words have no more meaning than the promise to rebuild New Orleans "better than ever." Most insidiously, the president has put representatives of polluting industries or environmental skeptics in charge of virtually all the agencies responsible for protecting America from pollution. Some egregious officials are now gone, often returning to the private sector whose interests they served. But the administrators who remain in place continue to carry the torch—people such as Mark Rey, a timber-industry lobbyist appointed to oversee the U.S. Forest Service; Rejane "Johnnie" Burton, at Interior, a former oil-and-gas-company executive in Wyoming, who has failed to collect billions on leases from oil companies active in the Gulf of Mexico; and Elizabeth Stolpe, a former lobbyist for one of the nation's worst polluters, Koch Industries, who is an associate director (for toxics and environmental protection) at the White House Council on Environmental Quality....
F.D.A. Says Livestock Were Fed Pet Food With Suspect Chemical Melamine, the chemical suspected in the deaths of pets around the country, was in food given to hogs and chickens in several states, and the Food and Drug Administration is trying to determine if the animals entered the human food supply, F.D.A. officials said Tuesday. Several thousand hogs have been quarantined and are being tested. The affected farms are in California, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah and possibly Ohio. A poultry farm in Missouri is also under investigation. Hog urine has tested positive for melamine in several of those states after it was determined that the animals ate salvaged pet food that originated in factories that produced the tainted food. It is common in the United States to take pet food that does not meet quality standards and reconstitute it into livestock feed, Stephen Sundlof, the F.D.A.’s chief veterinarian, said in a conference call with reporters. The food and drug agency, which is already testing wheat gluten and rice protein for melamine, the chemical used to make plastic utensils and as a fertilizer in other countries, said Tuesday that as a precaution, it was expanding testing of imported ingredients and finished products that contain cornmeal, soy protein, rice bran and corn gluten. Those ingredients can be used to make many products, including breads, pastas, pizza dough, baby formulas, protein shakes and energy bars....
Woman keeps goat in minivan Shirley Weidt says people should stop complaining about the goat in her minivan. After all, there's plenty of room in the ba-a-a-ack with the seats removed. Despite protests from some residents, city animal control officer Ray Buhr said Weidt isn't violating any laws or treating the animal cruelly. "The van is kept clean," Buhr said. "We've checked several times. There's really nothing in ordinances or state statutes that says she can't do that. The goat is entirely happy in there." Weidt said it's "nobody's business" if she keeps her goat in a van. The goat is in the van so it won't escape, she said. Beverly Saxton, who lives near property Weidt owns, thinks keeping the goat in the minivan is cruel....
A Lawyer and an Ass Walk Into a Courtroom After a Preston Hollow, Texas, neighbor complained that his son's pet donkey was a loud nuisance, Dallas lawyer C. Gregory Shamoun brought the donkey, known as Buddy, into a courtroom on Wednesday to attempt to prove to a jury that the burro's not. "I wanted the jury to see Buddy," Shamoun, a partner in Shamoun Klatsky Norman, says. "This is a very, very wonderful animal." Questions about Buddy's behavior arose in a justice-of-the-peace court suit Shamoun filed against his neighbor, John Cantrell, in which Shamoun alleges Cantrell assaulted him. Cantrell also alleged in the answer and counterclaim that Shamoun intentionally interfered with his enjoyment of his property by allowing a burro and a calf to roam freely in Shamoun's backyard. Cantrell alleges the burro -- Buddy -- was noisy at night. Cantrell "further alleges that Mr. Shamoun rented, hired, or otherwise acquired the aforementioned animals with the express purpose of harassing Mr. Cantrell." When the suit went to trial on Wednesday, Buddy was the first witness....