Is nuclear power's comeback for real? We all know that $30-a-barrel oil isn't coming back, just as we know that simply turning off a few lights won't halt global warming. Yet the search for a low-emission, nonfossil-fuel source of energy has been a bit like American Idol: One after another, fresh-faced alternative-energy-rock-star wannabes are eliminated. Wind and solar are nice and clean—but the sun doesn't work 24/7, and the wind is fickle. Ethanol offers politicians the irresistible combination of grow-your-own energy independence and the potential to make Iowa primary voters rich. But because it's corrosive and soluble in water, it's hard to transport ethanol over long distances through pipelines. And to raise a crop sufficient to meet our gasoline thirst, we'd have to plant the entire continental United States with maize, leaving only a small corner of Delaware for bedrooms and a den. As contestants are eliminated, it's worth looking at the geezer in the bunch: nuclear power. Last month, nearly 50 years after the Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania became the first commercial power plant to go online, the New Jersey-based utility NRG filed papers seeking permission to build a nuclear power plant in Texas. This represents the first such new application since 1979....
The Future Is Drying Up Scientists sometimes refer to the effect a hotter world will have on this country’s fresh water as the other water problem, because global warming more commonly evokes the specter of rising oceans submerging our great coastal cities. By comparison, the steady decrease in mountain snowpack — the loss of the deep accumulation of high-altitude winter snow that melts each spring to provide the American West with most of its water — seems to be a more modest worry. But not all researchers agree with this ranking of dangers. Last May, for instance, Steven Chu, a Nobel laureate and the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, one of the United States government’s pre-eminent research facilities, remarked that diminished supplies of fresh water might prove a far more serious problem than slowly rising seas. A report by the National Academies on the Colorado River basin had recently concluded that the combination of limited Colorado River water supplies, increasing demands, warmer temperatures and the prospect of recurrent droughts “point to a future in which the potential for conflict” among those who use the river will be ever-present....
Mining claims near wilderness areas in state seen as threat More than 21,300 mining claims have been staked within 10 miles of California's national parks and monuments and federal wilderness and roadless areas, according to an analysis of U.S. Bureau of Land Management records released Monday. The claims, which have risen by more than one-third in the last four years, include more than 2,170 staked outside Death Valley National Park, 525 near Joshua Tree National Park and 285 outside Yosemite National Park. There are also 41 near the Giant Sequoia National Monument. "If just a handful of these thousands of claims already staked turn into major mines, it could have devastating impacts on California's national treasures," said Dusty Horwitt, public lands analyst at the Environmental Working Group, the Washington-based nonprofit that issued the report. In California and across the West, mining claims have skyrocketed in the last five years, driven by a boom in the global price of gold, copper, uranium and other metals. The rising demand, particularly from China and other developing nations, has spurred interest in reopening abandoned mining sites....
Rep. Simpson Seeks Special Grazing For Fire-Riddled Idaho Congressman Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, is the leader of a bi-partisan group of 40 House members seeking extra wildfire and drought disaster help from the House Appropriations Committee. But Simpson has also made some dramatic suggestions about grazing policies for public lands that run counter to modern grazing and wildfire science. He’s joined in a straightforward disaster assistance effort by 39 congressmen and women from neighboring states, such as Barbara Cubin, R-Wyoming, Dennis Rehberg, R-Montana, Stephanie Sandlin, D-South Dakota and John Salazar, D-Colorado. The coalition asked for extensions on livestock and crop disaster aid programs, to accommodate growers who’ve been hammered by this summer’s drought and wildfires. Yet Simpson has gone much further, asking the Committee in a September letter to consider provisions that would allow ranchers to better utilize grazing lands unaffected by fires and a provision that would ensure cattle were allowed back on some fire-impacted lands as early as next year, rather than giving the range a two-year rest. In addition, Simpson alerted the Committee to his desire to explore the possibility of promoting a pilot program on some fire-impacted Idaho lands that would permit the use of grazing as a fuels reduction management tool in the rehabilitation toolbox. Simpson also recommended the use of non-native grass species on wildfire rehab projects, to aid livestock grazers....Go here(pdf)to read the letter.
Ranchers helping protect Montana from wildfires It's that time of the year again when ranchers are busy rounding up cattle and a special partnership between federal land managers and ranchers is helping ease the risk of fire while boosting the economy in Montana. Cattle are scattered over thousands of miles of U.S. National Forest lands and rounding them up is far from easy with the terrain being so rough that the job can only be done on horseback. Allowing cattle to graze in national forests and grasslands creates good income for ranchers and provides tax benefits to the local county and state governments and Jim Wickel a Regional Rangeland Program Manager says it also promotes the concept of open space. While some environmental groups are critical of grazing on federal timber lands U.S. Forest Service managers say cattle grazing helps because cows eat up fire fuels and thin the forest which reduces the risk of wildfires....
240 grizzlies estimated to be in Glacier park area A study of grizzly bears in and around Glacier National Park estimates 240 of the bears live in a 2 million acre area. "It's the first really rigorous population estimate for that area," said Kate Kendall, a West Glacier-based research biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, who led the study. The Greater Glacier area includes the 1.1 million-acre national park plus 900,000 acres of surrounding grizzly habitat, including the Blackfeet Indian Reservation and lands west of Glacier to U.S. Highway 93. Researchers estimated the population by collecting bear hairs in 1998 and 2000 and analyzing the DNA in each strand. The estimate is important because grizzly recovery efforts can't be measured without reliable population figures, Kendall said. "This is the first baseline information we have to monitor future trends," Kendall said....
Chertoff Waives Environmental Laws for Border Fence Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff on Monday invoked his power to bypass certain laws to restart construction of a fence on the Arizona-Mexico border. Chertoff's action allows construction to go forward on about seven miles of fence in the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area near Naco, Ariz. Work on nearly two miles of the fence had been suspended since Oct. 10, when a federal district judge ordered a delay on its construction. She ruled the federal government did not fully study the environmental impact of the fence. Congress gave Chertoff the power to waive environmental and other laws to build border barriers when it passed the REAL ID Act in 2005. This is the third time Chertoff has used the waiver power. He also used it Sept. 22, 2005 to finish building 14 miles of fence in San Diego, and on Jan. 19 for fencing in the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range in Arizona. A few of the environmental laws waived are the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act and the Solid Waste Disposal Act. Chertoff also waived conservation laws, such as the National Historic Preservation Act and the Antiquities Act....
Much BLM timberland tied up in lawsuits The Rogue River-Siskyou National Forest sold and awarded some 50.4 million board feet of timber in the 2007 federal fiscal year that ended Sept. 30. None of the timber, which fell just short of the forest's targeted annual 54 million board foot sales quantity under the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan, were litigated or appealed, officials reported. In comparison, it's a different story with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's Medford District, which was aiming at selling some 57 million board feet, but offered and sold 15.18 million board feet in that period. However, it also offered and sold another 8.67 million that were "reoffer" sales held over from previous years. But only 5.3 million board feet of the BLM district's timber sold in the 2007 fiscal year is available for harvest, said district spokesman Jim Whittington. "The reason is that the rest is tied up because of lawsuits," he said, noting that includes lawsuits against the BLM or other regulatory agency with a connection to that particular sale. The difference between the two agencies is that the forest staff now focuses on selling small-diameter trees while the BLM district continues to push old-growth timber, said George Sexton, conservation director of the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center in Ashland....
Feds weigh drinking water vs. mussels In what might be hopeful words for a drought-parched metro Atlanta, a regional director for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said there is "much flexibility" to provide drinking water for people and still comply with the Endangered Species Act. But Alabama's governor on Monday asked President Bush not to take emergency drought actions requested by Georgia, saying they would be "to the detriment of people who live and work downstream in Alabama." Also Monday, federal biologists waded in Florida's Apalachicola River, assessing what it would take to keep endangered and threatened mussels alive if less water is released upstream at Lake Lanier. Georgia has demanded the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers keep more water in Lanier to meet the needs of metro Atlanta during the deepening drought. Already, the corps says, the Fish and Wildlife Service has authorized the corps to allow some of the rainwater feeding Lanier to stay there, a key step toward helping the depleted lake recover. The Fish and Wildlife Service is prepared to work "quickly" on reviewing how much water the mussels can live with, Hamilton wrote....The ESA has "flexibility"? The USFWS will move "quickly"? Are the ranchers and others in the recovery area of the Mexican Wolf aware of this? Nope. The Gov't is going all out to make sure the general public in high population areas don't feel the full brunt of the act. That's a lot of votes, and the ESA itself might become endangered.
Animal law is key to water fight A famous Georgia lawyer learned the hard way how implacable the 1973 Endangered Species Act can be. At the U.S. Supreme Court in 1978, U.S. Attorney General Griffin B. Bell held up a vial holding a snail darter and argued that the tiny fish should not stop the completion of the Tellico Dam in Tennessee. A couple of months later, Chief Justice Warren Burger acknowledged for a 6-3 majority that it seemed “curious … that the survival of a relatively small number of three-inch fish among all the countless millions of species extant would require the permanent halting of a virtually completed dam for which Congress has expended more than $100 million.” But, he added, “the explicit provisions of the Endangered Species Act require precisely that result.” That case, TVA v. Hill, 437 U.S. 153, and subsequent decisions are what allow federal officials to release water from drought-depleted Lake Lanier, even though the state says it has just three months left of storage to quench the thirst of millions of Georgians. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in consultation with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, sends the water downstream to protect the habitat of four endangered species—fat threeridge, purple bankclimber and chipola slabshell mussels and Gulf sturgeon—living in the Apalachicola River and Apalachicola Bay of Florida....
Earth to PETA At lunchtime in late September, on a relatively untraveled stretch of sidewalk outside the U.S. State Department, demonstrators from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals attempted to catch the attention of, well, anyone. Inside the building, Condoleezza Rice was trying to convince world leaders that the U.S. was serious about global warming; outside, two PETA members handed out fliers featuring a photo of Paul McCartney. "Think you can be a meat-eating environmentalist?" it read. "Think again!" Two other protesters, dressed in chicken suits, displayed a green and chartreuse banner: "CliMEAT Change," it read. "Meat: #1 cause of global warming." Undaunted, PETA protesters, in October, drove a truck-mounted billboard around venues in Austin, Texas, and Denver, where Al Gore lectured about climate change. It featured a caricature of the Nobel laureate, potbellied and brandishing a partially eaten poultry drumstick. "Too Chicken to Become Vegetarian?" the billboard taunted Gore, and concluded, again: "Meat Is the #1 Cause of Global Warming." The Humane Society of the United States, good cop to PETA's bad, has mounted its own effort to link livestock to global warming. Along with PETA, it advocates eliminating animal products from our diets, implying that all of these products -- meat, dairy and eggs -- are equally destructive. But that's just not the case. "If you want to look at this globally," says Steinfeld, "beef is absolutely the worst."....
Rural vets are a dying breed So when Farr and other older rural veterinarians hear about today's aspirants carrying $100,000 in student loans and refusing to come out to the country because the work's too hard or complain the pay is not what they'd make at a fancy urban animal ER, they get a little testy. Their ire centers on their alma mater, Texas A&M University's College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. They say the school needs to take a more active role in its admissions process, looking beyond grade point averages and do what it can to attract more rural students who would more likely return to small towns but may not have the grades of their suburban counterparts. "There's tremendous hostility among the old guys (against A&M)," Farr said. In the past five years, a hot topic among veterinarians has been the apparent unwillingness of the new breed to treat large animals, i.e. livestock. It's forced rural vets to compete furiously for the few graduates willing to take on the 24-7 life of a large- or mixed-animal practice in a small town, a job that pays far less than a small-animal practice in a city....