Tougher Pollution Rules Issued for Ships, Locomotives Diesel-powered locomotives, ships, ferries and tugboats will have to eliminate 90 percent of the soot and 80 percent of the nitrogen oxides in their exhaust by 2030 under tougher air-pollution standards issued by the Environmental Protection Agency yesterday. "Today EPA is fitting another important piece into the clean diesel puzzle by cleaning emissions from our trains and boats," EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson said, adding that the nation's "diesel rule has reached its final stop on its journey to deliver cleaner air to all Americans." Over the past decade, pollution from diesel-powered cars, SUVs, trucks and off-road vehicles has been cut by a series of rules that curb emissions of fine particles and smog-causing chemicals. Environmental groups, which had criticized the EPA this week for setting new limits on smog-causing ozone at a level higher than recommended by the agency's independent scientific advisers, applauded yesterday's action....
Future Cars May Save Gas But Waste Water Efforts to wean America's automobiles off gasoline are running into the law of unintended consequences. Methanol wears out engine components, and corn-based ethanol has squeezed corn supplies. Even bypassing liquid fuel altogether may be problematic: New research suggests that flooding the roads with plug-in vehicles could cause a significant, though potentially manageable, drain on regional water sources. Present-day hybrid vehicles employ a small electric motor--in addition to an internal-combustion engine--to improve fuel efficiency. Plug-ins represent the next step in green car evolution. Still in development, they will use advances in battery technology to allow car owners literally to plug into the electric power grid and recharge overnight. A hypothetical plug-in vehicle would require up to 30 kilowatt/hours of electricity to recharge for a typical day's driving. It may not sound like much, but multiplied by millions of plug-in cars on the road within the next decade, the drain on water resources would add up. That's because electricity comes from very large--steam--turbine generators and nuclear reactors, which must be cooled with water pumped in from streams and rivers....
Getting right with law, getting to work on air It turns out that it could have been worse, or might have been better, depending on one's point of view about the breathability of Hoosier air. When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued new ozone standards Wednesday, bumping the Indianapolis area and much of the rest of the state onto the dirty list at the stroke of a pen, Gov. Mitch Daniels cried foul. Several counties, including nine in Central Indiana, had reached compliance only last year after being in violation since 2004, he noted. Now, they were back to square one, or at least back a few squares, in their struggle to attract and expand business. A different reaction came from environmentalists and public health advocates, who said the new, tougher standards were most welcome from both a medical and an economic standpoint, and too bad they were not stricter yet. Well, it seems they might have been. Press reports soon after release of the regulations indicate that an 11th-hour intervention by President Bush resulted in a higher threshold for ozone than that which the EPA's experts -- who normally are deferred to in these decisions -- sought....
Grouse threatens West The most fearsome creature in the Rocky Mountain West these days isn't the grizzly bear, mountain lion or even the gray wolf. It's a plump, ground-dwelling bird with a homely name — sage grouse — that has the potential to bring the mineral and agriculture industries of the rural West to their knees. The Fish and Wildlife Service began on Feb. 26 a status review on whether to list the sage grouse under the Endangered Species Act. The agency had little choice: In December, a federal judge in Idaho ordered the review after finding problems with a 2005 decision against listing the bird as endangered or threatened under the act. Now many Westerners are genuinely concerned that the sage grouse could bring down their economies as much as the listing of the Northern spotted owl crippled the Pacific Northwest timber industry in the early 1990s. How bad would it be? "To be short and sweet, it would be devastating," said Josh Tewalt, a sheep rancher who serves as executive vice president of the Idaho Cattleman's Association. A decision to list the bird as threatened or endangered would put restrictions, possibly severe ones, on human activities, potentially including oil and gas drilling, ranching and any other development that could disturb or fragment the bird's habitat. A decision on whether to list the bird is due no later than May 2009, but Western state officials don't plan on twiddling their thumbs until then. They're aggressively pursuing strategies to boost the sage grouse's numbers, a proactive approach that began years before the December court ruling. Rarely does a week go by without sage-grouse activity, and this one is no exception: In Wyoming, the state agriculture department convenes its two-day Sage Grouse Conference tomorrow. In Colorado, Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter is slated to sign today the state's Greater Sage Grouse Conservation Plan, a state and federal conservation partnership....
Not seen for century, wolf kills sheep Her voice tinged with emotion and the video camera jiggling in her shaking hand, Tonya Martin filmed and narrated the scene she found behind her ranch home March 5 - five sheep had been killed by a wolf and another five were wounded, three of them, as it turned out, fatally. "In the end, it's hard to watch what your animals go through," said Martin, 36, while showing the location of the slaughter on Thursday. "It makes me question what the future will be with them." Martin was driving a tractor out to feed her cow-calf pairs around 8:30 a.m. on March 5 when her mother-in-law, Katherine Martin, spotted the big black wolf. The wolf trotted out of the brush, crossed the county road, went under a barbed-wire fence and paused to look back. "We knew what it was right away," she said. "Our first instinct was to go after it." At the time, Martin didn't know the wolf had killed five of her sheep. Had she known, the .222 rifle that always rides in the tractor could have been used to legally kill the wolf. It wasn't until the Martins investigated that they found the sheep flighty and hiding in the barren cottonwood trees along Big Elk Creek. Scattered around the drainage were five dead sheep and five others that were injured. A veterinarian was called to patch up the five injured sheep, most of them with torn throats, but only two of those survived. "I've never seen anything like it," Martin said. "Some were hamstrung, their legs were broken and twisted. I'd never seen kills like it before. The sheep were scared to death." "It was a sad day, because I know he'll be back, and he'll be back with friends."....
Guarding Galisteo As oil and gas companies sink more drills into Western soil, landowners often find themselves at the mercy of corporations and industry-friendly federal law. Citizens of Santa Fe County, N.M., however, are pushing the limits of local control and demanding a seat at the table. In Galisteo Basin, south of tony Santa Fe, ranchers and blue-collar laborers share fences with second-home owners and transplanted professionals. But when it comes to energy development, these New West neighbors have found a common voice. To what local reports call “thunderous applause,” Santa Fe County commissioners enacted a one-year drilling moratorium in February. The ban will keep drills out of the basin while the county researches the impacts of energy extraction. The county lacks oil and gas policies, says county spokesman Stephen Ulibarri, so it will use this research to draft rules for environmental and archaeological protection. The basin, which is rich in the remains of the Tano Puebloan culture, is one of the largest archaeological sites in the American Southwest, according to local researcher James Snead. The moratorium raises the question: In a decades-old clash that has historically favored mineral owners over landowners, does Santa Fe County have any weight to throw around? “Companies need a permit from the county to make sure they comply with county land-use regulations,” says Gwen Lachelt, director of the Oil and Gas Accountability Project. “That way the county can say, ‘What’s your plan, Tecton, for protecting water resources?’ ” And if the county’s regulations — on air and water protection, for example — are more stringent than state and federal rules, industry would have to respect that, she says....
Judge say aerial wolf control invalid in several areas A judge today (Friday) invalidated the aerial killing of wolves in several small areas of Alaska while issuing a ruling upholding the state predator control program. Superior Court Judge William F. Morse issued a lengthy ruling that took a look at the state's wolf control program, now operating in five areas of Alaska. The program is being challenged by Friends of Animals, Defenders of Wildlife and the Alaska Wildlife Alliance. The groups filed the lawsuit against the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and the Board of Game in 2006 in hopes of ending the aerial wolf control program. Alaska is divided up into 26 game management units. The lawsuit challenged the program in areas where it is authorized. Friends of Animals lawyer Michael Grisham says the judge found the program was valid in five areas, but failed to meet requirements in three others. Those areas are game units across Cook Inlet from Anchorage and two near Fairbanks. The areas where the judge found it wanting were where the game board decided to extend it last year. Grisham said the board lumped together several new areas for predator control without making any new findings on the wolves, caribou and bears in those areas. Board Game Chairman Cliff Judkins said the problems can be corrected through emergency regulation, something that will probably occur next week.
School aims to recruit sheep shearers During the winter months, Mike Schuldt is in such a high demand to shear sheep that he even spends his vacation harvesting wool. “With the lack of shearers out there, people are calling me,” said Schuldt, Blaine County’s agricultural extension agent. “I could shear full time.” Across Montana, 280,000 sheep need to be sheared between January and May. Desperate for people who know how to use the clippers, ranchers have hired traveling shearers from New Zealand and Australia to meet the demand, but they, too, have become scarce because of the weak American dollar. To combat the problem, Montana State University is hosting The Montana Wool Harvest and Sheep Shearing School through Thursday at its Red Bluff Research Ranch. The goal is to train and recruit people to shear sheep. At sheep-sheering school Friday, 15 students, and dozens of sheep, gathered in the green barn at MSU’s Research Ranch on state Highway 84....
Cattle business leader, 64, dies Paul Hitch, 64, and President and CEO of Hitch Enterprises and Hitch AgriBusiness, Inc., died Friday at Baptist St. Anthony Health System, after a yearlong battle with cancer. The Guymon, Okla., native was a fourth- generation Hitch, said Hitch Enterprises Executive Vice President Randy Hinds. "Paul was a strong family man, a Christian," Hinds said. "It's hard to say anything bad about Paul Hitch. He was a great community leader and great industry leader." His sons Jason and Chris will step up and take over the management of the company, Hinds said. Paul had been fighting cancer for a year....