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Arizona copper mine will hurt tribes and the environment

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By James Anaya, for AZ Central

James Anaya: Rio Tinto should make some lands off limits to mining and abandon the project if it can’t gain local support.

Congress recently authorized an exchange of land so the multinational giant Rio Tinto can proceed with its Resolution Copper Mine project in eastern Arizona. The land to be conveyed to the company was taken from the Apache people more than a century ago, but Apache today continue to claim strong cultural and religious ties to the land.

The congressional authorization can be seen as a victory for the foreign-owned mining company. At the same time, it represents a shameful circumventing of democratic process in the face of environmental concerns and potential violations of the religious and cultural rights of the Apache people.

The San Carlos Apache Tribe, with numerous other Indian tribes across the country, had successfully opposed stand-alone legislation for the land swap because of these fundamental human-rights concerns. Leaders in Superior had voted to revoke support for the mine.

The mining company, however, convinced key members of the Arizona congressional delegation to authorize the land swap through an amendment buried in the must-pass National Defense Appropriations Act.

The new legislation does not make the land swap immediately effective. Several steps will have to be completed, including an extensive process of environmental review and consultations. Still, it makes the land swap and eventual mining appear to be a foregone conclusion.

Proponents of the mine, including Sen. John McCain, have stressed that the project will lead to needed jobs and generate significant economic activity. But whether or not the American people or Arizonans will fairly benefit economically in comparison with what the foreign company will profit remains highly debatable.

In any case, most Americans understand that the prospect of jobs or economic gain for some cannot alone carry the day, lest all those places rich in natural or cultural bounty that have been set aside as national treasures would be at risk.

The owners of the Resolution Mine project, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, subscribe to guidelines adopted by the International Council on Mining and Metals establishing, in keeping with United Nations standards, that mining companies should work to obtain the free, prior and informed consent of indigenous peoples and ensure full respect for their rights, as preconditions to the implementation of mining projects that affect them.

Rio Tinto, especially, has worked to follow these guidelines with a number of its projects around the world, building what many human rights and environmental advocates consider to be good practices.

But the land swap authorization for Resolution Mine was not predicated on the San Carlos Apache’s consent or widespread local support. Instead, the congressional authorization came amid continuing disagreement about the environmental and cultural impacts of the land swap and eventual mining, through a truncated legislative process that altogether avoided confronting the points of disagreement.

Any chances of now meeting local concerns and coming to an agreement with the tribe have been severely damaged.

The only way that those chances might be bettered is for the company to make clear it understands that some places, because of their religious or cultural significance or environmental sensitivities, are simply off limits to mining, and to commit to refraining from moving forward with the land swap or any mining without broad local community support and agreement with the tribe.

The company should be prepared to alter its planned land swap and mining activity, or altogether abandon it, if the company cannot obtain the social license that broad local support and agreement with the tribe would provide.

S. James Anaya is a Regents’ Professor at the University of Arizona Rogers College of Law. He served as the United Nations Human Rights Council’s special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples from 2008 to 2014.

NASA: Satellite Data Shows U.S. Methane ‘Hot Spot’ Bigger than Expected

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By US National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Methane emissions from the Four Corners region of the United States
The Four Corners area (red) is the major U.S. hot spot for methane emissions in this map showing how much emissions varied from average background concentrations from 2003-2009 (dark colors are lower than average; lighter colors are higher).
Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Michigan

One small “hot spot” in the U.S. Southwest is responsible for producing the largest concentration of the greenhouse gas methane seen over the United States – more than triple the standard ground-based estimate — according to a new study of satellite data by scientists at NASA and the University of Michigan.

Methane is very efficient at trapping heat in the atmosphere and, like carbon dioxide, it contributes to global warming. The hot spot, near the Four Corners intersection of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah, covers only about 2,500 square miles (6,500 square kilometers), or half the size of Connecticut.

In each of the seven years studied from 2003-2009, the area released about 0.59 million metric tons of methane into the atmosphere. This is almost 3.5 times the estimate for the same area in the European Union’s widely used Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research.

In the study published online today in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, researchers used observations made by the European Space Agency’s Scanning Imaging Absorption Spectrometer for Atmospheric Chartography (SCIAMACHY) instrument. SCIAMACHY measured greenhouse gases from 2002 to 2012. The atmospheric hot spot persisted throughout the study period. A ground station in the Total Carbon Column Observing Network, operated by the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory, provided independent validation of the measurement.

To calculate the emissions rate that would be required to produce the observed concentration of methane in the air, the authors performed high-resolution regional simulations using a chemical transport model, which simulates how weather moves and changes airborne chemical compounds.

Research scientist Christian Frankenberg of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, first noticed the Four Corners signal years ago in SCIAMACHY data.

“We didn’t focus on it because we weren’t sure if it was a true signal or an instrument error,” Frankenberg said.

The study’s lead author, Eric Kort of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, noted the study period predates the widespread use of hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking, near the hot spot. This indicates the methane emissions should not be attributed to fracking but instead to leaks in natural gas production and processing equipment in New Mexico’s San Juan Basin, which is the most active coalbed methane production area in the country.

Natural gas is 95-98 percent methane. Methane is colorless and odorless, making leaks hard to detect without scientific instruments.

“The results are indicative that emissions from established fossil fuel harvesting techniques are greater than inventoried,” Kort said. “There’s been so much attention on high-volume hydraulic fracturing, but we need to consider the industry as a whole.”

Coalbed methane is gas that lines pores and cracks within coal. In underground coal mines, it is a deadly hazard that causes fatal explosions almost every year as it seeps out of the rock. After the U.S. energy crisis of the 1970s, techniques were invented to extract the methane from the coal and use it for fuel. By 2012, coalbed methane supplied about 8 percent of all natural gas in the United States.

Frankenberg noted that the study demonstrates the unique role space-based measurements can play in monitoring greenhouse gases.

“Satellite data cannot be as accurate as ground-based estimates, but from space, there are no hiding places,” Frankenberg said.

In March 2014 the Obama Administration announced a strategy to reduce methane emissions under its Climate Action Plan. The strategy includes improving the measurement and monitoring of methane emissions and assessing current methane emissions data.

Federal Court upholds Grand Canyon Uranium Mining Ban

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By Brenna Goth, The Republic, azcentral.com, September 30, 2014

A 20-year ban on uranium mining near the Grand Canyon will remain in place after the U.S. District Court in Arizona ruled Tuesday against mining groups that sued the federal government.

Mining associations and other groups with a stake in the industry argued that the U.S. Department of the Interior had erred in a 2012 decision to ban new mining for 20 years on more than 1 million acres of public land near the national park. They argued the ban was based on “overly cautious,” speculative environmental risks. The withdrawal decision was based on studies assessing potential impacts on water, soil and other resources.

SPECIAL REPORT: Abandoned uranium mines continue to haunt Navajos on reservation

The ban prohibits the exploration and development of new claims but does not affect previously approved mining.

 

Photo credit, Don Bills/U.S. Geological Survey The Kanab North mine, north of Grand Canyon National Park, is not one of the mines covered under the 20-year ban, since it already exists. The U.S. District Court decision upholding the Interior Department's ban on new mines applies to new development only. Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/03/22/20-year-ban-new-uranium-mining-claims-grand-canyon-holds-court-148319


Photo credit, Don Bills/U.S. Geological Survey
The Kanab North mine, north of Grand Canyon National Park, is not one of the mines covered under the 20-year ban, since it already exists. The U.S. District Court decision upholding the Interior Department’s ban on new mines applies to new development only.
Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/03/22/20-year-ban-new-uranium-mining-claims-grand-canyon-holds-court-148319

 

Judge David Campbell heard oral arguments on Sept. 9 and ruled Tuesday that then-Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar did not violate the law when he chose to “err on the side of caution in protecting a national treasure,” even if he did not have “definitive information.”

An Interior Department spokesperson declined to comment.

A coalition of environmental groups and the Havasupai Tribe joined the lawsuit to defend the ban, sayingthe effects of uranium mining are long lasting and may not be fully known for decades.

“This is a great day for the Grand Canyon,” said Ted Zukoski, the lawyer representing those groups, adding that the department “really did its homework” with the risk assessments.

Mining groups have 60 days to appeal.

Laura Skaer, executive director of one of the plaintiffs, the American Exploration and Mining Association, said she would need time to review Campbell’s reasoning before deciding any next steps.

2014 Sacred Water Tour Report-Back

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Max Wilbert, Susan Hyatt, Katie Wilson, and Michael Carter, Deep Green Resistance Southwest Coalition

In late May 2014, members of Deep Green Resistance (DGR), Great Basin Water Network, the Ely-Shoshone Indian tribe, and others toured the valleys of eastern Nevada and western Utah targeted by the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) for groundwater extraction.[1] The region is part of the Great Basin, a cold desert named for its lack of any drainage to an ocean. What rain falls in the Great Basin remains there in a few streams, ponds, lakes, springs, and aquifers. It is these aquifers that SNWA wants to pump into a central pipeline and bring to the cities of Las Vegas and Henderson. The Goshute and Shoshone tribes and many groups, local individuals, businesses, and governments oppose the project, now stalled by lawsuits. DGR initiated the Sacred Water Tour to help familiarize potential opponents with the land and the water conflict.

We met on the 24th at the Goshute Tribal Headquarters, in the tiny town of Ibapah, Utah, near the Nevada border.   More than a year earlier, DGR coordinators Max Wilbert and Michael Carter met the tribal council here for the first time, to offer solidarity and assistance with the water-grab fight.

Goshute Tribal Headquarters

Goshute Tribal Headquarters

It was the Goshute’s dilemma that first attracted our attention to the SNWA pipeline.[2] Both the Goshute and Ely Shoshone (the Shoshone in this region called themselves “Newe”) have reservation land in the affected area, and both have been fighting the pipeline since it was first proposed. Rick Spilsbury, a Shoshone man from Ely, Nevada, led the tour, which began with Spring Creek, near Ibapah in Antelope Valley.

Spring Creek sustains a rich diversity of life. Rare Bonneville cutthroat trout swim in the creek and reservoir, elk come to drink, and many medicinal and edible plants grow in the riparian areas. Watercress lines the creek, and stinging nettles and wild rhubarb grow under the shade of the rocks where the water emerges. The stewardship of the Goshute has been integral in the return of Bonneville cutthroat to their native waters, and Spring Creek is essential in the restoration of the native fish population.[3]

About a dozen Goshute people went along this part of the tour, including young children transfixed by the sight of water springing straight from rock. The small stream cooled a channel through hot, dry air. The Goshute seemed especially quiet here, though all laughed when one of us held up a handful of old elk droppings, apparently thinking we didn’t know what they were. There seemed a lightness of heart to the mood, maybe because all felt that for the time being, the spring was safe.

Pond at Spring Creek and Deep Creek Range

Pond at Spring Creek and Deep Creek Range

SNWA suffered a major legal setback in December, 2013, when a Nevada District Court judge ruled that the State Engineer’s decision allowing the groundwater pumping was “arbitrary and capricious,” and also “criticized the proposed plan to monitor and take action if damage to the environment occurs and stated there must be scientific triggers.”[4] “Triggers” are events—such as the drying of springs or wells—that would force SNWA to cease pumping water and re-evaluate how it’s impacting an aquifer.

Before this ruling, SNWA wouldn’t even negotiate the possibility of triggers, according to tour guide Rick Spilsbury. Though SNWA has appealed, and other federal lawsuits against the project are pending, the overall outlook for now is good. As Spilsbury explained it, SNWA owns the water rights but because they’re locked in litigation, the water must legally stay put. However, he also cautioned that in the midst of this wave of good news is the bad news that weary pipeline opponents are becoming complacent.

It is important to remember that no success is guaranteed to last as long as industrial civilization stands. And any loss will be effectively permanent. Overdrawn aquifers will not return to their original states on timescales meaningful to humans. It’s possible to stop the SNWA pipeline, but if organized action doesn’t materialize before it’s too late, the effects are irreversible.

“My people have lived here sustainably for over 10,000 years,” said Spilsbury. “We want that for all of the Earth for another 10,000 years.”

From Spring Creek, the tour proceeded south through Antelope Valley into Spring Valley. Spring Valley would be mined for 61,127 acre feet of water annually (one acre-foot is enough water to cover an acre of land a foot deep—about 325,850 US gallons). Along with other valleys targeted for wells—Delamar, Cave, and Dry Lake—the project may produce 200,000 acre feet of water per year.

That night, we stopped to camp at Cleve Creek on the eastern edge of Spring Valley. We did not see any of the “Indian Petroglyphs” indicated on the map, but the place’s coolness, its cottonwoods and willows, its little gurgling creek, the distant tree-spotted meadows in the Schell Creek Range above, all spoke of its endurance and durability. The vestigial ice-age water below the surface—not so long ago, these valleys were long fjords of inland seas, the many mountain ranges slender peninsulas and islands—had a quiet language of its own, too. This quiet of the Great Basin is immense, sometimes intimidating. At Cleve Creek that night, as small thunderstorms came and went and birds and bats circled in the twilight, the calm was overwhelmingly of peace and security.

The conversation turned to the topic of bears and, as if the sky were participating, the clouds parted to reveal the constellation Ursa Major (the Great Bear), whose seven brightest stars are also known as the Big Dipper.

The next day we went further south through Spring Valley to the Swamp Cedars, a place that is both sacred and horrible to Goshute and Shoshone peoples. For many generations, this was a gathering place, trading ground, and ceremonial area. But only two generations ago, Mormon settlers and the U.S. cavalry attacked Newe gathered at this location.[5] Over a hundred people were killed in three massacres.

Sacred Water Tour, 2014

Sacred Water Tour, 2014

After paying our respects, admiring the rare ecology of a valley-floor forest in Nevada, and contemplating the sobering fact that this site is surrounded by SNWA test wells and is constantly threatened (a nearby wind farm was originally sited in the cedars), we proceeded further south.

After passing through Ely for resupply, long dirt roads carried us further south in sagebrush valleys between several mountainous wilderness areas (including Mount Grafton Wilderness). These remote, life-filled areas are threatened by the water grab as well.

In the heat of the afternoon, we dropped down to the West to Hot Creek Springs and Marsh Area, part of Kirch Wildlife Management Area. We visited Adams-McGill Reservoir, an oasis full of fish, flanked by many birds and lined with thick bulrush. A great blue heron waited nearby to show us that life can thrive in the desert—if there is water.

Kirch Wildlife Management Area

Kirch Wildlife Management Area

The endangered White River spinedace live in these waters, and are directly threatened by the proposed pipeline which would drain crucial habitat for the few remaining spinedace populations.

According to the Center for Biological Diversity, “A recent environmental impact statement for the proposed pipeline project disclosed that major vegetation and ecosystem changes would occur on more than 200,000 acres, including wetlands that will dry up and wildlife shrubland habitat converted to dryland grasses and noxious weeds. More than 300 springs would also be hurt, along with more than 120 miles of streams.”[6]

We headed back into Cave Valley via an extremely rough road, and we guessed that it rarely travelled. No place to break down. Even though the herd of wild horses we glimpsed knew where to find water out in these dry open valleys, there is no guarantee we could find drinking water. There are few perennial streams or springs. Most of the water is held in the ground, and the shallow groundwater brings life. Every drop of water counts. Water stolen means death to many of those who call this land home.

As the Goshute put it, “even a slight reduction in the water table will result in a cascade of wildlife and vegetation impacts directly harming our ability to engage in traditional practices of hunting, gathering, and fishing on ancestral lands. As our former Chairman Rupert Steele has pointed out; ‘if we lose our language or our lands, we will cease to be Goshute people.’ SNWA’s groundwater development application is the biggest threat to the Goshute way of life since European settlers first arrived on Goshute lands more than 150 years ago.”[7]

Before reaching our next camp in a small pass along the side of Cave Valley, we passed beneath the great tilted limestone peaks of the Schell Creek mountain range.

Schell Creek Mountains

Schell Creek Mountains

Our campsite that evening, with views into two valleys threatened by SNWA, reminded us of what happened to the Owens River Valley in California after a water extraction project. The valley was turned into a desiccated, dusty landscape largely devoid of life.[8]

That evening, we watched the sunset—a vibrant backdrop of rust, fuschia, and vermillion—from a remote limestone bluff above the pass until the light faded and hunger and darkness drove us back to camp.

Great Basin sunset, Cave Valley

Great Basin sunset, Cave Valley

The sun rose bright on our final morning, cicada song rising in volume with the light. We drove east along several more valleys before dropping into Lake Valley, where SNWA has purchased several ranches. The largest ranch was scandalized when SNWA fired a ranch manager for sexually harassing a female employee. According to Spilsbury, the money-losing ranch is an unpopular venture for the semi-public water agency, even in Las Vegas.

The day was warming quickly, reminding us this desert isn’t always cold. Lake is a broader valley than the others, the mountain ranges lower and gentler than those just to the west. Here the distance felt lonelier, more desolate, yet grazing antelope and circling ravens made their ways through the heat and bright sun. We made a final stop at another SNWA test well, and found beetles and ants and many other subtle crawling things in the cow-burnt soil. A sign in the bulldozed perimeter read “restoration area” with no evident irony at all. We said goodbye, wondering what would happen next, what we could do. The fate of this land seems in the hands of lawyers and judges, where a city’s agents have squared off against the scattered peoples of the dry valleys who only seem to want to be left alone. This is the old weary story of civilization—of legitimized theft, of an inevitable trajectory of civilized human endeavor that always ends in ruin. Yet the land wants to live.

SNWA Test Well site, Cave Valley

SNWA Test Well site, Cave Valley

As long as the cities of civilization exist near these wild places of sage and sky, they will have their eyes on the water. Even with precious little water evident in the landscape and ecology of the dry valleys, the judge in the December court ruling has noted that the SNWA water-grab is “likely the largest interbasin transfer of water in U.S. history”.[9] If the pipeline is approved the beautiful land will be permanently transformed into a dry dead place in the same way that other lands have been destroyed by this culture of extraction. As Derrick Jensen says, “Civilization is not redeemable. This culture will not undergo any sort of voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living. If we do not put a halt to it, civilization will continue to immiserate the vast majority of humans and to degrade the planet until it (civilization, and probably the planet) collapses. The effects of this degradation will continue to harm humans and nonhumans for a very long time.”[10]

DGR Southwest Coalition is searching for strategies to add defenses to the water and communities of the region. One possibility is being advanced by Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, which “works with communities to establish Community Rights—such that communities are empowered to protect the health, safety, and welfare of their residents and the natural environment, and establish environmental and economic sustainability.”[11] We welcome any suggestions and offers to help; we also encourage you to join the yearly Sacred Water Tour next May.

 

[1] Michael Carter, “Groundwater Pipeline Threatens Great Basin Desert, Indigenous Groups,” Deep Green Resistance News Service, June 17, 2013, http://dgrnewsservice.org/2013/06/17/groundwater-pipeline-threatens-great-basin-desert-indigenous-groups/

[2] Stephen Dark, “Last Stand: Goshutes battle to save their sacred water,” Salt Lake City Weekly, May 9, 2012, http://www.cityweekly.net/utah/article-35-15894-last-stand.html?current_page=all

[3] US Fish and Wildlife Service, “Status Review for Bonneville Cutthroat Trout,” October 2001, http://wildlife.utah.gov/cutthroat/BCT/literature/fws/bct_status_review.pdf

[4] Lukas Eggen, “Opponents of SNWA pipeline earn ‘complete victory’,” The Ely Times, December 13, 2013, http://www.elynews.com/2013/12/13/opponents-snwa-pipeline-earn-complete-victory-2/

[5] Delaine Spilsbury, “Clark, Lincoln, and White Pine Counties Groundwater Development Project Public Comment,” October 5, 2011, http://water.nv.gov/hearings/past/springetal/browseabledocs/Public Comments/Delaine Spilsbury 3.pdf

[6] Center for Biological Diversity, “Top 10 U.S. Endangered Species Threatened by Overpopulation,” October 28, 2011, http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2011/7-billion-10-28-2011.html

[7] Protect Goshute Water, “Southern Nevada Water Authority Groundwater Pumping & Pipeline Proposal,” The Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation, accessed June 24, 2014, www.GoshuteWater.org

[8] Marc Reisner, Cadillac Desert. New York: Viking Penguin, 1986.

[9] Rob Mrowka, “Lawsuit Filed to Halt Massive Las Vegas Water Grab: Pipeline Would Dry Up Springs and Wetlands, Hurt Fish, Sage Grouse, Pronghorn and Other Species” Center for Biological Diversity, February 12, 2014http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2014/southern-nevada-water-authority-02-12-2014.html

[10] Derrick Jensen, Endgame (Volume I): The Problem of Civilization. New York: Seven Stories, 2006.

[11] Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, “Community Rights,” accessed June 25, 2014, http://www.celdf.org/section.php?id=423

Resistance Radio: A discussion on oil and gas drilling in the West.

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The landscape of the rocky mountain west has been transformed on a scale unimaginable by oil and gas industries into a giant fossil fuel factory spanning tens of thousands of square miles.

We are under siege.

Derrick Jensen interviews Jeremy Nichols of WildEarth Guardians on Resistance Radio: A discussion on oil and gas drilling in the West.

Listen to the interview below, listen at our Deep Green Resistance Youtube channel, or browse all Resistance Radio episodes.

The Mother of All Anti-Fracking Tools

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The first county in the United States to outlaw fracking has an idea that could give environmentalists the upper hand—and deliver a major setback to big oil.

By: Jacob Baynham, Outside Magazine, June 2014

blowout-fracking

Mora County, New Mexico, a patchwork of prairie, foothills, and high peaks on the east flank of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, unemployment stands at 16 percent, county workers operate out of leaky temporary buildings, and the population density is so low—just two people per square mile—that the tiny community and its largest town, 300-person Wagon Mound, are still classified as frontier by state health officials.

In short, Mora isn’t the kind of place that comes to mind for a national showdown on fracking. But in April 2013, county commissioners took center stage in the fight by passing the Community Water Rights and Local Self-Governance Ordinance, which declared it illegal for companies to extract hydrocarbons anywhere in the county, making Mora the first in the U.S. to ban oil and gas drilling outright, on public and private land.

Not surprisingly, lawsuits soon followed. The county was sued in federal district court in Albuquerque late last year by theIndependent Petroleum Association of New Mexico (IPANM) and three local property owners. In January, a second suit was filed by Shell Western, a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell, the world’s sixth-largest oil company.

The likely outcome? Busy lawyers. But the suits could also set a nationwide precedent by settling an interesting argument: Does a community’s right to self-governance trump the rights of corporations? The county ordinance’s basic aim is to protect the water supply in a parched region of a drought-stricken state, but it also contains a bill of rights for the environment, which argues that natural ecosystems “possess inalienable and fundamental rights to exist.”

The lawsuit by Royal Dutch Shell claims that Mora County’s rule denies the company its constitutional rights, chief among them corporate personhood, which states that a business has the same rights as an individual. (The controversial Citizens United Supreme Court ruling cemented corporations’ constitutional right to free speech.)

“This ordinance denies our property interest by declaring to criminalize virtually any activity undertaken by a corporation relating to oil and gas exploration and production,” says Curtis Smith, a spokesman for Shell.

Some environmentalists say that’s the whole point and are eager to test it. The ordinance was drafted with help from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, a Pennsylvania nonprofit. CELDF cofounder Thomas Linzey acknowledges that provisions in the document contradict existing laws, but he relishes the chance to defend the self-governance statute before a judge. As the case goes into litigation, tiny Mora County, which doesn’t even have a stoplight, could help usher in a series of similar laws, and CELDF is working hard to ensure that this happens. It’s a fight Big Green groups have failed to take up, says Linzey, so it’s being waged at the grassroots level.

“Environmental folks don’t seem to give a shit,” he says. “They complain that the existing laws, which are stacked against us, are the only tools we have. We say maybe you should invent some new tools, because you’re not protecting anything.”

Banning oil and gas extraction under the purview of local government isn’t new. In 2010, Pittsburgh became the first city to ban fracking, which uses high-pressure water and chemicals to release oil and gas from subterranean shale deposits. Since then, more than 400 municipalities have instituted similar resolutions. The bans have mostly come in the form of zoning changes that keep the industry outside city limits.

But gas companies don’t drill in cities; they drill in the areas around them. That’s what makes Mora County’s ordinance unique. It bans energy extraction from a huge undeveloped area, nearly 1.2 million acres of rolling prairie, piñon and ponderosa forests, and 13,000-foot peaks.

“The oil and gas industry felt like it could contain these sorts of initiatives on a city-by-city scale,” says Eric Jantz, a staff attorney at the New Mexico Environmental Law Center, which is defending Mora County in the suit brought by IPANM. “But once you start getting into countywide prohibitions, that’s something the oil and gas industry has bigger concerns about.”

John Olivas, the Mora County commission chairman who helped pass the ordinance, says county commissioners voted for the sweeping legislation because regulations and zoning rules—typical anti-fracking tools—are simple loopholes that the industry would one day march through. “If the price is right for these corporations,” he says, “they’re coming.”

Karin Foster, the executive director of IPANM, counters that Mora County has been commandeered by a rogue environmental group. “This community-rights ordinance appeals to uneducated people in small communities that feel like they need to fight the man,” Foster says. “I don’t think the people leading them have their interests in mind.”

Some locals agree. Mora County is 80 percent Hispanic, and many residents are suspicious of Anglo groups coming in with an agenda, be it industrial or environmental. “That’s a real missionary attitude, to come into a place and say, ‘We’re going to protect you,’ ” says Sofia Martinez, an environmental -justice activist from Wagon Mound. Martinez opposes fracking, but she wishes that the county had taken a regulatory approach, one that didn’t expose it to potentially lengthy and expensive lawsuits. (Though the county has pro bono representation, by CELDF, among others, it may have to pay damages if it loses.)

Mora County’s case is likely to take years to resolve. Any ruling will almost assuredly be appealed, moving the case to the Tenth Circuit Court in Denver. But for now, Mora has become a cause célèbre, with other counties—like San Miguel, in New Mexico, and Johnson, in Illinois—considering similar bans. Cities and counties are now even working on community ordinances outlawing things like factory farms and GMO crops.

“We’ve all heard about Mora County,” says Sandra Steingraber, one of the nation’s most outspoken anti-fracking activists and author of Raising Elijah: Protecting Our Children in an Age of Environmental Crisis. Steingraber has been watching the fight all the way from upstate New York, where she’s battling at the township level. “The science is certainly on our side, and it points to the need for a nationwide ban,” Steingraber says. “Now we’ll see if the law ends up on our side.”

“Utah’s Carbon Bomb”: State Plots Massive Tar Sands & Oil Shale Projects Despite Climate Concerns

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Map of oil shale and tar sands deposits in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming.

Map of oil shale and tar sands deposits in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming.

 

While the fight over the Keystone XL pipeline and the Alberta tar sands has galvanized the environmental movement, far less attention has been paid to a related story here in the West. The state of Utah has begun making preparations for its own major tar sands and oil shale extraction projects. According to one U.S. government report, land in the region could hold up to three trillion barrels of oil — that’s more recoverable oil than has been used so far in human history. Critics say Utah is sitting on a tar sands carbon bomb. The Utah Water Quality Board has recently begun giving out permits for companies to extract from the state’s tar sands reserves. We speak to Taylor McKinnon, energy director of the Grand Canyon Trust.

TAYLOR McKINNON: In Utah, we have vast deposits of oil shale and tar sands, up to 20 billion barrels’ worth of oil in the tar sands deposits. And the USGS, the United States Geological Survey, estimates up to a trillion barrels of developable oil in the oil shale. These are unconventional fuels. Like Alberta’s tar sands, they need to be mined, melted, before they’re turned into a liquid hydrocarbon. So the energy investment on the front end of their development far exceeds that of conventional oil, and as a result, the resulting carbon emissions from developing these fuels also far exceeds that of conventional oil. When we’re facing climate change and the IPCC is saying we have a carbon budget within which to work in coming decades, this is the exact wrong policy direction from a matter of energy and climate.

AMY GOODMAN: So, I mean, we’ve heard so much about tar sands in Alberta. Why do we hear so little about what’s going on in Utah? And place it exactly for us in Utah.

TAYLOR McKINNON: We’re talking about deposits that are located in the Uintah Basin in eastern Utah and into western Colorado. It’s the heart of the Colorado River Basin. I think the reason we’ve heard more about Alberta’s tar sands is because they’re being developed. In Utah, the deposits are not being developed. It’s prospective. And we’re seeing really the onset of development, the onset of significant investment on the part of industry. We have—

AMY GOODMAN: What are the telltale signs? Like highways being built?

TAYLOR McKINNON: Highways are being built, publicly funded infrastructure. There’s, for example, an $80 million publicly funded road that’s been punched south into the Book Cliffs at the behest of an oil shale lobby in the state Legislature in Utah. So we’re seeing public investment, over a million acres of land, state and federal public land, available for leasing. And we’re seeing the very beginnings of commercial plays, attempted commercial plays, in those deposits, in the shallow deposits in the Uintah Basin.

AMY GOODMAN: How would they get the shale—the shale oil below? How does it—how would the equipment go in? And how would it affect the water?

TAYLOR McKINNON: Right now, the shallow deposits are being targeted, which would mean it would be—it’s strip mining, much like you see mountaintop removal or other coal mining in the U.S. So we’re talking about strip mining.

AMY GOODMAN: Yet isn’t tourism in Utah one of its main sources of revenue?

TAYLOR McKINNON: There’s a lot of tension between fossil fuel extraction—industrializing landscapes for fossil fuels and protecting them for tourism.

AMY GOODMAN: What’s the Grand Canyon Trust, your organization, doing?

TAYLOR McKINNON: We’re engaged on a number of different fronts. In 2012, the Obama administration allocated 800,000 acres of public lands as available for oil shale and tar sands leasing. We’re challenging that leasing framework in court, in federal district court. We’re also challenging several of the individual projects that are moving forward: the first tar sands lease pursuant to that leasing program, in addition to oil shale projects on state land.

AMY GOODMAN: What are the companies that will stand to benefit?

TAYLOR McKINNON: One is Enefit American, which is an Estonian company.

AMY GOODMAN: A company from Estonia?

TAYLOR McKINNON: Essentially, yes. Estonia has relied on oil shale for a long time for much of their power, and they’re one of the most carbon-intensive nations in the world, and they have vast pollution problems right now as a result of burning and mining oil shale. US Oil Sands is one of the leading players in the tar sands in the region. They’re pursuing tar sands mining on state land. And they are—

AMY GOODMAN: US—

TAYLOR McKINNON: On U.S. state land. They are—they plan to take that technology and use it in Alberta. Another company is Red Leaf—

AMY GOODMAN: That’s a U.S. company?

TAYLOR McKINNON: They are—they are, I believe, American, but with Canadian interests, if not Canadian-owned. These are foreign companies that are here in the U.S. on the front end of a play to try to get a foot in the door.

AMY GOODMAN: Total also involved?

TAYLOR McKINNON: Total is—dumped—

AMY GOODMAN: The French company, oil company.

TAYLOR McKINNON: Total allocated about $300 million in support of Red Leaf Resources, which is one of the oil shale plays that we see in the Uintah Basin.

AMY GOODMAN: Geographically place this for us in Utah in terms of cities, like Moab, for example.

TAYLOR McKINNON: We’re talking about north of Moab and to the southeast of Salt Lake City and to the northwest of Grand Junction, Colorado.

AMY GOODMAN: And the residents in these areas, how divided are they?

TAYLOR McKINNON: There’s division. There’s also a lot of support for jobs in some of the rural committees. So, some of the ranchers—the folks who stand to lose from the industrialization of these landscapes and who stand to lose from the pollution of groundwater and surface water are opposed to it. So some of the ranchers around there are opposed to it. But the people who want the jobs are often for it.

AMY GOODMAN: Compare this to the area of tar sands in Alberta, Canada, the size.

TAYLOR McKINNON: The oil shale deposits, in terms of barrels, are larger—in terms of the barrels of oil, are larger than Alberta’s tar sands. They’re not as accessible. And that’s good news.

AMY GOODMAN: Requiring more energy to—

TAYLOR McKINNON: Requiring more energy to get at. And that energy investment thus far has precluded them from being commercially viable. But as supplies of conventional oil wane, we see, as in Alberta, more and more investment being put towards these more energy-intensive and carbon-intensive unconventional fuels.

AMY GOODMAN: Where does the Bureau of Land Management stand, and President Obama himself?

TAYLOR McKINNON: The BLM and President Obama have allocated about 800,000 acres of public lands as available for oil shale and tar sands leasing. There are conditions imposed on when a lease can be let, but those lanes are available. And as a matter of climate and energy policy, it’s difficult to reconcile that with our climate goals.

Excerpted from Amy Goodman: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report, 3/14/2014.

New Proposals for Gas Drilling at Ouray Refuge in Utah

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The Colorado Pikeminnow is an endangered fish that inhabits the Colorado River. A pair of proposals to drill oil and gas wells at the Ouray National Wildlife Refuge are up for review through early April. The refuge in eastern Utah is already home to a half-dozen active wells, four endangered fish species, and rare cacti.
Photo courtesy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

A pair of proposals to drill oil and gas wells at the Ouray National Wildlife Refuge are up for review through early April. The refuge in eastern Utah is already home to a half-dozen active wells, four endangered fish species and rare cacti.

SALT LAKE CITY — While a national wildlife refuge may appear to be an improbable location to drill for natural gas or oil, two companies are seeking to do just that at the Ouray National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Utah.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has released assessments on the proposals and is seeking input from the public through April 8.

Development of the wells at the nearly 12,000-acre refuge can happen because the federal government owns the land but not the subsurface mineral rights.

Over the past decade, several wells have been developed, tapping mineral rights owned by the Ute Tribe, private individuals or the School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration.

The Utah situation is not an anomaly. The federal agency manages oil and gas operations on one-fourth of the 558 national wildlife refuges in the system. The refuge in Utah is already home to at least a half-dozen active wells involving state-owned mineral rights.

In this instance, the environmental assessment on the proposal by Thurston Energy Operating Co. is to spend a year developing two oil and gas wells on two pads, each about 1.6 acres. The wells would be drilled to a depth of 7,000 feet and have an operational life of 30 to 40 years before being reclaimed.

Another proposal by Ultra Resources Inc. encompasses the drilling and operation of nine oil and gas wells from five pad locations, each at 1.6 acres. An environmental assessment has also been released on Ultra’s proposal, which features a project area of 1,659 acres, including 1,376 acres on refuge property.

Both assessments include mitigation measures the companies must take to offset impacts, including effects on wildlife such as nesting raptors and thriving deer populations. The federal government is also requiring steps to minimize air pollution given the Uintah Basin’s trouble with high ozone levels in the wintertime.

The refuge was established in the 1960s and serves as a “genetic” haven for the four listed Colorado River endangered fish: the razorback sucker, the Colorado pikeminnow, the humpback chub and the bonytail chub. An endangered species of cactus is also found there. It includes a diverse ecosystem made up of forests, wetlands, 12 miles of the Green River and grasslands.

The service notes it is obligated to provide maximum protection of the refuge but provide mineral owners reasonable access and exploration rights to their mineral estates.

A paper copy of the assessments can be reviewed at the Ouray NWR Office at HC 69, 19001 Wildlife Refuge Road, Randlett, UT 84063. Comments should be submitted in writing by mail to the Ouray NWR Office or by email to sonja_jahrsdoerfer@fws.gov.

More information on the proposals is available by calling the refuge office at 435-545-2522.

Email: amyjoi@deseretnews.com

Twitter: amyjoi16

Original article byAmy Joi O’Donoghue, Deseret News 

Uranium Mining Expansion in Southern Utah

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Daneros uranium mine in southeastern Utah

Daneros uranium mine in southeastern Utah

Original article by Liz Thomas, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance

Scarred landscapes, contaminated water, and deadly gases are current reminders of the historic uranium mining and milling operations in southeastern Utah.  Now a Canadian mining corporation, Energy Fuels, is proposing to significantly expand its overall mining operation to increase ore production at its Daneros uranium mine in southeastern Utah.
The Daneros uranium mine, located in the heart of the Colorado Plateau, is surrounded by large expanses of spectacular wild lands.  Located five miles west of Natural Bridges National Monument, the uranium mine expansion is also near Cedar Mesa’s Grand Gulch, the Dark Canyon Wilderness Area, and Glen Canyon National Recreation Area’s Lake Powell.  These are areas enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of visitors from Utah and around the world, many of whom spend time camping, hiking, and enjoying scenic tours on the public lands surrounding the proposed mine site.

The Proposal
Energy Fuels is proposing to expand its existing mining operation from the current 4.5-acre operation at the Daneros mine to 46.3 acres (a ten-fold increase in surface disturbance).  The expansion includes the construction of new mining facilities at the nearby Bullseye and South Portal abandoned mine sites, installation of ventilation holes, and the construction of new access roads.  The company’s proposal states that over the next 20 years, 500,000 tons of ore could be produced at the expanded mining operation – an amount five times greater than what is permitted under the current Plan of Operations approved by the BLM in 2011.  For more detailed information on the company’s proposal, see the BLM’s press release.

Energy Fuels is pressuring the BLM to approve this major mine expansion even though the company closed down the Daneros uranium mine in October 2012.  This closure resulted from public backlash at the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster and the subsequent market drop in uranium prices.  The company has not yet re-opened the existing Daneros mine.

Historic Uranium Mining in Utah
Utah and the other states in the Four Corners region have a legacy of thousands of abandoned uranium mine sites.  These abandoned sites pose health, safety, and environmental risks to residents of the area, visitors, and wildlife, in the form of continued air and water contamination.  The federal government has a history of ignoring known sources of contamination and harm caused by the mining and milling of uranium, and has failed to notify uranium workers and the general public of these risks.

This sad history coupled with the significant risks inherent in uranium mining underscores the need for the BLM to conduct a comprehensive environmental analysis of the proposed Daneros uranium mine expansion.  The agency must disclose the potential impacts of expanded uranium mining on air and water quality, wildlife, wilderness, night skies, scenic viewsheds, cultural resources, and public health and safety.  Additionally, because the risks of mining don’t stop at the mine site, the agency must disclose the impacts associated with transporting and milling the uranium ore at the White Mesa Mill near Blanding, Utah.  Incredibly, even in light of the history and risks associated with uranium mining and milling, the BLM is not proposing to analyze the project in a comprehensive Environmental Impact Statement.

Uranium mining and milling is a dirty business, leaving a legacy of decades-old scars on the landscape of southern Utah. Accordingly, this proposed mine expansion should be denied.

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Noble Energy looks to the Denver Basin Aquifer System for non-tributary groundwater for operations

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Denver Basin Aquifers confining unit sands and springs via the USGS

Denver Basin Aquifers confining unit sands and springs via the USGS

Many water needs in the region have been met by buying supplies from farmers and ranchers, but a Noble Energy manager said Tuesday the oil and gas industry could and should stop being a part of that problem, and explained what his company is doing to get water.

The large energy developer is looking to use deep groundwater wells — drawing “non-tributary water” — to meets its needs down the road, said Ken Knox, senior adviser and water resources manager for Noble, during his presentation at the Colorado Farm Show in Greeley.

Farmers and others who pump groundwater typically draw water that’s less than 100 feet below the Earth’s surface — water that’s considered to be “tributary,” because it’s connected to the watershed on the surface and over time flows underground into nearby rivers and streams, where it’s used by farmers, cities and others.

Wanting to avoid water that’s needed by other users, Knox said Noble is looking to have in place about a handful of deep, non-tributary groundwater wells that draw from about 800 to 1,600 feet below the Earth’s surface.

Digging wells that deep is considered too expensive for farmers, Knox and others said Tuesday, and the quality of water at that depth is typically unusable for municipal or agricultural uses.

One of Noble’s deep groundwater wells is already in place, and the company is currently going through water court to get another four operating in the region down the road, Knox said. Along with digging deeper for water, Knox explained that Noble across the board is “strategically looking” to develop water supplies that don’t put them in competition with agriculture or cities.

Oil and gas development, according to the Colorado Division of Natural Resources, only used about 0.11 percent of the state’s water in 2012 — very little compared to agriculture, which uses about 85 percent of the state’s supplies.

But in places like Weld County — where about 80 percent of the state’s oil and gas production is taking place, and where about 25 percent of the state’s agriculture production is going on, and where the population has doubled since 1990 and is expected to continue growing — finding ways for an economy-boosting energy industry to not interfere with the water demands of farmers, ranchers and cities is critical.

The growing water demands of the region is coupled with the fact that the cheapest way to build water supplies is to purchase them from farmers and ranchers who are leaving the land and willing to sell. Those factors leave the South Platte Basin, which covers most of northeast Colorado, potentially having as many as 267,000 acres of irrigated farmland dry up by 2050, according to the Statewide Water Supply Initiative Study, released by the state in 2010.

With that in mind, the Colorado Farm Show offered its “Water Resources Panel: Agriculture, Urban and Oil and Development Interactions.”

Joining Knox on the panel were John Stulp, who is special policy adviser on water to Gov. John Hickenlooper; Dave Nettles, division engineer with the Water Resources Division office in Greeley; and Jim Hall, resources manager for the city of Greeley. The panel was moderated by Reagan Waskom, director of the Colorado Water Institute at Colorado State University.

Ken Knox, senior adviser and water resources manager for Noble Enerby

Ken Knox, senior adviser and water resources manager for Noble Enerby

Knox also spoke Tuesday of Noble’s and other energy companies’ efforts to recycle the water they use in drilling for oil and gas — a hydraulic fracturing process, or “fracking,” that involves blasting water, sand and chemicals into rock formations, about 7,000 feet into the ground, to free oil and natural gas.

The average horizontal well uses about 2.8 million gallons of water. Some water initially flows out of the well, but another percentage flows back over time. Knox stressed it is cheaper for companies to dispose of that returned water and buy fresh water for drilling purposes than it is to build facilities that treat used water.

But, seeing the need to make the most of water supplies in the region, Noble is willing to invest in water-recycling facilities and other water-efficiency endeavors.

Hall noted that the city of Greeley, which leases water to both ag users and oil and gas users, has seen a decrease in the amount of water it leases for energy development. With improved technology and improved drilling techniques, also decreasing is the amount of land oil and gas development is using, and the number of water trucks on rural roads.

Knox said oil and gas companies — once requiring about 8 acres for one well site — can now put four to eight wells on just 3 acres, meaning the impact on farm and ranch land is less than it once was. By becoming more water efficient, he said Noble has decreased its water truck loads by 1.65 million annually, and reduced its carbon dioxide emissions by 264,000 tons.

Original article by Eric Brown, The Tribune, via Coyote Gulch