Back when our Associate Editor Jonathan Thompson lived in the former mining town of Silverton, Colo., there was an ongoing debate about cleaning up abandoned mines. The stakeholders who wanted cleaner water advocated removing mine dumps, which leached acidic and heavy metal-laden water into streams. But many of the old-timers opposed the removal, arguing that tourists came to San Juan County to “look at the mine dumps. They’re really pretty, after all.”

It turns out that tourists really DO like to look at the toxic legacy left by mining. The Salt Lake Tribune profiles Butte, Mont., where the Chamber of Commerce is charging folks to look at the Berkeley Pit. And people are actually paying for it. ”Some people see contaminated water,” said chamber executive Marko Lucich. ”I see wealth.”

Makes you want to set up a Western environmental catastrophe tour. It could begin down near the Mexican border, where power plants on the south side of the border spew toxic fumes over to this side; pass through the cancer-filled uranium towns in Navajo country and southern Utah; and finish with a view of the folks of Libby, Mont.

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and the Buffalo Field Campaign are looking to give the Interior Department a new logo.

Given that Interior treats its bison “worse than any other wildlife in the National Park System” (HCN:The Killing Fields), PEER suggests that having a bison on Interior’s logo is really false advertising. They’re launching a contest to find something more appropriate for the agency that manages so much of our public landscape. Check out the campaign.

The EPA, apparently not content to ignore its whistleblowers, trim its operations and watch passively as its teeth get pulled by congress seems to have found a new gig. Helping with political fund raising: From The Denver Post:

The head of the Environmental Protection Agency was the featured guest at an intimate Denver fundraiser attended by representatives of industries regulated by his agency.

Stan Dempsey, head of the Colorado Petroleum Association, said he went to the event purely for “personal reasons” that had nothing to do with his position.

“I went to support [congressional candidate] Rick O’Donnell. I’m always interested in any fundraising event,” he said.

Perlmutter [an O’Donnell’s political opponent] , however, said he was not satisfied with the explanations and demanded to see the list of all those invited, not just those who attended.

“The whole thing smells of revolving-door issues and access to regulators,” said campaign spokeswoman Danielle Radovich Piper. “They came for access to the administrator, not a fundraiser.”

Some of the attendees included reps from El Paso Natural Gas, Colorado Petroleum Association, and the Colorado Mining Association. Read the whole article for more stomach churning details.

This actually brings two things to mind. 1) The excellent biography of Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro, particularly Means of Ascent where Johnson cultivates both monetary and political power by trading congressional and administrative favors with industry. And 2) it reminds me of the politics of the corrupt third-world, where even as scandals and inappropriate behavior abound, no one seems to have any capacity left for outrage.

This will be another blip on a radar of questionable and likely corrupt government practices that are carried out in the open and without any consequence. Today, Denver Post page 1; tomorrow, forgotten entirely.

The OHV and snowmobile crowds always get bad press for blazing new trails, removing roadblocks or roaring up trails that weren’t designated for their use. But don’t think everyone else is sweet and innocent. Check out this bitlet from the Missoulian:

The U. S. Forest Service announced in an open letter last week that it will immediately begin enforcing a horse- and hiker-only rule on all trails north of Blue Mountain Road in the recreation area.

“We have counted on signing, voluntary compliance and peer pressure to enforce this rule,” said Missoula District Ranger Maggie Pittman in the letter. “Unfortunately, these methods don’t seem to be working.

“The signs have been removed and vandalized, and the trail is being used by mountain bikers,” she said.

Setting aside the question of whether our almost non-existent public lands law enforcement will actually have much of an impact on mountain biker behavior, this raises a host of questions about whether we’re successfully inculcating any level of wilderness or environmental values in the next generation of uber-cool geared-up adrenaline junkies who use the public lands as their playground.

More and more, REI and its Shangri-La of gear and gadgetry seems like a threat to nature, rather than a service. Check out HCN’s article Invasion of the Rock Jocks about rock climbing’s changing face. Writer Robyn Morrison got flamed by climbing magazine Rock and Ice for touching a little too close to the bone. And as the Missoulian article demonstrates, the issues she highlights probably apply across the outdoor sporting spectrum.

If an outdoor sport is big enough to have equipment manufacturers, it probably means it’s got both the scale to do damage and the sense of entitlement to ignore limits.

The FBI is casting a wide net in its search for terrorists: Environmental demonstrators, anti-war protesters, and food for homeless programs make the list of suspected and surveilled. But so far, nary an anthrax-tossing, WTC bombing, jet hijacking, seaport-destroying enemy of freedom in the crowd. The ACLU has gotten hold of documentation of FBI surveillance of anti-globalization and anti-logging protesters. From the L.A. Times:

Denver-area activists said that since the surveillance documents became public, there had been a subtle chill, with some people avoiding protests for fear of ending up in an FBI file. Some activists think the FBI has been watching their groups to intimidate them.

“We’ve kind of gathered up our skirts and pulled in,” said Sarah Bardwell, who works for the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group. … “In our house, we don’t talk about politics anymore,” Bardwell said. “There’s been a toning down of everything we do.”

That change came after six FBI agents and Denver police officers visited her house in July 2004.

Six FBI agents! Thank goodness the FBI is working overtime for our protection. The FBI also assures us that only the guilty have something to fear:

[FBI spokeswoman Kelso] dismissed the idea that agents were spying on activists for political reasons.

“We don’t have enough agents,” Kelso said, “to go out there to monitor and surveil innocent people.”

I feel safer already.

Record outbreaks of mountain pine beetles are occurring thanks to “warmer than average winters.” The beetle increase is estimated as going from 675,000 acres to 1.1 million in a single year. Wow! Quote from the Oregon Register Guard:

“The region’s largest infestation of mountain pine beetles in 20 years has hit more than a million acres of forests in northern Idaho and Montana, while 2.5 million acres in Washington face disease and insect problems.

Recent flight surveys by the U.S. Forest Service and state forest management agencies found that years of drought have left forests in the Northwest vulnerable.”

This relates nicely to Michelle Nijhuis’ HCN story “Global Warming’s Unlikely Harbingers.” It all sounded so science-fictional when she wrote it two years ago…

How’s this for a water-geek yawner of a title? Water Availability for the Western United States–Key Scientific Challenges.

But this circular from the U.S. Geological Survey has striking content. It discusses the numerous pressures on Western water: the effects of population growth, groundwater contamination, global warming, and water laws that still pretend that ground water and surface water are somehow separate. It also has groovy graphs and maps showing everything from temperature rises across the West to the numbers of active and inactive mines at river headwaters. My personal favorite factoid: 60% of Arizona’s population depends on (likely unsustainable) groundwater pumping for their water supply. This, in a state experiencing an extraordinary drought, and the second fastest growth rate in the nation (HCN: Arizona Returns to the Desert). (Read on …)

This AP story touches on both an earlier GOAT post about the National Wildlife Federation buying out grazing leases, and to HCN’s story about the disturbing methods of Montana’s Department of Livestock toward bison management.

Montana’s Governor Schweitzer is talking about buying out the grazing leases around Yellowstone to reduce the mixing problem of cattle with brucellosis-infected bison.

“Schweitzer said he has talked to livestock groups about buyouts and plans further discussions with them and other Montanans.

‘We’re just laying this on the table,’ he said. ‘We haven’t got all the answers.’”

Ahh, but it is refreshing to see someone asking questions.

This is the first response HCN got from John Fayhee’s article about the West’s real estate boom and his own place in it. Feel free add your thoughts, here or on the main article. -Paolo Bacigalupi, Online Editor

IS EVERYONE A JOURNALIST?

I was one who applauded HCN’s graphics changes as they were being introduced, but you do seem to have overdone it with the March 20 issue, and not just in terms of graphics: color the articles by Fayhee Yellow.

Granted, advocacy journalists don’t live by the same constraints real journalists do, but these essays are, in my opinion, over the edge. Fayhee distorts, misleads, leaves out salient facts, and generally views the ‘beast’ from within its belly without having the vaguest notion what its outside dimensions are, somewhat reminiscent of the proverbial blind men reporting on the anatomy of an elephant.

(Read on …)

With the surfeit of bad news lately, I’ve been hunting for positive trends in the West. This report about grazing buyouts came via our Northern Rockies Editor, Ray Ring. My savior.

The National Wildlife Federation has helped engineer the purchase of a 74,000-acre grazing allotment near Yellowstone. They’ve been doing this around the national park for a while (HCN: Wildlife win one in Yellowstone) and their efforts have slowly built a sort of buffer zone that supports wildlife and reduces the number of cows and sheep that get ripped to shreds by wolves and grizzlies.

Grazing on public lands has been a thorny Western issue for a long time, whether it has to do with environmental degradation on poorly managed allotments, or the taxpayer cost of managing what amounts to a federal subsidy of ranching interests. And for a long time, environmentalists carped about the issue but resisted acknowledging the economic value that a federal grazing lease represented for ranchers. As the above article suggests, that’s been changing lately, with environmentalists offering generous cash offers to buy out and retire grazing leases. These “golden saddle” offers have worked in a number of states (HCN: The Big Buyout) and seem to represent one of the few trend lines where not only are good things happening for the environment, but they’re happening without a lot of acrimony.

If you’ve heard any good news lately, email me via HCN’s feedback form.

According to a poll by the Civil Society Institute and 40mpg.org, a plurality of Americans want the federal government to do more about climate change, and given the absence of federal leadership, they support local initiatives to do the same. (Link to survey results .pdf).

More and more, I’m thinking the Bush administration will be seen as the Neville Chamberlain of global warming — the folks who turned their eyes away from a real and increasing danger and who dithered in the face of an implacable foe. That the Bush administration seems to do it for the profit of campaign donors makes it even more squalid. Chamberlain was a dope, but even if history looks unkindly on him at least he wasn’t on the Nazi payroll.

The BLM is so slammed with drill applications that it can’t process them all. Big surprise, given the current energy boom, but the Rocky Mountain News business section covers this story as though the BLM is just sitting around trying to obstruct development and throw monkey wrenches into the Energy Act of 2005 which demanded that the BLM process all drilling applications within 30 days.

Interestingly, there’s no mention of the fact that the BLM tried to raise its fees (HCN: Oil Drillers get “One-stop shopping” at no extra cost) specifically so that it could address the increased demands of processing the flood of drilling applications. That price increase was beaten back, in part by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R) of Utah. So the BLM is being slammed for not processing apps fast enough, even as its funding has remained stagnant. And it’s not like the BLM hasn’t gotten creative in its attempts to support the industry. Remember when the gas industry got to install its own employees at BLM offices to help with the drilling backlog (HCN: Industry embeds its own in the BLM)?

This is an agency which is charged with managing a vast swath of federal lands, but under outgoing Interior Sectretary Gale Norton became an agency focused entirely on getting energy out of the ground. It doesn’t have enough staff to police the impacts of energy development. It doesn’t allow its staff to focus on other jobs (wildlife monitoring, anyone?). And yet now energy companies are complaining that the BLM isn’t processing permits fast enough? It seems like the BLM has done plenty to serve this particulary constituency. Maybe it’s time that the gas companies learned to wait in line.

Salmon season on the West Coast is being heavily curtailed because there are so few salmon — mostly in the Klamath River. Unfortunately, even though salmon numbers have fallen to critical levels, the only folks taking a hit are the people who fish: fishing may be cut or stopped entirely to avoid destroying the fragile population.

This makes sense until you discover that on the Klamath River, farmers will still divert their water and the Klamath dams will still generate electricity and salmon will still die in extraordinary numbers. Here’s a link to HCN’s recent article on that bit of irony. And here’s the story we did a couple years ago when Klamath salmon died like flies, and a scientist blew the whistle on the river’s management. Finally, lest you think there is some sort of legitimate scientific doubt about how much damage dams do to salmon, even the hydropower industry’s biggest scientific supporters also now agree that the only way to save fish is to kill dams.

I’m thinking of compiling a file of all the things that are obvious and yet never spoken, or else ignored. The facts of the salmon issue seem so obvious: dams kill salmon, diverting water kills salmon. And yet we still see articles like this one in the San Francisco Chronicle where only fishermen and environmentalists (conniving self-serving whiners that they are) are quoted as blaming the dams.

Does anyone have doomsday clock for wild salmon? We need a betting pool or something similarly cynical. Maybe we could all turn on a couple extra lightbulbs at home, hoist an aluminum can of our favorite beverage, and hold a wake for all those salmon who don’t stand a chance.