Rebecca Clarren

Today, the Senate passed the Farm Bill. Much can and will be written about the benefits and problems this mammoth piece of legislation will inspire. The $307 billion farm bill however does much more than grant subsidies to farmers and provide funds to nutrition programs like food stamps. In a small dark corner of the bill is an important piece of reform legislation that deals, not with food, but with natural gas prices. Let me explain.

If you use natural gas at home, you’ve probably noticed that your bills have been getting bigger. In some parts of the country they’ve almost doubled in the past six years. You might assume that rising gas prices are the stuff of Econ 101: Gas reserves in the Gulf of Mexico are dwindling, the cost of crude oil is sprinting upward, creating demand for other energy sources and hurricanes Katrina and Rita damaged refineries, cutting supply and jacking up prices. But what’s partly behind spikes in your gas bills are the financial traders who capitalize on a dysfunctional regulatory system and an energy market that’s devised to confound consumers.**

(Read on …)

Rebecca Clarren

In a stunning display of passive aggressive behavior the federal government has once again failed to propose a plan that will recover thirteen species of endangered Northwest salmon. Since 1994, environmental groups, tribes and the state of Oregon have complained that three different NOAA Fisheries proposals, called Biological Opinions, for salmon recovery violate the Endangered Species Act. The feds have gone so far as to claim that the dams are part of the natural landscape, akin to say a mountain, and therefore the fact that they kill tens of thousands of salmon each year, can’t be mitigated.

The latest biological opinion, released yesterday, once again fails to comprehensively consider the impact of the dams. Instead of doing what salmon defenders say would be the most effective and best move to help the struggling fish: remove four dams along the Snake River, the $75 million a year plan would make $500 million in capital improvements to the system’s 14 dams over 10 years, and boost rates for hydropower generation by the dams by up to 4 percent, reports the Oregonian.

(Read on …)

Ed Quillen

Bottled water has attracted ample criticism on environmental grounds, mostly because plastic bottles end up in the waste stream. But there’s another environmental cost: Transporting the water.

An article in today’s local newspaper explained now Nestlé plans to tap some local springs near Nathrop (between Buena Vista and Salida in Chaffee County, Colo.) for its Arrowhead bottled water.

The company proposes to collect 0.3 cubic feet per second (about 135 gallons) and transport the water by truck to its bottling plant in Denver. That works out to 194,400 gallons per day. A gallon of water weighs 8.35 pounds, so that’s 1,622,268 pounds, or about 811 tons, to be hauled from Nathrop to Denver every day.

(Read on …)

Marty Durlin

Online Editor

The U.S. Department of Energy announced April 12 that it’s investing $13.7 million in solar energy projects at 11 universities across the country, including Arizona State University and the California Institute of Technology. And that’s nice…but it’s a small ray of sunshine in the gloomy scenario forecast by the DOE budget.

The Bush administration is requesting nearly $25 billion for the energy department next year, an increase of nearly $5 billion over the FY08 budget. Given the war in Iraq, the state of the economy, the price of gas and oil, and the lip service to “clean” energies, you’d think there’d be some serious money for energy conservation in the budget, along with an emphasis on renewable energy.

But no. The energy efficiency and renewable energy line item? Minus 27 percent, down about $500 million.

So where is the money going? Weapons activities: up 5 percent to $6.6 billion. Fossil energy programs: up nearly 25 percent, at $1.1 billion. Yucca Mountain: up over $100 million.

Read it and weep.

Ed Quillen

About 15 years ago, High Country News published a long article of mine. Its working title was “Is Denver Necessary?”

Therein I argued that Denver had developed, then essentially gutted, a vast hinterland of about 300,000 square miles. The city had once seen the countryside as a source of raw materials for its industries and as a market for its products, and it invested in the hinterland. But since about 1970, the hinterland was basically a source of water for continued suburban development in the metro area.

There was more to it than that, though. The big picture was that the Mountain West had been developed as part of a Chicago empire after the Civil War. That is, the bucolic scene of steers in a mountain meadow was an extension of the packing plants of the Windy City, just as the rancher ordering from the Sears, Roebuck catalogue was part of the same extended urban system, all linked by railroads with names like “Chicago & Northwestern,” “Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific” and “Chicago, Burlington & Quincy.”

And in the 1990s, I argued, the West was coming under the dominance of a different city, Los Angeles. Instead of producing tangible products like timber, beef, and minerals, we were promoting intangibles like amenity lifestyles and quality recreational experiences.

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Sarah Gilman

Assistant Editor

Gather round folks, it’s time for a natural gas sing-along (a la the Beverly Hillbillies theme):

“Come and listen to a story about a man named Jed
A poor roughneck, barely kept his family fed,
Then one day he was drilling for some gas,
And up through the ground came a bubblin’ mess.

Salty coalbed methane water, that is. . .”

Gas companies seeking coalbed methane have pumped untold (and undoubtedly massive) quantities of the often briny stuff from the ground over the last decade and dumped it in streams, irrigation ditches and holding ponds in Wyoming and Montana’s Powder River Basin. Meanwhile (and much to the chagrin of many a Powder River area rancher), the feds have done little to study its impacts or regulate its discharge.

Federal officials are only now starting to review what’s known about CBM water and determine what information gaps need to be filled, reports the Associated Press, a full year after the deadline set by the 2005 federal energy bill. The review apparently came only after three environmental groups sued the Interior Department in February.

But this is not the first time the feds have dragged their feet on regulating this subset of the gas industry. (Read on …)

Sarah Gilman

Assistant Editor

Back when the feds saw the West (and, by extension, its residents) as disposable, they detonated four massive nuclear bombs thousands of feet below the sage scrub hills of western Colorado in hopes of freeing trillions of cubic feet of natural gas. The first explosion, which took place near Rulison in 1969, was ruled a failure because (surprise surprise) it made the gas dangerously radioactive. Even so, the US Department of Energy went ahead and blew up three more bombs below the gas-rich Piceance Basin in 1973.

That sort of cavalier attitude drew fire from Manhattan Project scientist John Gofman, who called members of the nuclear establishment “the scoundrels of the Earth,” and noted that he “wouldn’t believe anything written by the Department of Defense or the Department of Energy.”

But these days, the energy department is a touch more leery of the Rulison bomb site. (Read on …)

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

New uranium mines are proposed for dozens of places in the West, including Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico. Mining companies claim that the safety issues of past uranium mines won’t be an issue — these mines will be in-situ rather than open pit, so the radioactive metal will be dissolved underground and won’t come into direct contact with miners or nearby residents (see our story “Navajos pay for industry’s mistakes” for more on the health problems caused by old uranium mines and mills).

There’s one little hitch, though — such mines have a history of contaminating groundwater (see our story “Underground movement“). In Wyoming, an operating in-situ mine was just cited for numerous violations, including spills and an inadequate cleanup bond. The Casper Star-Tribune has the story:
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Ernie Atencio

How is it, in our theoretical democracy of, by and for the people, that government agencies and corporations think they can just blow off the public process and accountability time after time? It’s become tiresome business-as-usual, laying the burden of public information on the people instead of with the powers that be, where it should reside.

On April 2, the Navajo grassroots group Diné Citizens Against Ruining our Environment (Diné CARE) (HCN 10/31/94) and the San Juan Citizens Alliance filed a lawsuit against federal agencies overseeing the proposed Desert Rock coal-fired power plant in northwestern New Mexico to force them to release documents that they are legally required to share with the public. Diné CARE and the Citizens Alliance want to see records on the draft environmental impact statement; they want to know where the required water will come from and how the related expansion of the nearby BHP Navajo coal mine would affect tribal members living in the area. Sounds reasonable, but the Bureau of Indian Affairs, it’s regional director in Gallup and the Department of Interior — all named in the lawsuit — have so far refused to comply with requests under the Freedom of Information Act.

(Read on …)

Ed Quillen

Although I burn several cords of wood every winter, it’s still a blessing to have a thermostat that controls a natural-gas furnace. Natural gas also powers the household water heater and our kitchen stove. So I’d be a hypocrite if I opposed all natural-gas drilling and development.

Even so, I was disappointed when the federal Bureau of Land Management rejected Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter’s proposal to minimize the effects of natural-gas development on the Roan Plateau, a relatively untouched landscape of about 125,000 acres north of Interstate 70 between Rifle and Parachute.

Among other things, Ritter wanted 36,000 acres set aside as sensitive wildlife areas. The BLM says only 21,000 acres. Ritter proposed phased leasing; the BLM wants to lease it all at once. The City of Rifle officially opposed any drilling on the top of the plateau.

(Read on …)

Ed Quillen

Twice a year, I envy my in-laws in Arizona, and that doesn’t count those subzero days when I’m splitting firewood in the snow while they may be basking by a swimming pool. The two regular occasions for envy come at the spring onset and autumnal departure of Daylight Saving Time .

This Sunday night, most Americans — including those of us in Colorado — are supposed to set our clocks forward one hour. This used to happen on the first Sunday in April, but in order to “save energy,” Congress advanced it in 2007 to the second Sunday in March. The return to Standard Time was moved from the last Sunday in October to the first Sunday in November.

In theory, this saves energy because with an extra hour of daylight in the evening, people will wait longer to turn on their lights — or something like that.

But that theory doesn’t stand up to some facts gathered from Indiana, where 15 counties used to go on Daylight Time while the other 77 counties stayed on Standard Time. In 2006, the state legislature put all of Indiana on Daylight Time.

Since electricity consumption can be measured easily, this provided an ideal way to answer the question: Did the counties that had been on Standard Time use less energy after they switched to Daylight Time?

A professor and a graduate student at the University of California in Santa Barbara analyzed more than 7 million monthly meter readings. Residential electric usage increased from 1% to 4%, costing Hoosiers an extra $8.6 million a year, and social costs from increased emissions were estimated at from $1.6 to $5.6 million, according to an article in The Wall Street Journal.

(Read on …)

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

The San Francisco Chronicle reports on a new way to cut down on our demand for oil: change your car’s oil only as often as the manufacturer recommends.

Most cars, says the story, do fine with an oil change every 5,000 or even 10,000 miles. So ignore the little sticker from Grease Monkey that says you’ll be due for an oil change after 3,000.

Don’t know what your manufacturer recommends? The 3,000 Mile Myth site provides a list of the most common makes and models.

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

They’re all the rage, because:

They use less energy. They save you money on your electricity bill. And they kind of save the planet, or at least, they reduce the upward trend of global warming.

So we’re all installing compact fluorescent bulbs in all the light fixtures in our houses.

Turns out, “there’s a catch.”

That’s the warning from the new Santa Barbara-based Miller-McCune think tank:

Low-energy bulbs — also known as compact fluorescent lamps — contain small amounts of mercury. … (And) when you break a bulb with mercury in it, the mercury instantly vaporizes in the air and poses a health risk to people who inhale it. The U.S. National Institutes of Health warns: “Exposures to very small amounts of mercury can result in devastating neurological damage and death.”

One country — the United Kingdom — has begun alerting the public:

So this month, as stores throughout the United Kingdom began pulling traditional tungsten bulbs from their shelves as part of a government mandate to completely replace them by 2011, ministers at the Environment Agency were simultaneously calling for more public education — including warnings printed on bulb labels — about the health and environment risks presented by low-energy lights.

As a sober BBC report put it: “Official advice from the Department of the Environment states that if a low-energy bulb is smashed, the room needs to be vacated for at least 15 minutes. A vacuum cleaner should not be used to clear up the debris, and care should be taken not to inhale the dust. Instead, rubber gloves should be used, and the broken bulb put into a sealed plastic bag, which should be taken to the local council for disposal.”

Sheesh. The Miller-McCune story is here. Is no type of progress completely safe?