More Orr 2

 

Leavitt Urges State Leaders to Market Utah During the Games

SL Trib: 50 Years Later, Idaho's Atomic Energy Boom Is a Bust

Official may have conflict of interest in mine decision

Federal Register notice: Draft Recovery Goals for Colorado River Endangered Fish

Proponents of A-LP seek fast funding

Tree shredder easy on forest

Mining plans draw fire from backcountry users

Coal-bed methane fueling dispute

Dan Walters' twisted view of reality

Counterpunch: "Flying Bombs" -- Who Saw It Coming?

Controversy Over Montana Dam Comes to a Head

Chevrolet honors Hillary, Christy, Fergie, Marlo, and others

===================================================+

Date: Saturday, September 15, 2001 9:41 PM
Subject: SL Trib: Leavitt Urges State Leaders to Market Utah During the Games

[This article is both disgusting and hilarious. Note the group took a
tour of the recently incinerated Circle Four Farms--before last month's
fire it was the largest factory hog farm in the West. And note, too the
polygamy jokes!]
____________________________________________________________

Leavitt Urges State Leaders to Market Utah During the Games
Monday, September 10, 2001
 
BY THOMAS BURR
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

 

    CEDAR CITY -- The 2002 Olympic Games will be more than 17 days of
competitions along the Wasatch Front, Gov. Mike Leavitt told leaders from
across Utah on Friday. It also will be a chance to showcase Utah and
brand the state as a technology-savvy community with a dedicated work
force.

    "May I just ask that you not underestimate or underappreciate what a
remarkable opportunity this presents for us as a state," Leavitt said
during a concluding luncheon for the Utah Rural Summit, a gathering of
city and county leaders from across the state held this week in Cedar
City.

    Calling the Games a "great branding moment," Leavitt said Utah needs
to use the worldwide spotlight on Utah as a chance to show companies that
the state is a place where they should do business. Some 3.6 billion
people will be looking at Utah as "the center of the universe" during the
Olympics, he said, and communities need to use that to their advantage.

    The annual summit focused this year on capitalizing on technology and
the upcoming Olympics. The event began Wednesday night with a tour of
Circle Four Farms, an industrial-size hog producer near Milford, an hour
north of Cedar City in Beaver County. The trip was followed by a "mock"
planning commission meeting called "Paradox, Utah," which focused on
public policy making and land-use issues.

    Thursday's events included a panel discussions about integrating
technology into communities, marketing "local stories" to promote
communities, developing tourism programs and electronic-commerce
opportunities.

    Panel discussions about the Olympics dominated Friday's activities,
which culminated with Leavitt speaking about using the Games to promote
Utah's technological capa- bilities.

    Utah is one of the most wired places in the nation, Leavitt said, and
stressed that leaders need to learn to incorporate that message into
their economic development. "We're pioneering here once again," Leavitt
said.

    The sentiment that the Olympics are only the Salt Lake City games has
been dispersed, Leavitt said after the speech, and the Games will be felt
in every corner of Utah. "Benefits will be felt for generations and all
over the state," he said.

    The objective of the conference was to help rural Utah "capture the
spirit of the Olympics," said Wes Curtis, the director of the Utah Center
for Rural Life. Curtis said the conference was a success in that regard
and helped a lot of leaders learn ways to get their communities involved
in the Games.

    At least one important question from leaders was answered during the
summit. During a panel discussion about dealing with media during the
Games, Sevier County Commissioner Ralph Okerlund asked how he should deal
with the inevitable query from journalists about where to find
polygamists. Panel members suggested the leaders be honest and
straightforward in telling the news media about the state.

    But Scott Iverson, director of the Utah Media Center, which will
house credentialed reporters from around the world during the Games,
quipped that he had already considered making two posters for the center.
One would be of a man hawking "maps to the polygamist's homes,'' and the
other would parody Grant Wood's famous 1930 painting "American Gothic."
Instead, the poster would be called "Utah Gothic" and include one man
holding a pitchfork, surrounded by several wives.

===================================================+

Date: Saturday, September 15, 2001 9:41 PM
Subject: SL Trib: 50 Years Later, Idaho's Atomic Energy Boom Is a Bust

Monday, September 10, 2001

 

50 Years Later, Idaho's Atomic Energy Boom Is a Bust

 

BY GLEN WARCHOL
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

 

    ATOMIC CITY, Idaho -- When Alfred Christiansen arrived in Idaho's
high desert in August 1951, he had no idea he was about to become a
nuclear power pioneer.

    As a liquid metals specialist at General Electric in Schenectady,
N.Y., he came to Idaho's high desert to help University of Chicago's
Argonne Laboratory set up the world's first breeder reactor -- EBR-1 --
at a former Navy gunnery range 40 miles west of Idaho Falls.

    "When I got there it turned out the Argonne people knew as much about
liquid metal cooling as I did," says Christiansen, who now lives in Salt
Lake City. "They told me to pick up what I could on how reactors
operate."

    The project's brilliant lead physicist, Walter Zinn, gave
Christiansen more hands-on experience than he bargained for, drafting the
New Yorker as a control-room operator in bringing the breeder reactor to
criticality, or controlled nuclear fission.

    Slide rules in hand, Zinn and a dozen workers watched the gauges in
the tiny control room as EBR-1 slowly came to life. Scientists knew a
reactor that "breeds" more nuclear fuel than it consumes was possible in
theory, but until EBR-1 began splitting atoms and spitting neutrons into
the surrounding uranium, nothing was certain.

    At one point, Christiansen was slow in resetting an instrument on the
control panel. "I got a good crack on the side of the head with Zinn's
slide rule," he remembers. When breeder reactor theory finally became
reality, it happened in silence. Only the humming gauges and scientists'
calculations showed the immense energy being released in the
football-size reactor core.

    "There were no cries of jubilation or high-fives. It was pretty much
simply a problem solved," Christiansen said. "I don't think there was
much idealism on the part of Zinn, [lead engineer Harold] Lichtenberger
and the other nuclear engineers. To them there was always a problem to be
solved."

    Still, Zinn celebrated in his own way. He walked out to U.S. Highway
20, which was nearing completion to connect the lab with Idaho Falls.
Zinn dragged the barriers aside and ordered his driver to take him home
the short way, Christiansen says. "The big grin on his face was the only
indication that he was happy with the results."

    Fifty years later, EBR-1, now a National Historic Landmark, feels
more like a tomb for nuclear energy than a monument to its birth. In the
control room, the engineers' yellowed notes are still taped to the
lifeless gauges.

    Outside EBR-1's concrete containment walls are the house-size hulks
of two nuclear aircraft engines -- artifacts of an atomic age of wonder
that somehow never happened. Scientists had planned an enormous
atom-powered airplane that would lift off from a 5-mile runaway, but in
1961, President Kennedy killed the project. Nearby is a rusted mule-drawn
plow, the property of a turn-of-the-century pioneer whose dreams died in
the same patch of desert.

    Nearby Atomic City has more tumbleweeds than citizens and the town's
cafe that once offered as a lunch special "Atomic Chicken" is boarded up.

    But in the early 1950s, hopes were riding high. Before 1951 ended,
EBR-1's energy was converted to steam that, in turn, generated
electricity to light a string of light bulbs. Another high came in 1955,
when one of the Idaho energy lab's reactors made nearby Arco the world's
first "nuclear powered" town -- for a few minutes anyway.

    "It was a public relations stunt," says Argonne National Laboratory
spokesman Paul Pugmire. "Just to show it could be done."

    Alongside prototype power plants for nuclear submarines, America's
"Atoms for Peace" program was jump-started by promising power "too cheap
to meter." Nuclear power plants soon were built, the first in 1957 at
Shippingsport, Pa.

    But over the next 30 years, America's wonder would turn to fear. In
March 1979, equipment failures and human error contributed to a partial
meltdown at Three Mile Island near Harrisburg, Pa.

    In April 1986, a series of steam explosions ripped through the
Chernobyl nuclear reactor in the then Soviet Union. Thirty people were
killed and radiation spread through the Northern Hemisphere.

    Though the nuclear industry likes to point out that Three Mile
Island, the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history, caused no deaths or
proven illnesses and that Chernobyl would never be allowed to operate
under Western standards, "meltdown" and "China syndrome" became a part of
America's vocabulary of fear. By the 1990s, a cartoon buffoon, Homer
Simpson, became the world's best-known nuclear technician.

    Today 80 percent of the nation -- including Arco -- is powered, not
by fission-generated electricity, but by coal- and gas-burning plants and
dammed rivers.

    The sprawling Idaho experimental site, now called the Idaho National
Energy and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL), had its share of meltdowns.
Of the 42, most were controlled tests, but 16 were unexpected, including
a 1955 incident at EBR-1 itself. "It got away from them and partially
melted down," says Argonne scientist Leon Walters. "But in the process,
they learned so much about meltdowns."

    In January 1961, a deadly mishap at the lab entered the realm of
folklore. An explosion in a prototype military reactor killed three men,
skewering one to the ceiling with a control rod, the "throttle" of a
reactor.

    Recovery workers in protective gear entered the steaming wreckage to
remove the highly radioactive bodies. The victims were buried in
lead-lined caskets. The ambulance that carried them was also entombed in
the Idaho desert.

    Rumors circulated that the accident was really a murder-suicide
triggered by a "love triangle." After a lengthy investigation, a team of
scientists offered their best guess: One of the employees, apparently a
Homer Simpson prototype, "goosed" the man who was withdrawing the control
rod.

    "He had an understandable reaction," says Walters. The victim's
reflexive jerk pulled the rod out fast enough to cause a steam explosion.

    The pro- and anti-nuclear forces agree on few things, but one is the
roots of the public's disenchantment with nuclear power.

    "It was the close relationship with the military and the secrecy and
the lies that made the public suspicious of the DOE [Energy Department],"
says Wenonah Hauter, director of Ralph Nader's Public Citizens Critical
Mass Energy and Environmental Program.

    Argonne's Walters agrees. "With the culture of secrecy that
surrounded nuclear development in the post-war years, we built up an era
of mistrust," he says. "It began in the '50s and the '60s. But I never
thought it would last 20 or 30 years."

    Nuclear energy advocates hope their day in the sun belatedly has
come. In his report on national energy policy in the spring, Vice
President Dick Cheney supported "the expansion of nuclear energy in the
United States as a major component of our national energy policy." Cheney
further delighted the industry by describing nuclear power as "affordable
and environmentally sound."

    To the Bush administration's blessing, add rolling blackouts in
California and nuclear advocates figure the public is ready to re-embrace
the atom.

    The DOE projects the country will need 50 percent more electricity by
2020, and the nuclear power industry is hoping to provide 23 percent of
that 50,000 megawatts of new energy, according to the Nuclear Energy
Institute.

    Argonne in Idaho says it has the solution to many of the problems
that have dogged nuclear power. A new generation of the descendants of
EBR-1, which will irradiate useless forms of uranium to breed fissionable
isotopes -- can cheaply extend the supply of nuclear fuel material
another two to three centuries, Argonne scientists say.

    The industry has a long way to go to convince their opposition.
Public Citizen issued reports that nuclear power is neither safe nor
cheap. "Our research shows that the higher the reliance on nuclear power,
the higher the rates will be," says Hauter. "Their energy plan is
reckless and it will not bring down the cost of energy."

    Mistrust has a long half-life.

    Argonne's Pugmire remembers meeting an old Idaho potato farmer. When
he told the man where he worked, the farmer said, "You were supposed to
invent an atomic tractor that wouldn't need gas and would run forever."

    "After all those years, he was still mad," Pugmire says. "I told him,
'Let it go, man.' "
   
   
   
   
© Copyright 2001, The Salt Lake Tribune

===================================================+

Date: Saturday, September 15, 2001 9:41 PM
Subject: SF New Mex: Official may have conflict of interest in mine decision

Santa Fe New Mexican

 

Official may have conflict of interest in mine decision

By BEN NEARY
The New Mexican
September 10, 2001

 

Several Western environmentalists say it's a conflict of interest for J.
Steven Griles - newly appointed deputy U.S. Secretary of Interior and a
former mining-industry employee - to preside over an Arizona utility
company's application for a permit to open a huge coal strip mine in
western New Mexico.

Before his contentious appointment to the No. 2 seat in the Interior
Department early this summer, Griles worked as a consultant to the
American Mining Association, a trade association that includes many major
mining companies, including North American Coal Co., a Texas company.

North American Coal Co. helped the Salt River Project - the Arizona
utility company that wants to open the New Mexico strip mine - to prepare
the mine-permit application now pending before the Department of Interior.

SRP plans its so-called Fence Lake Mine ultimately to cover around 18,000
acres on the border of Cibola and Catron counties, south of Grants.

Bob Barnard, Fence Lake Mine project manager for SRP in Phoenix, said
that since working on the original Fence Lake Mine permit application for
SRP, North American Coal Co. has continued to perform consulting work for
SRP and possibly could be involved in future mining at the site if the
federal government approves it. However, he said it appears more likely
that SRP would form a new company to undertake the mining work at the
site.

Zuni Pueblo and other local tribes have strongly opposed SRP's mine plan,
saying it threatens to dry up a nearby lake they hold sacred. Several
tribes have said they sense heavy political pressure on the Interior
Department to approve the mine despite the department's trust
responsibility to look out for Indian concerns.

According to a knowledgeable source, Interior Secretary Gale Norton
recently delegated authority to Griles to make a decision on SRP's permit
application. As deputy secretary, Griles would normally have broad
authority to deal with mining issues and other public-lands issues.

In recent weeks, Griles met with Barnard in Washington, D.C., without any
of the Indian opponents present to discuss the company's application.
Griles met with Zuni Gov. Malcolm Bowekaty this week.

Although Griles has met with both SRP officials and opponents of the
Fence Lake project in recent weeks, a spokesman for the Interior
Department said on Friday that Griles won't make any final decisions on
the permit application.

Griles' office said Friday that he was not available for comment.

Mark Pfeifle, Norton's press secretary, said Friday that Griles is chief
operating officer of the department. He said Griles has been meeting with
both SRP and Zuni Pueblo officials in the hope of working out some sort
of compromise.

However, Pfeifle said, "Ultimately, if the two parties do not find
consensus and common ground and agree on a compromise, Secretary Norton
may be called upon to make a decision."

Pfeifle said Norton has not vested Griles with authority to make a final
decision on SRP's application.

But Bowekaty, the Zuni Pueblo governor, had been left with another
impression after meeting with Griles this week.

Asked his understanding of Griles' role in the permit review, Bowekaty
said Friday, "We've heard indirectly that he is delegated that authority
(to act on the permit)."

John Grasser, vice president of external communications for the American
Mining Association in Washington, D.C., said Griles served as a
consultant to the association on mining issues within the past five
years. Grasser said North American Coal Co. has been an association
member for at least the past 17 years, his tenure at the association.

"I know that when Griles was up for confirmation, the environmental
community was just fit to be tied that he was up for that spot," Grasser
said.

People need to understand that many individuals who serve in government
generally have certain areas of expertise, he said. If the government is
looking to tap individuals who have expertise in an industry such as
mining, for example, it follows that it would hire people from the
industry itself.

But not everyone agrees.

The Southwestern Center for Biological Diversity, an Arizona-based
environmental group, recently filed a protest challenging a decision by
the New Mexico state government to grant SRP a five-year extension on its
state mining permit.

Brian Segee, a lawyer with the center, said Friday that his group has
concerns about Griles reviewing SRP's federal application given Griles'
past work for the mining association.

"Obviously, it would be a conflict of interest," Segee said. "But it
seems that conflicts of interest seem impossible to avoid under the Bush
Administration, since virtually everybody he's appointed to these
regulatory industries come from the industries which are going to be
regulated."

Doug Wolf, a lawyer with the New Mexico Environmental Law Center - a
Santa Fe firm that has opposed the Fence Lake Mine - said Friday that he
opposes any participation by Griles in the SRP permit process.

"It's an ugly conflict of interest trying to get an ugly mine in
operation," Wolf said of Griles' participation.

Carolyn Johnson, staff director of the Citizens Coal Council in Denver -
a federation of grass-roots citizen groups concerned about coal mining -
likewise said she believes that Griles' participation in the permit
process amounts to a conflict.

Johnson said she has known Griles since he was a top official with the
Interior Department under former Secretary James Watt during the Reagan
Administration.

"The man is so pro-coal, and so pro-development of any sort, that to have
that kind of a person, there's no sense of any moderation or trying to
find out what the public really wants," Johnson said. "He comes in with
this very clear bias, and he's always been that way."

Pfeifle, Interior Department spokesman, pointed out that nearly all the
nation's major mining companies are members of the American Mining
Association. Using Griles' past work for the association to disqualify
him from reviewing projects involving member companies would essentially
remove him from all consideration of mining issues, he said.

Pfeifle questioned whether a reporter would write a story if a
decision-maker on SRP's pending permit application had come from the
background of working for an environmental group.

"Steve (Griles) did meet with the (Zuni) governor on this Wednesday, and
the department is hopeful and optimistic that the parties will find a
solution amongst themselves," Pfeifle said. "They're working towards that
goal, they're making progress, and the department is helping to
facilitate a dialogue between the two parties to find a win-win outcome."

Bowekaty said Friday that he and other pueblo representatives explained
to Griles this week their concern that SRP's plan to pump water for its
mining operations would harm the Zuni Salt Lake, 12 miles away. In
addition, the pueblo is concerned the mining will destroy cultural sites
in the area.

"We basically presented the Zuni tribe's position relating to hydrology,
and the traditional cultural properties and cultural issues," Bowekaty
said. He said he also explained to Griles that the pueblo is already in
state court challenging the state government's approval of the mine.

"I think that he understood that there are a lot of issues, and for them
to sign off on the permit would create more issues," Bowekaty said of
Griles.

At a recent meeting on the state mine permit in Grants, Bowekaty pledged
to fight any federal approval of the mine project in federal court if
necessary.

And asked his reaction to Griles' history of having worked as a
consultant to the mining association given that North American Coal Co.
is a member, Bowekaty said, "I think that if he has been a lobbyist, I
would hope that a lot of that information is disclosed. And I think that
Secretary Norton may need to rethink that position in light of that
potential conflict of interest."

===================================================+

Date: Saturday, September 15, 2001 9:15 PM
Subject: Federal Register notice: Draft Recovery Goals for Colorado River Endangered Fish

 

[Federal Register: September 10, 2001 (Volume 66, Number 175)]
[Notices]
[Page 47033-47034]
>From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:fr10se01-60]

===================================================
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR

Fish and Wildlife Service

Notice of Availability of Draft Recovery Goals for Four Endangered Fishes
of the Colorado River Basin

AGENCY: Fish and Wildlife Service, Interior.

ACTION: Notice of document availability.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

SUMMARY: To further the recovery of humpback chub (Gila cypha), bonytail
(Gila elegans), Colorado pikeminnow (formerly named Colorado squawfish;
Ptychocheilus lucius), and razorback sucker (Xyrauchen texanus), we, the
Fish and Wildlife Service announce the availability of draft recovery
goals for these endangered fishes of the Colorado River Basin. This
information will serve as a supplement and amendment
to the respective existing recovery plans for each species. The draft
recovery goals for each species provide objective, measurable recovery
criteria for downlisting and delisting that identify levels of
demographic and genetic viability needed for self-sustaining populations
and site-specific management actions/tasks needed to minimize or remove
threats. We solicit review and comment from agencies and the public on
these draft recovery goals. Reviewers should pay particular attention to
the application of existing demographic and genetic data in the
development of minimum viable population (MVP) standards and the
downlisting and delisting monitoring periods associated with each species.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The purpose of these supplements and
amendments are to describe site-specific management actions/tasks;
provide objective, measurable recovery criteria; and provide estimates of
the time required to achieve recovery of each of the four endangered fish
species. The recovery goals for the humpback chub, razorback
sucker, and bonytail are identified by two recovery units, upper basin
(above Glen Canyon Dam, Arizona) and lower basin. Recovery of the
Colorado pikeminnow is currently considered only for the upper basin.
Downlisting and delisting criteria by listing factors and management
actions, as well as demographic criteria, are presented for populations
of each species within recovery units. In addition, updated life-history
information, statistical criteria for monitoring, and estimated time to
achieve downlisting and delisting requirements are also identified. These
serve as supplements and amendments to the recovery plans by providing
more

[[Page 47034]]

specific objective and measurable criteria to recover each of the four
fish species.
Copies of the Draft Recovery Goals will be mailed to interested
parties upon request. The documents are also available (in *.pdf format)
for viewing and downloading at: http://www.r6.fws.gov/crrip/rg.htm. Make
requests and mail comments to the Director at the address below. You may
submit comments by sending electronic mail (e-mail) to:
colorivgoals@fws.gov.

DATES: The agency must receive comments on or before October 25, 2001.

ADDRESSES: Mail comments and requests to Dr. Robert Muth, Director, Upper
Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program, U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service, Post Office Box 25486, DFC, Denver, Colorado, 80225. See
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION for information about electronic filing.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Dr. Robert Muth, Director (extension
268), Dr. Thomas Czapla (extension 228) or Ms. Debra Felker (extension
227), Coordinators (see ADDRESSES above), at telephone (303) 969-7322.

Dated: August 20, 2001.
Ralph O. Morgenweck,
Regional Director, Denver, CO.
[FR Doc. 01-22602 Filed 9-7-01; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4310-55-P

===================================================+

Date: Saturday, September 15, 2001 9:43 PM
Subject: Durango Herald: Proponents of A-LP seek fast funding

 

Proponents of A-LP seek fast funding

September 12, 2001
By Tom Sluis
Herald Staff Writer

 

The Animas-La Plata Project will not be able to be completed within seven
years as required by Congress unless Washington opens the financial
spigots next year, the lawyer for a Southwest Colorado water district
said Tuesday.

"The Bureau of Reclamation needs between $45 million and $50 million for
the 2003 budget, which the Bush administration has to submit by February
2002," said Sam Maynes, the lawyer for the Southwestern Water
Conservation District. The Bureau of Reclamation is the federal agency
that will build Ridges Basin Reservoir just west of Bodo Industrial Park.
"If the agency doesn't get that money, there is really no way they can
stay on the seven-year construction schedule," Maynes said at the water
district's annual meeting in Durango.

Congress passed legislation in December 2000 that said the
120,000-acre-foot reservoir designed to settle Colorado Ute claims on
area rivers be financed for five years and built in seven.

For the fiscal year 2002, which starts Oct. 1, both the House and Senate
have approved $16.5 million for the long-stalled project, but a
conference committee still has to approve the figure. Maynes said
Reclamation needs at least $21.5 million for early construction
activities.

The House and Senate have also approved $8 million for the tribal
resource fund, which is designed to pay tribes for water that they are
entitled to, but that the project does not provide.

Maynes said supporters of the $343.8 million project are still expecting
a lawsuit by environmental groups over the most recent environmental
statement clearing the way for the reservoir, pumping plant and intake
pipe. Before a lawsuit can happen, a notice to sue must first be filed.
Maynes said this notice alone, even if a lawsuit is never filed, would
result in project delays.

In other news:

* Farmers in the Dolores River basin are growing alfalfa, which needs
more water than hay, because of a more efficient irrigation plan.
Irrigators used to be charged for water allocated; now they are charged
for the water used. The unused portion is put into a water bank, where
other irrigators can access it.

* For the upper Animas River basin, recommendations from a group on how
to clean up pollutants in the watershed were adopted by the state's Water
Quality Control Commission. The recommendations will be implemented over
the next 20 years. Cleanup projects began this summer.

* To the south in New Mexico, the San Juan Water Commission is finalizing
a deal to pay up-front for its share of Animas-La Plata Project water,
but problems may be ahead as New Mexico tries to quantify its water
rights. New Mexico has no water meters in place, so it has difficulty
showing how much water it uses in the Colorado River basin, but is
involved with interstate compacts that require a defined quantity to
reach state lines.

* The water district approved spending $57,107 for half of the cost of
two cloud-seeding programs run by Western Weather Consultants. One
program, for $60,724, is for the Upper East Fork Hermosa drainage,
Dolores and La Plata River basins. The second, costing, $53,490, is for
the Telluride area. The expense will also be split among Durango Mountain
Resort, Dolores Water Conservancy District, Animas-La Plata Water
Conservancy District, and Telluride Ski & Golf Co.

===================================================+

Date: Saturday, September 15, 2001 9:42 PM
Subject: Denver Post: Tree shredder easy on forest

Tree shredder easy on forest

By Mark H. Hunter
Special to The Denver Post

Wednesday, September 12, 2001 - DEL NORTE - The gnarled pin~on tree had
been standing for a century on the sandy hillside below Del Norte Peak
before it exploded into jagged chunks of aromatic shrapnel.

The tree wasn't hit by lightning or blasted with dynamite - it was
shredded by a powerful logging machine being used in a
habitat-improvement experiment in southern Colorado's Rio Grande National
Forest.

The $250,000 machine, called a Hydro Ax, resembles an armored front-end
loader on steroids. Instead of a bucket, it sports an 8-foot-wide
industrial-strength mower and rolls across the fragile landscape on soft
balloon tires, shredding full-grown pin~on and juniper trees.

The experiment, which wrapped up last week, is a three-way partnership of
the U.S. Forest Service, the Colorado Division of Wildlife and the Rocky
Mountain Elk Foundation. The Bowen Creek project will be a model for
future projects to improve winter grazing for elk and deer and reduce
potential for summer wildfires.

"We've been looking at the pin~on-juniper forest around the West," said
Peter L. Clark, supervisor of the Rio Grande National Forest. "This is a
demonstration site. There are opportunities to do this on a broader
scale."

Dale Gomez, a wildlife biologist with the Forest Service, is overseeing
the $15,000 experiment. Two Hydro Ax machines, owned by South Fork-area
logger Brian Rue, are being used to clear the trees.

"This is important winter range," Gomez said during a recent tour of the
site, located between Del Norte and South Fork. "Over the years, the
trees have replaced the brush and grass, and the trees suck up all the
water. When we remove some of the trees, we'll get more water and more
grass for wildlife."

Gomez said more than 400 acres of pin~on-juniper forest was treated.
"We're trying to get a good mosaic pattern. We're leaving most of the
bigger trees," he said.

They also plan several controlled burns to promote growth of grass, Gomez
said.

"If we can keep the elk wintering up here longer, we can reduce the
damage they do on the ranches down below."

Division of Wildlife officer Brent Woodward has to answer to - and
reimburse - upset ranchers when elk forage on ranch land .

"This definitely will benefit the wildlife with winter range," Woodward
said. "This will help us by not having to pay a lot out of the
game-damage fund in the winters when the elk get into the hay fields and
hay stacks."

Howard Brown of Monte Vista, representing Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation,
said, "I'm awestruck. I think it's an incredible way to improve the
habitat, and we're proud to be a partner in this. When you see how much
it opens up the landscape, it has to improve the habitat. All wildlife
will benefit from this."

===================================================+

Date: Saturday, September 15, 2001 9:41 PM
Subject: Denver Post: Mining plans draw fire from backcountry users

"I don't like the noise very much," said Thomson's compatriot, Alecia
Bryan, over the din of the drilling. "But if it weren't for the miners up
here originally, we wouldn't have these roads to play on."

_____________________________________________

Mining plans draw fire from backcountry users

By Steve Lipsher
Denver Post Mountain Bureau

 

Monday, September 10, 2001 - MONTEZUMA - The commanding views from the
top of Webster Pass on the Continental Divide attract scores of hikers,
mountain bikers and four-wheelers each year.

The minerals beneath it have attracted Charles Robinson.

"It's very probable that in that area . . . is some kind of sulfide ore
body" such as molybdenum or precious metals, said Robinson, the principal
of Mineral Systems Inc. of Golden.

With a temporary drilling rig set up on top of the breathtaking
12,096-foot pass, Robinson has brought commercial mining back to Summit
County, one of two hard-rock operations that have raised questions of
compatibility with recreation in "Colorado's Playground."

"There's a large portion of the White River National Forest that remains
open to mining," said Dillon District Ranger Jamie Connell. "We're in the
middle of Colorado's mineral belt, and the mining laws still apply."

But while the area is steeped in mining history - the state's largest
gold nugget was found nearby, and Montezuma is a former mining town - the
industry has withered since World War II and been displaced by recreation
as the top business in the area.

"There's a strong feeling that recreation is the driving force in the
area, and it is," said Paul Semmer, a community planner for the Forest
Service. "Not surprisingly, the recreationalists don't want any mining
going on up there."

Governed by 130-year-old mining laws that many critics claim are badly
outdated, however, forest managers must provide "reasonable access" to
mines and even allow new claims to be staked, to the dismay of
backcountry users and environmentalists.

So it is an increasingly hostile local population that has begrudgingly
welcomed miners such as Robinson and a hobbyist miner, George Stroup of
Can~on City, who in a separate proposal wants to sift through a mine dump
and set up a crushing mill in an alpine valley south of Breckenridge.

"Though this project may be in compliance with the letter of the archaic
mining laws, it is not good for the gulch, our county, its visitors or
its residents," Jeffrey Bergeron, a popular local cable-TV personality,
said of Stroup's proposal for McCullough Gulch.

He was among dozens of residents and community leaders - including the
county commissioners - who flooded the Forest Service with letters in
opposition to Stroup's proposal, by far the more controversial of the two
mining efforts.

Stroup wants to extend an existing road two miles past tarns, wildflower
meadows, willow-choked wetlands and rocky slopes into the basin to the
old Christine Mine, an unpatented mining claim at 12,600 feet that he
discovered in 1997.

Stroup, who could not be reached for comment, previously told the Summit
Daily News: "What we found at the dump was unreal. I dream of that kind
of ore. I spent my whole life looking for one of these."

But critics are concerned that building a road and running
four-wheel-drive vehicles up the valley to remove up to 20 tons of ore
daily will destroy the area, which is popular among hikers and
backcountry skiers.

"Hundreds of people enjoy McCullough Gulch in a given week," wrote Leigh
Girvin, who, as the director of the Summit Huts Association, is one of
the county's leading advocates for preserving the backcountry for
recreation. "They go there because it's quiet due to the lack of
motorized vehicles."

In fact, only one of the dozens of letters to the Forest Service supports
Stroup's proposal; still, forest officials must give him an opportunity
to craft an operations plan and work with him to find "reasonable access"
to the area near 14,265-foot Quandary Peak.

Less controversial was the approval of Robinson's drilling operation on
Webster Pass, which uses existing roads, although even that had its
critics - a small group that surely would grow if Robinson finds
lucrative ore and offers full-scale mining there.

"If we have indications of a significant ore deposit, a mining company
might be interested in further exploration," Robinson said. "It won't be
us. We are going to make the information available to the major mining
companies."

Contractors are expected to wrap up drilling the 2,000-foot hole this
week, and the 3-inch diameter core will be analyzed for its mineral
content, he said.

But the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail follows the ridge that
forms Webster Pass, and supporters bristle at the sight of the 30-foot
drilling rig perched right in the saddle.

"The . . . drilling activities . . . cause unacceptable modifications to
the spectacular and substantive landscape of Webster Pass," said Celina
Montorfano of the American Hiking Society. "It will damage and destroy
the quality of the (Continental Divide Trail's) visual environment."

Bruce Ward, the co-director of the Continental Divide Trail Alliance,
said the drilling is just one of many threats to the experience along the
3,100-mile trail that runs from Mexico to Canada.

"We don't want to determine national energy or mining policy," he said.
"But we do want to point out that Congress designated this trail for a
reason, and that's for its scenic qualities."

For the time being, however, the drilling on Webster Pass is only
temporary, and crews haven't worked on weekends, when recreational use is
the highest.

"There's no reason it can't be compatible," Robinson said.

Recreationalists, however, are wary.

"I don't want to see a big open pit up here," said Scott Thomson of
Denver, who was among a group of four-wheelers visiting the area
recently. "But if it could look old, I wouldn't mind it at all. There are
a lot of old mines all around Colorado, and they're actually kind of
neat."

Of course, modern mining operations have little of the charm of their
turn-of-the-century predecessors in the area.

"I don't like the noise very much," said Thomson's compatriot, Alecia
Bryan, over the din of the drilling. "But if it weren't for the miners up
here originally, we wouldn't have these roads to play on."

===================================================+

Date: Saturday, September 15, 2001 9:42 PM
Subject: Denver Post: Coal-bed methane fueling dispute

Denver Post

Coal-bed methane fueling dispute

By Susan Greene
Denver Post National Writer

 

Sunday, September 09, 2001 - DURANGO - Don't smoke in the shower.

That was Amoco's advice to Teri Hawkins after the gas company's crews
found so much methane leaking into her mobile home that her tap water
catches fire.

Hawkins lives next to a well pumping the invisible, odorless form of
natural gas from coal beds 2,000 feet underground. Though she can cope
without lighting up while bathing, she cringes at the prospect of her
home blowing up.

"Any day it could be "poof,' and we're smoke," said the retired
restaurant manager, taking a long drag on her Camel Light. "You have to
wonder why we're just collateral damage for the gas companies."

Hawkins is one of hundreds of Rocky Mountain residents grappling with gas
seeping into their homes, water wells drying up, hot springs gushing from
their land, trees dying and tap water that's not only flammable but so
contaminated that some say it turns their laundry ashen.

"When you live around here, you've got to keep a special set of white
underwear to wear to the doctor's," said Carl Weston, who for decades has
hauled bottled water to his home rather than use his contaminated well.

Many attribute their troubles to coal-bed methane, one of the Rockies'
fastest-growing natural-resource products and an integral part of the
Bush administration's energy plan. Though coal-bed methane heats homes
and fuels electricity plants far more cleanly than coal, critics say
drilling for it is raping the Rocky Mountains.

"We want to debunk the myth that natural gas is environmentally friendly
when it's clear that it's actually filthy dirty energy," said Gwen
Lachelt, executive director of the Durango-based Oil and Gas
Accountability Project. "If it's polluting our water and killing our
trees, how long must we wait to figure out what it's doing to us?"

Industry boosters counter there's no proof that drilling harms the
environment or human health. They say coal-bed methane is an invaluable
source of clean-burning fuel at a time of energy crisis. Touting the
Rockies as the "Persian Gulf of Gas," they note that drilling has
lavished hundreds of millions of tax dollars on government coffers and
provided thousands of jobs in the region.

"Finding this huge untapped resource . . . is like finding gold in
Central City," said Jan Laitos, director of the Natural Resources Law
Program at the University of Denver Law School. "It's a bonanza for the
energy field to produce less-polluting fuel. And it's a bonanza for
Colorado - without necessarily ruining the environment."

Those outside the debate say it's so polarizing because so much money and
such cherished natural resources are at stake. Measuring the effects of
such a new industry working so deep underground isn't yet an exact
science, they add.

"Environmentalists go overboard about the potential harms, and the
industry probably understates the dangers," said Richard Christiansen,
associate professor of petroleum engineering at the Colorado School of
Mines. "I can't think of any subject other than religion . . . that makes
people so afraid and so passionate."

The U.S. Department of Energy stumbled upon coal-bed methane as a fuel
source in the 1970s and 1980s while studying how to reduce coal-mine
explosions. Crews learned to free the gas by flushing massive amounts of
water from coal beds.

Heavy production caught on in the late 1980s, spurred by federal tax
credits and exemptions from environmental regulation. Now, rising
consumption and California's energy crunch have utilities scrambling to
crank up gas-fired electricity production.

Companies particularly covet coal beds in the Rockies, where drilling is
cheaper and more predictable than off shore, and faces far less
opposition than in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The San Juan Basin under southwestern Colorado and northern New Mexico is
a methane mother lode, yielding about 75 percent of the nation's coal-bed
gas. Some 2,200 wells operate around Durango and Trinidad; about 300 more
are expected to be permitted this year.

Methane mania also has hit Wyoming, which issues about 40 new drilling
permits daily. The state had about 5,000 coal-bed wells in June, with
15,000 more permitted and waiting to be drilled.

Analysts project that natural-gas consumption will increase 40 times
faster than all other energy types by 2015. Extracting just 15 percent of
the methane in U.S. coal beds, they say, would yield a $1 trillion
bonanza and quench national demand for more than a decade.

"It's an incredibly important domestic energy source. We're going to need
coal-bed-methane drilling if we're going to meet the needs of the
public," said Mark Rubin of the American Petroleum Institute.

 

'A proven credit'

The Bush energy plan, if approved by Congress, would offer nearly $3
billion in new tax credits over the next six years to boost production of
nonconventional fuels such as coal-bed methane.

"It's been a proven credit that's been useful to help the industry go
search for gas in areas that are difficult and expensive. It's an
incentive that we believe is appropriate," said Greg Schnacke, executive
vice president of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association.

Others aren't so pumped about the idea.

"The way I see it, we're paying gas companies to drill an experimental
energy source that's no longer experimental, while they've got carte
blanche to raise gas prices through the roof," said La Plata County
Commissioner Josh Joswick, who fields frequent complaints about drilling.

Joswick and fellow commissioners must balance those grievances against an
industry that provides about half the county's tax revenue. Drilling
means big money in Durango, where hundreds have become "methane
millionaires" by leasing their mineral rights.

Mac and Ron Burkett collect what they describe only as "sizable"
royalties from drilling on their 4,200-acre ranch. But in 1992, the
ranch's main water well began drying up after gushing 1,000 gallons a
minute for generations. That's about the time, they say, that the J.M.
Huber Corp. and Amoco built the first of 22 gas wells there. The
companies control mineral rights on the property and, wherever state
regulations allow, can drill without the Burketts' permission.

Huber and Amoco say drilling didn't diminish the well.

"Our operations simply aren't the cause of those problems," said Paul
Edwards, a BP production engineer.

But the Burketts say experts they hired convinced them the companies
pumped up their groundwater along with coal-bed methane.

"It defies logic to say there's no relation between these aquifers and
the millions of gallons of water they pull out of the ground," said Mac
Burkett, whose great-aunt began running cattle there in the 1940s. "I
can't even go to that part of the ranch now. It makes me sick that their
gas pumps took away our lifeblood."

Nancy Vandover lives miles from the nearest coal-bed methane well. But in
1990 the groundwater under her land suddenly changed from fresh water to
hot mineral springs, heating her soil up to 99 degrees, 34 degrees above
normal. The heat gradually killed most of her century-old fruit trees,
blue spruce and firs.

Tests show Vandover's tap water - which she doesn't drink - contains high
levels of potentially toxic hydrogen sulfide along with other minerals
that have corroded her plumbing and forced her repeatedly to replace
fixtures turned orange from the contamination.

The state government's Oil and Gas Conservation Commission found her
troubles may have stemmed from a site 9 miles to the south where Amoco
was reinjecting millions of barrels of drilling wastewater into the
"entrada" layer deep below the coal bed. That's how most gas companies in
Colorado dispose of their wastewater.

Vandover's home sits on the shallow edge of the basin where the entrada
juts out to the surface. Her problems eased in 1999, when the state
ordered Amoco to stop reinjecting into the entrada layer at that site.

Still, BP America Inc. - which merged with Amoco in 1999 and now runs 900
coal-bed-methane wells in La Plata County - says "inconsistencies" in the
state data show its operations "could not have affected the hot springs"
on Vandover's land.

"There's no measurable evidence between the two," said spokeswoman Paula
Barnett.

BP also says there's no correlation between the gas pump next to Hawkins'
mobile home and her contaminated water. Hawkins' troubles, they say, stem
from so-called biogenic gas formed when bugs grow, feed on each other and
pass a natural gas of their own.

Industry experts assert drilling doesn't cause gas seeps nor water
contamination. They say today's wells don't leak because they're designed
with protective steel and cement casings.

"Being environmentally responsible underpins our license to operate. It's
not a bonus, and it's not optional. We view it as an essential element to
the future of our company," said Barnett.

Oil & Gas Journal, an industry magazine, acknowledged growing complaints
about coal-bed methane in its July issue and suggested how industry
leaders could respond.

"One easily can attribute these phenomena to numerous factors other than
production operations," the article read.

That's BP's explanation for the early 1990s evacuation of several
residents from their homes along the Pine River near Bayfield after
methane saturated the soil and bubbled up through the river water.
Homeowners blamed nearby drilling. Before the BP merger, Amoco reached an
undisclosed settlement with the residents, then bought and leveled four
of their homes. Still, the company attributes the trouble to longtime
natural seeps.

Weston, the Burketts and Vandover are among longtime Durangoans who say
there weren't such major seeps before coal-bed drilling. Now there's a
rotten-egg smell along the Animas River, where county signs warn
"Hydrogen sulfide at the highest concentrations found here can cause eye
and lung irritation along with headaches and nausea, even with brief
exposure."

Rather than reinjecting wastewater, as companies do in Colorado, Wyoming
drillers dump their wastewater - up to 130,000 gallons per well per day -
onto the ground.

Industry officials say coal-bed wastewater pales in quantity compared
with what's used in farming and mining.

"You actually aren't talking about a lot of water. There's more water
falling out of the sky, if you can believe that, than produced by these
wells," Schnacke said.

But environmentalists say the dumping is killing Wyoming's trees,
polluting rivers and wasting water.

"They need to look at coal-bed methane as two resources, not one, rather
than sending all that water down the proverbial drain," Lachelt said.

She and others say companies should tread more lightly on the land with
better drilling methods.

The industry - and the Bush administration - have promised to limit
damage in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge by requiring "directional
drilling," which allows companies to pump the same amount of gas from one
well that they would otherwise take from seven or eight. Less than 5
percent of methane wells nationwide are directionally drilled.

A growing number of conservationists say the technology should be
required for coal-bed methane, which they claim is as damaging as Arctic
drilling, affects more people and benefits from federal tax credits.

"There's an awful lot they could do to get the production they need and
still minimize damage to people's property and the environment," said
Denver lawyer Lance Astrella, who represents companies developing new
drilling methods.

 

Directional drilling costly

Gas companies say they'd like to do more directional drilling, but it
adds 30 percent to their costs. And, they argue, government shouldn't
force the technology on an already overregulated business.

"Where we differ from environmental groups is that they want to mandate
technology as a panacea on the environmental front," Schnacke said.

Environmentalists also want government to keep a closer eye on the fluids
pumped into wells to stimulate production of coal-bed methane and other
fuels. The process, called "fracturing," injects a jellied mix of sand,
water and chemicals at tremendous pressure to break open the earth and
release the fuel.

Industry scientists say the mixtures are safe, adding there's no evidence
they've leaked into the water table nor made anyone sick.

"We have a 30-year history of this stuff not showing up in mysterious
places. You'd think it would at least show up or would be self-evident if
there were a problem," BP's Edwards said.

But some scientists say the fluids can travel along the fissures they
create and reach natural geologic fractures, which often carry drinking
water. If pumping coal-bed methane can deplete nearby water wells, they
contend, the chemicals can run the other way and pollute water.

The same dynamic, they add, explains why gas not captured in gas wells
could travel through underground fissures and, in Hawkins' case, migrate
back to her home.

"If there's a connection going in one direction, there's a connection
going in the other . . . It makes no sense for the industry to claim
their methods are foolproof," said David Lutter, general counsel for the
Legal Environmental Assistance Foundation, which seeks closer regulation
of fracturing.

 

Fracturing-fluid chemicals

No comprehensive studies have been conducted on the possible health
effects of fracturing fluid. The mixtures generally contain corrosion
inhibitors and biocides, which destroy living organisms in the wells. In
La Plata County, BP says it uses chemicals including:

Thiourea, which, according to U.S. Occupational Health and Safety
Administration safety reports, can cause goiter, liver, blood and
respiratory damage, and is "a possible human carcinogen."

Sodium tetraborate decahydrate, which can "cause effects on the central
nervous system, kidneys and liver," and "possibly causes toxic effects
upon human reproduction."

Trisodium nitrilotriacetate, which "may have effects on the kidneys" and
"is possibly carcinogenic to humans."

"They're extremely toxic to the environment and human health," said Wilma
Subra, a Louisiana chemist and recipient of the MacArthur "genius" award
who advises groups fighting gas companies.

Some of these chemicals would be restricted in dry cleaning, mining, auto
manufacturing or other industries, but they're not regulated by the
Environmental Protection Agency for use in the oil and gas industry. A
federal appeals court recently put that policy in doubt, ruling that
fracturing fluid falls under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act because
it's pumped into the ground. The head of the U.S. Senate Energy Committee
is now trying to free the fluids from federal oversight.

U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., wants a four-year EPA study of the
fluids' effect on drinking water. If, as committee staffers say they
expect, the fluids aren't found to harm groundwater, they would be exempt
from EPA regulation.

Lutter has little faith in that research. "I think the oil and gas
industry is orchestrating an effort to limit the studies so they can
achieve their objective to avoid the Safe Drinking Water Act," he said.
"In the meantime, I expect many people to lose use of their
drinking-water wells just so the oil and gas industry can make a profit."

Opponents say they don't aim to stop coal-bed-methane drilling, but want
government to slow permitting and conduct more studies to determine the
effects on people and the environment. That was their message Thursday
during a hearing before the House Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral
Recources.

"There's a woeful lack of information about the impacts of coal-bed
methane," said Travis Stills, research director for the Oil and Gas
Accountability Project. "Basically, all we're trying to do is make sure
that decisions about coal-bed methane are no longer made in the dark."

 

 

All contents Copyright 2001 The Denver Post

===================================================+

Date: Saturday, September 15, 2001 9:41 PM
Subject: Dan Walters' twisted view of reality

http://www.capitolalert.com/news/capalert06_20010909.html
The Sacramento Bee

Dan Walters: It's what politicians do when they want to ignore a harsh
reality
Sept. 9, 2001

 

State Sen. Sheila Kuehl has newspaper editorialists, environmentalists,
farm groups and urban planning theorists swooning over her legislation
that would require local governments and developers to identify a water
supply for any major housing subdivision prior to its approval.

The measure is the latest version of a concept that's been kicking
around the Capitol for several years, driven by an East Bay water
official.

It sounds plausible enough on its surface. What, one might ask, could
be more logical than to have a source of water identified before a
housing development is begun, rather than simply and automatically
relying on the local water agency to pick up the new customers? If
enacted, Kuehl's bill, SB 221, would give those opposed to residential
growth a new legal weapon. They could litigate the issue of whether
enough water is available to serve the proposed development.

SB 221 may be, however, the most illogical bit of legislation to
surface in the Capitol this year because it's based on the wholly
fallacious, if pervasive, notion that development is growth. Growth is
the addition of 600,000 people to California's population each year,
virtually all of them by birth or foreign immigration. New housing, new
retail business, new transportation facilities, new power plants, new
schools -- and new water systems -- merely serve that growth.

It makes no more sense to tie residential development to water than it
would be to force developers to certify that there are enough lanes on
the freeway, enough beds in the local hospital, enough classroom space,
enough groceries in the local supermarket, or enough electric power to
serve the residents of the proposed development.

Providing sufficient water supplies to meet demand is the job of
politicians, and so far they've done a poor job, putting off critical
decisions on new storage and conveyance facilities year after year. They
did a comparably lousy job on power plants, which is why California has
suffered from an energy crisis in recent months, and transportation
planning is equally dismal.

Tying subdivision approval to water supply is a simplistic, utterly
illogical approach to a very complex matter of balancing competing land
use needs, and the even more complex issue of financing and building
infrastructure for the ever-expanding needs of an ever-rising population.
If a subdivision isn't built because there's no easily identifiable water
supply, it wouldn't stop growth. It merely would mean that California
would have that many fewer homes, when housing development is already
falling short of need, driving up housing costs and making it more
difficult for families to put roofs over their heads.

Something similar to what Kuehl proposes took root in trendy Marin
County during the 1980s. Using the pretext of water shortages, Marin
County virtually shut down residential development. It worked, in the
sense that it brought Marin's population growth to a near-halt, but it
merely squeezed development even farther north into Sonoma County,
creating another set of problems.

If we don't want to deal with the effects of growth, including the
incursion of new subdivisions into rural areas and the diversion of water
supplies from farms to homes, we could deal with it at its roots. We
could get tough on immigration or institute more vigorous birth control
programs. But those are, to say the least, controversial steps, and
stopping population growth, even if it were possible, would have its own
negative effects. It would mean fewer workers, less economic growth, and
the social and economic costs of having an aging population.

There is no easy answer to population growth. We -- society acting
through its political officeholders -- either accept it and deal with its
effects in ways that mitigate the most negative aspects, or we put our
heads in the sand and pretend that passing a law tying housing
development to water will somehow make the problems go away. It's the
sort of thing that politicians and other practitioners of symbolism and
wishful thinking do when they can't, or won't, recognize reality.

 

The Bee's Dan Walters can be reached at (916) 321-1195 or
dwalters@sacbee.com

===================================================+

Date: Saturday, September 15, 2001 9:41 PM
Subject: Counterpunch: "Flying Bombs" -- Who Saw It Coming?

 

September 11, 2001

"Flying Bombs"

Who Saw It Coming?

By Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St Clair

Tuesday's onslaughts on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon are being
likened to Pearl Harbor and the comparison is just. From the point of
view of the assailants the attacks were near miracles of logistical
calculation, timing, courage in execution and devastation inflicted upon
the targets.

The Pearl Harbor base containing America's naval might was thought to be
invulnerable, yet in half an hour 2000 were dead, and the cream of the
fleet destroyed. This week, within an hour on the morning of September
11, security at three different airports was successfully breached, the
crews of four large passenger jets efficiently overpowered, the cockpits
commandeered, navigation coordinates reset.

In three of the four missions the assailants attained successes probably
far beyond the expectations of the planners. As a feat of suicidal
aviation the Pentagon kamikaze assault was particularly audacious, with
eyewitness accounts describing the Boeing 767 skimming the Potomac before
driving right through the low lying Pentagon perimeter, in a sector
housing Planning and Logistics.

The two Trade Center Buildings were struck at what structural engineers
say were the points of maximum vulnerability. The strength of the
buildings derived entirely from the steel perimeter frame, designed - so
its lead architect said only last week - to withstand the impact of a
Boeing 707. These buildings were struck full force Tuesday morning by
Boeing 737s, with fuel tanks fully loaded for the long flights to the
West Coast. Within an hour of the impacts both buildings collapsed. By
evening, a third 46-story Trade Center building had also crumbled.

Not in terms of destructive extent, but in terms of symbolic obliteration
the attack is virtually without historic parallel, a trauma at least as
great as the San Francisco earthquake or the Chicago fire.

There may be another similarity to Pearl Harbor. The possibility of a
Japanese attack in early December of 1941 was known to US Naval
Intelligence and to President Roosevelt. Last Tuesday, derision at the
failure of US intelligence was widespread. The Washington Post quoted an
unnamed top official at the National Security Council as saying, "We
don't know anything here. We're watching CNN too." Are we to believe that
the $30 billion annual intelligence budget, immense electronic
eavesdropping capacity, thousands of agents around the world, produced
nothing in the way of a warning? In fact Osama bin Laden, now prime
suspect, said in an interview three weeks ago with Abdel-Bari Atwan, the
editor of the London-based al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper, that he planned
"very, very big attacks against American interests."

Here is bin-Laden, probably the most notorious Islamic foe of America on
the planet, originally trained by the CIA, planner of other successful
attacks on US installations such as the embassies in East Africa,
carrying a $5 million FBI bounty on his head proclaiming the imminence of
another assault, and US intelligence was impotent, even though the
attacks must have taken months, if not years to plan, and even though CNN
has reported that bin-Laden and his coordinating group al-Qa'ida had been
using an airstrip in Afghanistan to train pilots to fly 767s.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, when hijacking was a preoccupation, the
possibility of air assaults on buildings such as the Trade Center were a
major concern of US security and intelligence agencies. But since the
1980s and particularly during the Clinton-Gore years the focus shifted to
more modish fears, such as bio-chemical assault and nuclear weapons
launched by so-called rogue states. This latter threat had the allure of
justifying the $60 billion investment in Missile Defense aka Star Wars.
One of the biggest proponents of that approach was Al Gore's security
advisor, Leon Fuerth, who wailed plaintively amid Tuesday's rubble that
"In effect the country's at war but we don't have the coordinates of the
enemy."

But the lust for retaliation traditionally outstrips precision in
identifying the actual assailant. By early evening on Tuesday America's
national security establishment were calling for a removal of all
impediments on the assassination of foreign leaders. Led by President
Bush, hey were endorsing the prospect of attacks not just on the
perpetrators but on those who might have harbored them. From the nuclear
priesthood is coming the demand that mini-nukes be deployed on a
preemptive basis against the enemies of America.

The targets abroad will be all the usual suspects: rogue states, (most of
which, like the Taleban or Saddam Hussein, started off as creatures of US
intelligence). The target at home will of course be the Bill of Rights.
Less than a week ago the FBI raided Infocom, the Texas-based web host for
Muslim groups such as the Council on Islamic Relations, the Islamic
Society of North America, the Islamic Association for Palestine, and the
Holy Land Foundation. Palestinians have been denied visas, and those in
this country can, under the terms of the CounterTerrorism Act of the
Clinton years, be held and expelled without due process. The explosions
of Tuesday were not an hour old before terror pundits like Anthony
Cordesman, Wesley Clark, Robert Gates and Lawrence Eagleburger were
saying that these attacks had been possible "because America is a
democracy" adding that now some democratic perquisites might have to be
abandoned? What might this mean? Increased domestic snooping by US law
enforcement and intelligence agencies; ethnic profiling; another drive
for a national ID card system.

Tuesday did not offer a flattering exhibition of America's leaders. For
most of the day the only Bush who looked composed and control in
Washington was Laura, who happened to waiting to testify on Capitol Hill.
Her husband gave a timid and stilted initial reaction in Sarasota,
Florida, then disappeared for an hour before resurfacing in at a base in
Barksdale, Louisiana, where he gave another flaccid address with every
appearance of bring on tranquilizers. He was then flown to a bunker in
Nebraska, before someone finally had the wit to suggest that the best
place for an American president at time of national emergency is the Oval
Office.

Other members of the cabinet were equally elusive. Secretary of State
Colin Powell, who has managed to avoid almost every site of crisis or
debate was once again absent from the scene, in Latin America. Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld remained invisible most of the day, even though
it would have taken him only a few short steps to get to the Pentagon
pressroom and make some encouraging remarks. When he did finally appear
the substance of his remarks and his demeanor were even more banal and
unprepossessing than those of his commander in chief. At no point did
Vice President Cheney appear in public. The presidential contenders did
expose themsleves. John McCain curdled the air with threats against
America's foes, as did John Kerry, who immediately blamed bin-Laden and
who stuck the knife firmly into CIA director George Tenet, citing Tenet
as having told him not long ago that the CIA had neutralized an impending
attack by bin-Laden.

Absent national political leadership, the burden of rallying the nation
fell as usual upon the TV anchors, all of whom seem to have resolved
early on to lower the emotional temper, though Tom Brokaw did lisp a
declaration of War against Terror. Tuesday's eyewitness reports of the
collapse of the two Trade Center buildings were not inspired, at least
for those who have heard the famous eyewitness radio reportage of the
crash of the Hindenberg zeppelin in Lakehurst, New Jersey in 1937 with
the anguished cry of the reporter, "Oh the humanity, the humanity". Radio
and TV reporters these days seem incapable of narrating an ongoing event
with any sense of vivid language or dramatic emotive power.

The commentators were similarly incapable of explaining with any depth
the likely context of the attacks; that these attacks might be the
consequence of the recent Israeli rampages in the Occupied Territories
that have included assassinations of Palestinian leaders and the
slaughter of Palestinian civilians with the use of American aircraft;
that these attacks might also stem from the sanctions against Iraq that
have seen upward of a million children die; that these attacks might in
part be a response to US cruise missile attacks on the Sudanese factories
that had been loosely fingered by US intelligence as connected to
bin-Laden.

In fact September 11 was the anniversary of George W. Bush's speech to
Congress in 1990, heralding war against Iraq. It was also the anniversary
of the Camp David accords, which signaled the US buy-out of Egypt as any
countervailing force for Palestinian rights in the Middle East. One
certain beneficiary of the attacks is Israel. Polls had been showing
popular dislike here for Israel's recent tactics, which may have been the
motivation for Colin Powell's few bleats of reproof to Israel. We will be
hearing no such bleats in the weeks to come, as Israel's leaders advise
America on how exactly to deal with Muslims. The attackers probably bet
on that too, as a way of making the US's support for Israeli
intransigence even more explicit, finishing off Arafat in the process.

"Freedom," said George Bush in Sarasota in the first sentence of his
first reaction, "was attacked this morning by a faceless coward." That
properly represents the stupidity and blindness of almost all Tuesday's
mainstream political commentary. By contrast, the commentary on economic
consequences was informative and sophisticated. Worst hit: the insurance
industry. Likely outfall in the short-term: hiked energy prices, a
further drop in global stock markets. George Bush will have no trouble in
raiding the famous lock-box, using Social Security Trust Funds to give
more money to the Defense Department. That about sums it up. Three planes
are successfully steered into three of America's most conspicuous
buildings and America's response will be to put more money in missile
defense as a way of bolstering the economy. CP

===================================================+

Date: Saturday, September 15, 2001 9:41 PM
Subject: Controversy Over Montana Dam Comes to a Head

Controversy Over Montana Dam Comes to a Head
Monday, September 10, 2001
 

 

BY SUSAN GALLAGHER
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

 

    MILLTOWN, Mont. -- Behind a dam that's pushing a century in age and
beneath the reservoir lies enough mud contaminated with toxic metals to
cover an NFL stadium and some of its parking lot.

    Downstream from the dam is Missoula, Montana's second-largest city.

    For environmentalists, the choice is clear: Remove the sediment, tear
down the dam, return the confluence of the Blackfoot and Clark Fork
rivers to their natural state.

    For some others, the decision is not so easy. Removing a dam that
restrains 6.6 million cubic yards of contaminated sediment is a feat they
fear will make things worse.

    The dam and its Milltown Reservoir are the terminus of the nation's
largest Superfund environmental cleanup site, the resting place for
decades of mine waste that washed 120 miles down the Clark Fork River
from Butte and Anaconda.

    What to do with the contaminated sediment, and the dam that holds it
all back, has become the focus of a growing debate between
environmentalists and business.

    For long-term river health, removing the sediment and the dam is
"absolutely the right thing to do," said Tracy Stone-Manning, executive
director of the Clark Fork Coalition, an environmental group.

   But Atlantic Richfield Co., part of BP Amoco PLC, says what the Clark
Fork Coalition advocates is fraught with environmental risk. Arco is
responsible for dealing with the mess at Milltown.

    The Environmental Protection Agency has been studying Milltown's
contamination and is expected to make a decision this spring on what to
do about contaminated sediment.

    Chief among the options are two ideas: a $20 million plan to upgrade
and strengthen the dam, built in 1907, and leave the sediment behind it
untouched.

    The second option, which has won support of community leaders
downstream in Missoula, is a $120 million plan to remove the sediment and
tear down the dam.

    The contaminated mud, 30 feet deep in places, poses no immediate
danger to those who use the reservoir, the EPA says.

===================================================+

Date: Saturday, September 15, 2001 9:15 PM
Subject: Chevrolet honors Hillary, Christy, Fergie, Marlo, and others

Hillary Rodham Clinton, Christy Turlington, Sarah Ferguson, Marlo Thomas,
Heather Mills, Lilly Tartikoff, and Others to Be Honored with Redbook's
Mothers & Shakers Awards Presented by Chevy TrailBlazer

Hillary Rodham Clinton to Address Guests in Keynote Speech

Honoring Women Who Make Change Happen

on Monday, September 10th, 2001, at Avery Fisher Hall

 

NEW YORK, Sept. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- On Monday, September 10, 2001, Redbook
in conjunction with Chevy TrailBlazer will present its fourth annual
Mothers & Shakers awards at Avery Fisher Hall. This year's 12 honorees
including Hillary Rodham Clinton, Christy Turlington, Sarah Ferguson,
Marlo Thomas, Heather Mills and Lilly Tartikoff, have made extraordinary
contributions to health care -- from helping to develop an AIDS vaccine
to raising money for a new breast cancer treatment. Hillary Rodham
Clinton will give the keynote address.

"We are proud to honor these twelve unstoppable women who are making such
a difference to healthcare," said Ellen Kunes, Redbook's editor-in-chief.
"Redbook recognizes this year's Mothers and Shakers for their dedication
to helping the rest of us live longer, healthier lives."

"Chevrolet is extremely proud to help recognize these remarkable women
for their significant contributions to healthcare," said Cheryl Pilcher,
Chevrolet TrailBlazer assistant brand manager. "In the spirit of a true
TrailBlazer, these twelve women have displayed the passion and commitment
needed to improve the lives of millions of people around the world."

This year's Mothers & Shakers recipients include:

* Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton -- During the first year of her
husband's presidency Hillary Clinton succeeded in focusing national
attention on one of the most pressing questions of our time: How do we
guarantee adequate medical care for everyone? Now the junior senator
from New York State has continued the battle for equal access to medical
care. Her legislative initiatives include bills which would make more
uninsured children eligible for Medicaid, give patients the right to sue
their HMOs, and extend Medicare coverage to prescription drugs.

* Regina Benjamin, M.D., M.B.A. -- Benjamin is a nationally recognized
health care activist devoted to making healthcare more accessible to the
poor. She is a doctor who set up her practice as a rural health clinic
and never turned anyone away because they couldn't pay. At 44, she was
the first African-American woman to be named a trustee of the American
Medical Association, and now sits on the board of Physicians for Human
Rights and serves as president-elect of the Alabama Medical Association.

* Lilly Tartikoff -- When her husband, TV executive Brandon Tartikoff,
was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease and had his life prolonged 16 years
with experimental drugs by cutting-edge UCLA cancer researcher Dennis
Slamon, M.D., Tartikoff made it her cause to raise money for this
doctor's work. Since then she has raised more than $20 million,
persuading Revlon chairman Ronald Perelman to help her found the
Revlon/UCLA Women's Cancer Research Program in 1989. Now Tartikoff, 48,
has joined Today Show host Katie Kouric to create the National Colorectal
Cancer Research Alliance and continues to help raise money for Dr.
Slamon's good work.

* Kathie Grovit-Ferbas, Ph.D. -- Back in 1982, while working as a
volunteer in a Manhattan hospital, Kathie had a strong desire to help
heal the young men dying of a mysterious illness which we now know as
AIDS. Now 36 and a virologist, Grovit-Ferbas leads a research team at
the UCLA AIDS Institute that is working on a vaccine with the potential
to not only prevent AIDS, but treat it. Since her findings were
published last year, she has tested the vaccine on mice and is now
recruiting subjects for her first human trials.

* Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York -- Sarah Ferguson modeled her U.S.
foundation for kids in desperate situations, Chances For Children, on her
charity in England, Children in Crisis, which she founded when she
witnessed huge numbers of children in Poland who were dying of
environmentally-caused cancers. Chances For Children has helped homeless
kids as well as the victims of the bombing in Oklahoma City where it
built a sheltered backyard play area for a little boy so badly burned he
couldn't be out in the sun. Children in Crisis has arranged to have
thousands of tents delivered to refugees in Kosovo and has built schools
in Sierra Leone for the orphans of parents who've died of AIDS. As U.S.
spokesperson for the American Heart Association and for Weight Watchers
International, The Duchess of York is a highly visible and vocal advocate
for heart health and healthy weight.

* Laura Van Tosh -- Laura Van Tosh, 39, had her first breakdown when she
was 17 and has been working to give a voice to people with mental illness
ever since. She ran one of the first peer-counseling programs for the
homeless mentally ill and created a lobbying organization for patients,
the Consumer Managed Care Network, to give them a voice in the debate
over insurance coverage. A writer, researcher, and frequent government
consultant, she contributed to the first-ever Surgeon General's report on
Mental Health in 1999. She was recently awarded a grant for her Mental
Health Roundtable, a series of brown-bag lunch meetings in Washington
where young activists meet and learn from the country's most experienced
mental health leaders.

* Marlo Thomas -- During the 1960s, Marlo Thomas was national chair of
St. Jude Teen-Age Marches, the first nationwide fund-raising program
organized by ALSAC, the fund-raising arm of St. Jude Children's Research
Hospital, the world's leading research and treatment center for kids with
catastrophic illnesses. Later, as her acclaim as a Broadway, television
and film actress grew, Thomas began to speak publicly, attending
fund-raisers and galas, making speeches and appearing on television
commercials for the hospital. After her father, entertainer Danny Thomas
died in 1991, the Emmy Award winning actress, producer and social
activist and her two siblings took over his work supporting St. Jude's.
In the late 1990s, Thomas assumed the role of National Outreach Director,
traveling tirelessly to fundraise, working with major corporations to
bring more recognition and funding to the hospital, ensuring its
continued growth and success.

* Maureen Britell -- A third-generation Irish catholic, Maureen Britell
was raised to believe that abortion was "something vile that only the bad
girls do." Then she found herself 20 weeks pregnant with a fetus without
a brain. She decided that she could not carry a child that would be
stillborn to term. But what turned her into an activist was learning
that abortion was not covered under her military pilot husband's federal
insurance plan. The Britells sued the government and she became a
spokesperson for the National Abortion Federation, telling her story to
legislators and testifying against attempts to ban partial-birth
abortion. Maureen, now 35, is executive director of Voters for Choice in
Washington, D.C.

* Heather Mills -- Mills, a former model in London, was being fitted for
a new leg after her leg had been amputated as a result of a motorcycle
accident when she discovered that old prosthetics were simply being
discarded. That prompted her to set up the Heather Mills Trust to
provide prostheses, often recycled, for landmine victims around the
world. Today, with the help of her fiance, Sir Paul McCartney, Mills is
a spokesperson for Adopt-A-Minefield, the nonprofit organization that
clears landmines and raises awareness about the global landmine crisis.

* Kim Kenney -- Since Kim Kenney took over as director of the Chronic
Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction Syndrome (CFIDS) Association of America in
1991, she has helped raise $3.6 million for research and made the
organization a major force in Washington. In 1998, thanks to Kenney's
relentless probing, a researcher at the Centers for Disease Control blew
the whistle on his agency and alerted Congress that more than 12.9
million earmarked for chronic fatigue research had been diverted into
other programs. The government launched a series of audits and the money
suddenly became available for CFIDS research.

* Christy Turlington -- Turlington, a former model, has made it her
mission to convince people not to smoke. She started smoking when she
was 13 and quit when she was 26, just before she lost her father to lung
cancer. Then she was diagnosed with early stage emphysema. She gave up
runway modeling, earned a degree from New York University, and now spends
much of her time reaching out to schoolchildren about why they need to
lead cigarette-free lives.

* Mary Chung -- Growing up in Orange County, California, watching her
family struggle to fit in, Chung was stunned to learn that
Asian-Americans were supposed to be a "model minority" (healthier,
better-adjusted and successful). When she was 26, Chung founded the
National Asian Women's Health Organization to do something about the
"health crisis" masked by the stereotype. Now nine years old, NAWHO has
a $2 million budget and works with organizations like the National
Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control to research and
address the health concerns of Asian women.

The October issue of Redbook, on newsstands September 11, will
prominently feature the honorees and their causes and will include a
four-page "Shake Things Up" booklet, sponsored by Chevy TrailBlazer and
produced in conjunction with America's Promise. Included in the booklet
is a guide to simple steps that busy Mothers & Shakers can take to get
involved in their communities, and information about how nominations can
be made for the "Chevy TrailBlazer Uncompromising Strength Volunteer
Recognition Awards" Contest.

Redbook magazine, targeted to young married women, is published by Hearst
Magazines, a unit of The Hearst Corporation and the world's largest
publisher of monthly magazines, with 16 U.S. titles and 102 international
editions distributed in more than 100 countries. Of these, Hearst
publishes nine monthly magazines in the United Kingdom through its wholly
owned subsidiary, The National Magazine Company Limited.

The 2002 Chevrolet TrailBlazer is an all-new, completely redesigned,
reengineered SUV that delivers unequaled comfort, confidence and
durability. The TrailBlazer is manufactured by General Motors (NYSE: GM),
the world's largest vehicle manufacturer, designs, which builds and
markets cars and trucks worldwide. In 2000, GM earned $5 billion on
sales of $183.3 billion excluding special items. It employs about
372,000 people globally. More information on General Motors can be found
at www.gm.com .

 

SOURCE Redbook; General Motors
09/10/2001 07:01 EDT http://www.prnewswire.com