Archived Water News Headlines | Public Lands and Watersheds

The archives appearing below were published in 2003 and 2004.  Please read about link decay in case a link to a news story takes you to a 404 page error or "blank" page.

Internet shutdown affects Indian students, land issues (WAVY TV | AP, 3/24/04) - American Indian school children are among those most affected by an court-ordered Internet shutdown at the Interior Department . A federal district judge ordered the department to pull the plug on Internet connections because of security concerns.

Agencies log off Internet | Department of Interior agencies lose Internet (The Free Lance Star, 3/20/04) - A federal judge in Washington ordered the Interior Department to disconnect from the Internet many of its computers to safeguard from hackers records of Indian lands, natural resources, and funds.

National parks told to cut services quietly - Internal memo follows report claiming underfunding (MSNBC, 3/18/04) - National park superintendents are being told to cut back on services — possibly even closing smaller, historic sites a couple days a week or shutter visitor centers on federal holidays — without letting on they are making cuts.

Growth nears Petrified Forest | Subdivisions imperil park expansion plan, ranchers say (Arizona Republic, 3/14/04) - For nearly a decade, some of the state's largest ranchers have waited patiently to strike a deal with the federal government to enlarge Petrified Forest National Park and protect the area's geological and archaeological treasures. But time appears to be running out as development pressures increase and the ongoing drought makes the cattle industry less viable.

January '04 Focus

Public Land Uses & Stewardship; Federal Monies
President's Healthy Forests Initiative
Supported with New Stewardship Contracting Procedures

WASHINGTON - The Department of the Interior and the U.S. Department of Agriculture have announced new Stewardship Contracting Interim Guidance procedures designed to improve the removal of underbrush and trees that often serves as hazardous fuels for catastrophic wildfires. The effort is in support of President George W. Bush's Healthy Forests Initiative.

Stewardship contracting involves caring for the land through broad-based community public and community involvement. Stewardship contracting is intended to achieve key land-management goals that improve, maintain, or restore forest or rangeland health; restore or maintain water quality; improve fish and wildlife habitat; reestablish native plant species and increase their resilience to insect and disease; and reduce hazardous fuels that pose risks to communities and ecosystem values through an open, collaborative process. Stewardship contracting authority includes agreements with nonprofits, best-value contracts, designation by description, end results, and goods for services. The following are now available on the BLM website (you will need Adobe Reader - get a free download here - new window):

Guidance Document (New window) - Guidance on the preparation, implementation, and tracking of BLM stewardship projects, in accordance with Section 323 of Public Law 108-7, the Consolidated Appropriations Resolution, 2003.

Instructional Memorandum (new window) - Issuance of Stewardship Contracting Guidance and Identifying Stewardship Contracting Opportunities and Projects

Q&A (new window) - Questions and answers about Stewardship Contracting as it affects the BLM

Stewardship Contracting Fact Sheet (new window) - Fact sheet about Stewardship Contracting as it affects the BLM, including goal, authority, and definitions.

Study: Saving Forests Best Way to Cheap, Clean Water (Reuters - 9/1/03) - Major cities should focus efforts and funds on conserving forests that naturally purify their drinking water, saving them from spending billions of dollars on water treatment facilities, a study published by the World Bank and World Wide Fund for Nature showed.

Bush's choice for EPA chief raises activists' ire (Atlanta Journal Constitution, 8/17/03) - Environmental environmentalists fear that Leavitt will open the door for grazing, mining and other economic uses on federal lands.

Interior's top lawyer asks for investigation of own conduct (San Diego Union Tribune, 8/14/03)- Complaints about grazing issues made by Friends of the Earth and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility prompt Department of Interior inquiry.

Bush Tours Wildfires, Touts Forest Thinning Plan

REDMOND, Oregon, August 21, 2003 (ENS) - President George W. Bush says his Healthy Forests initiative is the kind of "common sense policy" that can prevent the catastrophic forest fires plaguing the Western United States and urged Congress to pass the forest thinning plan. After taking a helicopter tour of wildfires in and nearby Oregon's Deschutes National Forest today, Bush said environmental review and litigation are needlessly delaying forest management projects that would reduce the threat of future wildfires. resident's Wildfire Bill Heads to Senate Floor.

"Congress needs to act," Bush said during a speech today in Redmond, Oregon. "People ought to understand up there in Washington that current law makes it too difficult to expedite the thinning of forests because it allows for the litigation process to delay progress and projects for years and years."

"That is a problem," said Bush. "And those delays, the endless litigation delays, endanger the health of our forests and the safety of too many of our communities.

Wildfires have burned some 2.4 million acres this year, according to the National Interagency Fire Center, compared to six million by this time last year.

Bush's Healthy Forests initiative, which has been adopted by congressional supporters as the basis for pending legislation, streamlines federal planning requirements for thinning forests on some 20 million acres of federal land and limits legal challenges to agency actions.

The plan passed the House in May and the Senate Agricultural Committee in July, but faces sharp criticism from some Senate Democrats and environmentalists who say it is little more than a giveaway to the timber industry.

It has the support of the timber and paper industries, who say it will reverse the trend of mismanagement of public lands by the federal government.

Bush said his plan is "not something that was invented in Washington, D.C." "It is the collective wisdom of scientists, wildlife biologists, forestry professionals, and as importantly, the men and women who risk their life on an annual basis to fight fires," Bush said. "That is who I have been listening to."

The conditions of the nation's forests did not happen overnight, Bush said, and there are some 190 million acres of forests and woodlands at risk from catastrophic wild fire.

"A problem that has taken a long time to develop is going to take a long time to solve," said Bush, who defended the plan's provisions to limit administrative appeals, legal challenges and environmental review of forest thinning projects.

"We want people to have input," Bush said. "But we want people to understand that we're talking about the health of our forests, and if there is a high priority, we need to get after it before the forests burn and people lose life."

But critics contend it is the timber industry that is driving Bush's plan and say its revamping of judicial and environmental reviews cut out the public, are unnecessary and possibly illegal. They say the plan is doomed to fail because it targets scarce resources at federal lands for projects that will do little to help the communities most at risk from wild fires.

Studies show that 85 percent of the land that surrounds communities most at risk is private, state, or tribal -- not federal. "The President's plan does not address the heart of the problem," said Jim Furnish, former deputy chief of the National Forest System for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Only 20 percent of the acres burned in the last 12 years were in national forests.

"Any forest plan should focus first on protecting the areas immediately around cities and towns," says John Hummel, a city council member for the city of Bend, Oregon. "The President's plan does not do that."

Bush insists his plan will protect local communities and said his forest stewardship contracting policy is also benefiting the local economies of Western communities. The policy allows private firms to reap the financial benefits of the underbrush and timber they remove under contract.

Bush defended the practice and said paying private contractors for these projects "takes a little load off the taxpayer." "The local community's tax base will get better when somebody spends the money they make from the thinning projects, and the forests are more healthy," he said. "Stewardship contracting makes sense. It is an integral part of our plan."

But to environmentalists and some Western local and state officials, it is an integral component of why Bush's plan is misguided.

Critics say the forest stewardship program is logging under the guise of wildfire management and believe the vagueness of President's plan and the broad authority it grants federal agencies will encourage logging of valuable timber, not the underbrush most in need of clearing.

The administration is engaged in "a full court press within the bureaucracy to rewrite regulations against the public and the environment in favor of corporate interests," said Defenders of Wildlife President Rodger Schlickeisen.

Logging large, old trees "flies in the face of sound forest science," said Dominick DellaSala, a forest ecologist with the World Wildlife Fund's Klamath-Siskiyou ecoregion program in Oregon. "Numerous studies have shown that this kind of logging actually increases the risk of catastrophic fires," DellaSala said. "If the administration is serious about protecting people and forest resources, it needs to focus resources on brush clearing and thinning in the forests nearest communities and in tree plantations."

Today's trip by the President was the third in the past two weeks to combine campaign fund raising stops with events touting his environmental policies.

Some 2,000 protestors - criticizing the administration's environmental and economic policies along with the U.S. intervention in Iraq - greeted Bush today when he arrived at the University of Portland for a fund raising luncheon.

On Friday Bush will attend another fund raiser before visiting a Snake River dam to promote his efforts to protect and restore endangered salmon.

Printed with permission
(c) 2003 Environmental News Service

Methane Extraction Methods Alarm Ranchers, Conservationists

(Reprinted with Permission from ENS)

SHERIDAN, Wyoming, March 12, 2003 (ENS) - An unprecedented coalition of western ranchers, hunters, anglers, conservationists, water users and renewable energy advocates is appealing to Congress to protect the natural resources of the Western states from the environmental problems caused by energy production, particularly coalbed methane extraction. Releasing its agenda for energy development on Tuesday, the coalition called on Congress to "protect private property rights, conserve and protect drinking and irrigation water resources, and preserve sensitive public lands" when national energy legislation comes before lawmakers this spring.

A group of companies that includes: Lance Oil and Gas [Western Gas], Barrett Resources [Williams], Devon Energy, Yates Petroleum, Pennaco Energy [Marathon Oil], and CMS Oil and Gas [Perenco S.A.] - has notified the federal government that they intend to develop coalbed methane in the Powder River Basin of Wyoming

There are 12,000 coalbed methane wells currently operating in the Powder River Basin, and the companies have declared their collective intention to drill an additional 39,400 wells.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), a federal agency under the Interior Department, has issued a Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) and Proposed Plan Amendment for the Powder River Basin Oil and Gas Project, a plan that the coalition is protesting on the grounds that it is flawed, contains contradictory statements, and does not protect the lands, waters and wildlife of the region from the "enormous impacts" of development.

The FEIS "fails to reveal the full extent of impacts to the people, land, water and air resources in the Powder River Basin," the Powder River Basin Resource Council said February 18 in a letter of protest to BLM Director Kathleen Clarke. "The analysis is flawed and fraught with errors, provides contradictory information, and it especially fails to reveal or take the required “hard look” at the serious and long lasting impacts to the land owners living on top of these federal minerals," the council wrote. "Now, we are facing an unprecedented level of development in this proposed project and we have found that BLM has ignored the requirements of the Federal Land Policy Management Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act," the council wrote.

The majority of federal oil and gas resources on western public lands are open for energy production. The Bush administration indicates that 85 percent of the "technically recoverable" oil and 88 percent of the "technically recoverable" natural gas on federal lands in the Rocky Mountain West are currently available for leasing and development.

Some public land areas have "unique natural values that should be safeguarded from all impacts of energy development," the coalition says. The group is asking Congress to ban new leasing or re-leasing in national monuments, national wildlife refuges, national forest roadless areas, citizen proposed wilderness areas on Bureau of Land Management lands, wild and scenic rivers, and sacred sites.

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson spoke on behalf of the coalition, asking federal agencies to "require environmentally compatible energy practices" in New Mexico.

The energy industry is lobbying Congress to weaken protections on 58 million acres of private property in the West that lie above federally owned mineral and gas reserves, said the coalition, which includes the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance and the Wyoming Outdoor Council.

"Ranchers have no way to protect their property from the impacts of irresponsible energy development," says Nancy Sorenson, a Wyoming rancher activist with the Powder River Basin Resource Council. "We need strong laws that protect our property rights and our way of making a living."

The coalition is asking Congress to require surface owner consent and surface use agreements before allowing energy development on their land. Today, Western land owners have little say over whether and how the federal minerals under their lands are extracted, and little recourse from the impacts this development can have on their drinking water, livelihoods and quality of life, the coalition states.

The coalition is urging Congress to adopt the reclamation standards to address the destructive impacts that coalbed methane development has on water resources. The lawmakers should require operators to submit proposed water management plans with their permit applications.

Ranchers oppose changes proposed by industry that would exempt coal bed methane gas development from the Clean Water Act. "We're in the middle of a horrible drought - we can't afford to pollute or waste a single drop," Sorenson says.

The coalition calls on Congress to regulate the gas industry practice of injecting toxic chemicals like benzene, MTBE and toluene into the ground to produce natural gas. Known as "hydraulic fracturing," the practice threatens to contaminate underground drinking water supplies.

"Hydraulic fracturing can contaminate our aquifers, which provide tens of thousands of western residents with their primary source of drinking water," warns Gwen Lachelt, director of the Oil and Gas Accountability Project in Durango, Colorado. The energy industry is asking Congress to exempt hydraulic fracturing from the Safe Drinking Water Act. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been asked to support legislation which would exempt hydraulic fracturing from the safe drinking water law. The agency completed a study in 2002 of the possible impacts of hydraulic fracturing on underground sources of drinking water. Based on its analysis, the EPA has "preliminarily found that the potential threats to public health posed by hydraulic fracturing of coalbed methane wells appear to be small and do not justify additional study." The EPA notes that states with jurisdiction over their underground injection control programs have the authority to place controls on any injection activities that may threaten underground sources of drinking water.

With the "expected increase" in coal bed methane production, the EPA report says, additional data collection may become valuable in the future, if development leads to injection of fracturing fluids into underground sources of drinking water that are simultaneously used as drinking water sources. The agency says it is committed to working with states to collect relevant data to monitor this issue.

Hunters, anglers and conservationists hope the proposed legislation maintains existing safeguards for critical wildlife habitat and pristine public lands. "Hunting, fishing and recreation are the cornerstone of the West¹s economy," says Tory Taylor, a wildlife guide based in Dubois, Wyoming. "If Congress removes wildlife protections to drill for gas, I could be out of a job." Wildlife recreation and outdoor activities contribute hundreds of thousands of jobs to the West¹s economy, and generate over $20 billion a year in economic activity, the coalition says.

The energy industry must be held accountable for cleanup costs and damages, the coalition urges. "Current law has proven insufficient to protect public lands and private property interests from the many damages caused by oil and gas development," the group says. "Legislation is needed to provide for bonding levels that reflect the real liabilities associated with energy extraction, to clean up past oil and gas development activity, improve reclamation standards, and strengthen inspection and enforcement activities."

A copy of the Western Energy Agenda is available at the Powder River Basin Resource Council website at: www.powderriverbasin.org.

BLM Director Kathleen Clarke said the changes reflect the Bush administration's "new environmentalism."

This is a policy, Clarke explained, that "looks to those closest to the land, rather than Washington, DC, for answers to public land issues." The rule changes were published March 3 in the Federal Register, giving the public 60 days to comment.

Conservationists say the changes to federal rules governing grazing on public lands will do little to reform a system that they believe harms the environment and shortchanges the American taxpayer.

Some 167 million acres of land governed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is authorized for grazing.

Clarke said the proposed changes will target local conservation and cooperative stewardship efforts while improving the agency's business practices and providing greater flexibility to public land managers and grazing permit holders.

But conservationists are suspicious of proposals they will believe limit public appeals and make it more difficult for BLM officials to remove permit holders who overgraze. They warn that the changes elevate economic interests over environmental protection and fail to address the issue of grazing fees.

"This is yet another blatant attempt by the Bush administration to curtail the ability of the public to participate in decisions affecting our public lands," said Laurie Fulkerson, grazing program coordinator for Forest Guardian, a conservation group focused on the American Southwest. "The BLM's effort to push the administration's agenda through these proposed regulations occurs at the expense of native wildlife, plants, and streams," Fulkerson said.

In its announcement, BLM officials said they want to create provisions to reemphasize consideration of social, economic and cultural impacts, in addition to the ecological impacts of federal reviews of agency actions under the National Environmental Policy Act. The proposed changes include "streamlining" the administrative appeals process related to grazing decisions and reinstating a provision that allows the agency and a grazing permit holder to share title of certain range improvements, such as a fence, well, or pipeline, if they are constructed under what is known as a Cooperative Range Improvement Agreement.

Conservationists contend that reinstating this provision will make it more difficult for the agency to remove permit holders who overgraze. They believe the transfer of ownership of public infrastructure to private hands will increase the costs of buying out permit holders found to be engaged in harmful practices. It is hard to get a real sense of the full extent of the administration's planned revisions because its publicly released proposals are not all that specific, said Dave Alberswerth, BLM program director for The Wilderness Society. But as the BLM is planning an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), it is clear that this will be a "major departure" from the current regulations, Alberswerth said.

The proposed revisions do not tackle the issue of grazing fees, which many conservationists believe is a key shortcoming of the current regulatory framework.

Conservationists have long argued that the fee is too low and encourages overgrazing, which has serious environmental consequences. But the government has sided with grazing interests, who contend public land ranchers have to invest more time and resources on federal lands than on private rangeland. Grazing fees on federal lands bring in less than $6.5 million a year to the U.S. government and fall far short of covering administration costs, which run at some $63 million annually. In February the government announced this year's fee for grazing on public lands will be lowered to $1.35 per animal unit month (AUM), down from $1.43 last year. An AUM is defined as the amount of forage needed to sustain one cow and her calf, one horse, or five sheep or goats for a month. The formula used for calculating the fee was established by Congress in the 1978 Public Rangelands Improvement Act and has continued under a presidential Executive Order issued in 1986, which mandated that the fee cannot fall below $1.35 per AUM.

The annually adjusted grazing fee is computed by using a 1966 base value of $1.23 per AUM for livestock grazing on public lands in Western States, which is then adjusted according to current private grazing land lease rates, beef cattle prices, and the cost of livestock production. Based on the formula, the 2003 fee dropped primarily because of a decline in beef cattle prices in 2002. The $1.35 per AUM grazing fee, which took effect March 1, applies to 16 Western states on public lands administered by the BLM and the Forest Service.

It is hard to argue the U.S. government is not heavily subsidizing grazing on public lands. An October 2002 study by the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) found that the minimum cost to U.S. taxpayers of the federal grazing on public lands is $128 million. But this number could be as high as $1 billion, CBD analysts determined, because of indirect costs from resource damage and subsidies.

In late February, a coalition of eight citizen groups filed suit against the Forest Service for failing to reform the fee for grazing on National Forests in the Western United States. "The Forest Service charges about as much to run a cow on public lands as it costs to feed a pet hamster," said Peter Galvin, CBD conservation biologist. "Livestock grazing on public lands is one of the major causes of species endangerment in the U.S."

Last October, a federal judge ruled that the Forest Service was in violation of the Endangered Species Act in the 11 national forests of New Mexico and Arizona because it had failed to monitor and restrict livestock grazing on more than 15 million acres.

The public has until May 2 to comment on the BLM's Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and the accompanying EIS, which will be discussed at four public meetings. The meeting schedule and the agency's proposed rule changes can be found at: www.blm.gov/nhp/news/regulatory/index.htm.

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2003. All Rights Reserved.