Westerners stand up to exploitation wave

| The New Mexican

5/11/2008 - 5/11/08

It might be of slight comfort to the people of the Galisteo Basin and other parts of New Mexico getting attention from a Big Oil long focused on our state's southeast and northwest, but ... we're not alone. And in some cases, it looks as if we're ahead of a few of our Rocky Mountain neighbors when it comes to citizen input and resistance on the part of politicians.

Take Wyoming — which is what the energy industry has been doing for a century or so: First it was one big coalfield, for firing steam engines then for fueling much of the nation. Now oil and gas are well-established.

And where better, many might argue: The ninth-biggest state, with nearly 100,000 square miles, has barely more than half a million people to worry about pollution and other environmental ills besetting the big-population states. All that space, most of it wind-blown; fresh air and clear skies everywhere y'look ...

Well, maybe not everywhere: From The Associated Press comes the story of Sublette County, south of Jackson Hole, where they've been drilling for hydrocarbons for a half-century or more; a few tiny towns doubling as camps for roughnecks, surrounded by ranches and wildlife-rambling room.

And the skies are not cloudy all day — but they are getting a little smoggy. During the past winter, the state had to issue its first ozone alerts, and they were for a county with fewer than 7,500 people — yet where ground-level ozone exceeded healthy levels.

It'll cost the state plenty to get back within federal clean-air standards. And if money weren't the concern, a hazy atmosphere is: The longtime haven for seekers of solitude is looking ominously industrial.

Environmentalists, who now include ranchers long scornful of their efforts, hope to head off worse pollution. Energy companies talk about mitigating damage to the air, all the time saying drilling must go on.

Are there enough Wyomingites willing to stand up for their skies? A ver.

In central Utah, a couple of hours south of Salt Lake City, folks are getting up on their hind legs over energy-company incursions. Oil is flowing from wells in Sevier County — and there's abundant coal as well.

Plans to put in a coal-fired power plant have prompted an effort to put the issue on November's election ballot. They've been up against a state legislature so, uh, embedded with the extractive industries that it passed a law banning land-use initiatives and referenda.

The law took effect only last Monday — but before it did, the locals rallied in Richfield to gather the 1,200 or so required signatures in time. Meanwhile, the constitutionality of such a law limiting citizens' rights is under court challenge.

In Colorado, too, lots of folks are raising fusses over what, for so long, has been laissez-faire treatment of Big Oil, Big Coal and big everything else that has meant jobs for many, royalties for some, and fortunes for a few. But oil, gas and coal have been here-today, gone-tomorrow propositions for populaces who've found tourism a longer-term bargain — and who, themselves, like the land left alone.

New Mexicans have long been in that situation — and it shows in the environmental activism, not to mention NIMBYism, so often attracting politicians' attention. Most local candidates in our June 3 primary election have called for a collar on the oil-and-gas guys. To the extent that county government can put reasonable limits on them, the winners will be held to their word. Meanwhile, we've got some good people leading the state agencies with environmental authority.

The situation in Santa Fe and Río Arriba counties is far from settled — but it isn't for lack of citizen awareness of a new wave of exploration for exploitation.