On Energy Development, Hunters and Anglers Push Back

On Energy Development, Hunters and Anglers Push Back. By Chris Hunt. New West.

Hunt also introduces us to a new group, Sportsmen for Responsible Energy Development.

Proposed dam on Cache la Poudre River is controversial in Fort Collins, Colorado

Divide develops over dam. A proposed $431 million dam and reservoir project north of Fort Collins riles those who see it as a disastrous strangling of the picturesque Cache la Poudre River. By Michael Booth. The Denver Post.

The dam is said to be justified by projected growth of new homes. Instead it is a massive subsidy for the continuation of a bad idea and an economy destroying practice.

The governments in this country are having a hard time adjusting to the fact that the home building boom is over. Now they should take a “time out” and consider all they have done to facilitate the creation of an unsustainable hosing market directed at the upper class and the upper middle class* — how many resources were unnecessarily sacrificed. They also need to consider their ethics, or more likely lack thereof, and get out of bed with the developers.

The dollar’s international value is now a joke and the inventory of unsold homes is at least a year from being filled. Nevertheless, we keep hearing proposals for more big developments, ones the average American never could afford to buy into. Many in the West are located in or near scenic mountainous areas where they take a toll on wildlife and require a huge new infrastructure (such as this dam).

If the American economy is to ever prosper again, there needs to be much less investment in housing for the relatively well off and much more in science, technology, environmental protection and remediation, efficient health care, education and reeducation, new energy sources and especially efficient use of energy, etc.

This dam is an illustration of the wrong mentality, and it shows the striking decline in this country is not the work of the Republican Administration in Washington alone.

Related story. Fen-ced in: Protected peat bog blocks growth plan for Grand Valley, Colorado. Grand Junction Sentinel.

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*Ironically, despite the huge number of new homes, few are within the reach of the lower middle class and those with fewer means.

B.C. government shifts away from development of Flathead Valley

Well maybe . . . the article is more of a hope than report of the facts.

Victoria shifts away from development of Flathead Valley. But permanent protection still needed for rare treasure. Kathryn Molloy, Vancouver Sun

Bordering on Catastrophe (more on plans to industrialize the area near Glacier NP)

British Petroleum has withdrawn their plans for massive industrialization of the area across the border, but adjacent to Glacier National Park, but B.P. other companies and the British Columbia government have lots of other awful plans for this general area.

Bordering on Catastrophe. Montana’s opposition helped kill a Canadian mining plan last week. But has the real war just begun? By Gordon Sullivan. Missoula Independent.

Link to the North Fork Landowners Association. Much more information on the fight over the Canadian Flathead River area.

British Petroleum’s plans for thousands of coal bed methane wells near Glacier NP are dropped

This is great news! BP drops Flathead coal-bed plan. By Michael Jamison. Missoulian.

I recently did a story on the grave threat of these wells to the water, air and land in British Columbia just NW of Glacier National Park.

The plans for the huge mountaintop coal mine (the Cline Mine) remain, however.

Here is the most extensive article. BP Drops Coal-Bed Methane Exploration Project North of Glacier Park. Flathead Beacon. By Dan Testa.

Governor Brian Schweitzer says Montana can’t be allowed to Become Another Wyoming

Oil & Gas Symposium: Montana Cannot Become Another Wyoming. By Hal Herring. New West.

Park Service: Ely, Nevada coal-fired power plant plan ‘unacceptable’

The National Park Service has come out against the giant coal-fired electrical generating plant planned for north of Ely, Nevada. Now it and majority leader Harry Reid are in opposition as well as it appear local residents.

Park Service: Ely, Nevada coal-fired power plant plan ‘unacceptable‘. Elko Daily Free Press.

Kempthorne’s New Interior? Mountaintop removal mining and expanded stream dumping

Western Watersheds Blog has located the news the Secretary Dirk Kempthone and his “new honest” Department of Interior has just approved regulations that make the stip mining in Appalachia even worse.