Oil and gas leases have been a hot topic for a long time, especially since the controversial disruption of a BLM land sale by student activist Tim DeChristopher in Salt Lake City this past December. The sale which, according to some, was a midnight move by the Bush administration found itself floundering when an unknown bidder (DeChristopher) won parcel after parcel of land. Since December the leased parcels have been pulled back and forth between the BLM and the Interior, [...]
Salt Lake City, UT - The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) announced that on May 28, 2009 an agreement was made with Equity Oil Company (”Equity”) concerning oil and gas leases on lands in Utah’s San Juan County.
The agreement “gives SUWA certainty that oil and gas development in an important part of the Hatch Point proposed wilderness area will be subject to the applicable Resource Management Plan and additional restrictions,” said Stephen Bloch, Conservation Director and Attorney for SUWA.
By Tom Schueneman •
April 28, 2009
Characterizing it as “legally defective”, Department of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar took dead aim at the last minute attempt by the Bush administration allowing mining operations to fill valley streams with waste rock from “mountaintop removal” methods if it proved “too expensive” to find an alternative.
By Tom Schueneman •
April 17, 2009
Bush-era plan to expand offshore drilling in sensitive areas in Alaska was rejected today by a federal appeals court.
By Timothy B. Hurst •
April 11, 2009
In response to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s recent comments that the offshore wind energy resource in the U.S. could potentially provide 25% of our electricity and replace the need for coal-fired power plants, Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal balked, telling reporters: “Ain’t going to happen.”
By Tom Schueneman •
March 3, 2009
Obama reverses Bush administration ruling to weaken the Endangered Species Act.
By Timothy B. Hurst •
January 26, 2009
Closed to visitors since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, The Statue of Liberty’s crown may be reopening if the new Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar, has anything to say about it.
By Timothy B. Hurst •
January 26, 2009
In one of his last move Secretary of the Interior, outgoing Secretary Dirk Kempthorne issued a Secretarial Order authorizing the Bureau of Land Management to establish offices to expedite the permitting of renewable energy and associated transmission facilities on BLM lands.
By Caitlin Sislin •
January 8, 2009
This is a guest post by Caitlin Sislin, a public interest environmental attorney in Oakland, California and founder of the Transformative Advocacy program of Women’s Earth Alliance.
On December 22nd, 2008, the U.S. Department of Interior’s Office of Surface Mining granted Peabody Western Coal Company a “life-of-mine” permit for its Black Mesa project. The permit authorizes the Kayenta mine, which generates 8.5 million tons of coal per year to the Navajo Generating Station in Page, Arizona, to continue unabated until 2026.
Navajo and Hopi activists protest this permit as an unacceptable desecration of Black Mesa mountain, regarded as a living, female being and a central component of Native religion. Wahleah Johns, co-director of the activist organization Black Mesa Water Coalition, said that “[t]his decision will uproot the sacred connection that we have to land, water and all things living on Black Mesa.”
Peabody has operated the Kayenta and Black Mesa mines on the sacred Black Mesa mountain since the mid-1960s, to the great detriment of the Navajo nation. Coal extraction destroys the environmental integrity of the mountain, contaminates the air with methane gas, and threatens miners with illness and injury; coal burning is among the most highly-polluting forms of energy production in existence. Navajo land throughout Arizona and New Mexico is littered with coal mines and coal-fired power plants, nearly all of which fail to provide power to Navajo residents, instead exporting the coal and power to far-away urban communities such as Las Vegas and Los Angeles.
By Timothy B. Hurst •
December 17, 2008
As an environmentalist, I’m far more concerned about losing Salazar as a protector of Colorado’s rivers and streams, its mineral resources, and its public lands, than I am about the job the Senator will do protecting those things as the next Secretary of the Interior.
By Timothy B. Hurst •
December 8, 2008
A coalition of 106 conservation organizations is supporting Congressman Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) as the next Secretary of the Interior, according to a letter from more than 78 groups sent to President-elect Obama and released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).
