Gale Norton Under Fire

For as long as I can remember, Republicans have promised to give control over Western land issues to the locals, and for all that time, Eastern Democrats have recoiled in horror, thinking that what that really meant was that the remaining undeveloped land in the West would be handed over to locals for mining, drilling, and general destruction.

I think there used to be a lot of truth to that, and maybe there still is in some parts of the mountain West. But not in Western Colorado, where the economy has been transformed. With the last mining bust long past, Western Colorado is now home to retirement communities, upscale resort development, and a strong tourism industry. The ranching and (in lower elevations) farming industries have found they can co-exist with their new neighbors. The mining and oil and gas industries are now viewed as a threat to everyone else because those businesses can destroy wilderness and pollute water supplies if they are not carefully regulated.

George W. Bush made the same promises about Western lands as previous Republican candidates, and his Secretary of Interior, former Colorado Attorney General Gale Norton, was supposed to follow through. But as it has turned out, "local control" doesn't count for much when the locals want to see environmental safeguards in place, as they do in the case of the Roan Plateau in western Colorado and the San Juan basin in southwestern Colorado. Two boards of county commissioners (Garfield and La Plata) and even the city council of traditional GOP hotbed Grand Junction, have demanded that drilling regulations protect local water supplies (for example, by requiring "directional drilling" from wells clustered in a single location, instead of covering the landscape with rigs every few hundred yards). But this week, Norton opened up huge tracts of the West to new natural gas drilling without putting in those locally-desired safeguards.

Making up for lost time, the Denver Post is all over this issue today. Their editorial page strongly condemned Norton's decision:

Norton came into office promising to listen to local concerns, but she has broken that pledge. For example, the Roan Plateau, a dramatic uplift that rises 3,500 feet over the Colorado River near Rifle, will be open to drill rigs. Yet all town councils in Garfield County - Rifle, Silt, Parachute, Carbondale, New Castle and Glenwood Springs - had asked BLM not to allow drilling on the plateau's top. Instead, they called for a compromise to permit drill rigs at the plateau's base. But Norton ignored their pleas.

The Roan Plateau illustrates a major misunderstanding about public lands. It's a myth that the Roan was totally off-limits to a search for energy. Of the Roan's 127,000 acres, 50 percent are, or could have been open to drilling under the old policy. Local communities wanted less than one-third of the plateau left in pristine shape.

The Democratic candidate to replace Scott McInnis in the 3rd Congressional District, whoever that ends up being, should put all of those towns on his or her "must visit" list. This issue can help turn this district -- which even under the Republicans' gerrymander is not that heavily tilted to the Republicans -- into a pickup in 2004.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the Post's coverage is when they asked Norton if in light of the criticism she has received, she is considering leaving the Bush administration. Her answer was a definite maybe. "The pull of Colorado is very strong," she says. Yes it is, but if Norton has her way there will be a lot less of Colorado to enjoy.

Comments

[etc.]

This post reminds me of others from the Political State report concerning coal bed methane in Wyoming. Specificly, one of the waste products of CBD is salty water, and the ranchers and farmers don't like it. Among other things, it helped get a Democratic governor elected in Wyoming, of all places.

What I think this points to is a larger issue that the Republican based sage brush rebellion of the 70's and 80's represented a coalition of interests that don't seem to have as much in common as they once did.

[Ralph]

Run! John Salazar, Run!

[Jo Fish]

And anyone is surprised that the oil and mineral industries win out over "local interests" why?

If Gail Norton carried a mattress around with her, she could not be any more obvious.

[Sara]

The Roan plateau is a gorgeous place that needs to be saved! Let's do our part to help save this beautiful area for our future generations!