water said:
That does give conservationists a bad name..
Why? That BLM official is no tree hugger! He's trying to work out an accomodation for industry and locals. Here's the text immediately following the quoted passage.
"..Opponents of drilling, including many local business leaders, are deeply skeptical that the fragile Roan would survive. They paint a vision of a dream landscape turned nightmare: towering gas rigs with their bright lights and thundering diesel engines; endless truck traffic, swimming-pool-size evaporation ponds filled with foul-smelling petroleum residues, thousands of gallons of wastewater and miles of dusty dirt roads in a region that rarely receives rainfall.
"Once the steamroller starts rolling, it doesn't pick and choose," said Duke Cox, a builder and businessman from the nearby town of Silt. "It just rolls over everything."
And another concerned citizen:
"...In the town of Pinedale, Wyo., local officials are wary. Ward Wise, who serves as the Pinedale mayor's assistant, said the economic boost from gas production in the past was often short-lived. Even now, in good economic times, the town gets relatively little money from energy royalties -- about $88,000 this year.
"It's a boom-bust cycle," Wise said. "What happens when this thing busts? And someday it will. What's going to happen to the environment, which can never be replaced?"
Now here's the greenie!
.... Peter Aengst, oil and gas campaign coordinator for the Wilderness Society, said oil companies have access to most federal lands. He noted that a 2002 federal study of five mountain states -- Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming -- showed that just 15 percent of the land containing proven oil reserves -- and 12 percent of the proven gas reserves -- are now off-limits.
"Why," Aengst asked, "do we need to be going into that last 5 or 10 percent that's really sensitive?"
Sounds like a reasonable question to me. If the locals get their hackles raised enough, perhaps Bush's unbalanced approach can be derailed.
"It is our obligation to use the land wisely, and sometimes not to use it at all," said James L. Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality..... "We have a strong commitment to preserving roadless areas," he said. BALONEY!
