U.S. Sens. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and John Barrasso, R-Wyo., introduced the WEST Act last week, extolling it as a job generator. In an op-ed he wrote Monday for the St. George News, Hatch lauded oil and gas drilling as nirvana on earth, a slam-dunk way to jump-start employment in the region.

“Job creation and energy production is typically a match made in Heaven in Utah and other western states. They are a perfect complement – much like former Jazzmen Karl Malone and John Stockton were in their heyday,” the senator wrote.

But not everyone is jumping up from their seats, hooting and hollering in favor of hydraulic fracturing.

Gathered concentrated oil burns during a controlled oil fire in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. The U.S. Coast Guard worked in partnership with BP, local residents, and other agencies to conduct this "in-situ burn" to aid in preventing the spread of oil following the April 20 explosion on Mobile Offshore Drilling Unit Deepwater Horizon. (U.S. Navy photo)

“The WEST Act is not aligned with the conservation values of the American people,” said Emily Diamond-Falk, communications manager for The Wilderness Society in Washington, D.C. “In a recent Colorado College survey, a majority of independent voters across the West said that they were in favor of ‘reducing our need for more coal, oil and gas by expanding our use of clean, renewable energy that can be generated in the United States. The same poll found that voters were in strong agreement that ‘our national parks, forests, monuments and wildlife areas are an essential part of your state’s economy.’ It appears that the WEST ACT is an effort to open our shared public lands and waters to industrial development and pollution.”

The bills bundled into the WEST Act include the Jobs and Energy Permitting Act, or H.R. 2021, which was cited in a report commissioned by Reps. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., Edward Markey, D-Mass., and Howard Berman, D-Calif., late last year that called the Republican-led 112th Congress “the most anti-environment House in U.S. history.” The legislation would upend the Supreme Court’s decision that the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. The bill also prohibits the EPA from collecting emissions information.

The WEST Act would undermine the Clean Air Act in a multitude of ways. It includes the so-called Farm Dust Regulation Prevention Act, which would cast doubt on the EPA’s ability to regulate coarse particulate matter from mining and extraction industries, or dust that contains arsenic or other heavy metals, or dust that substantially harms public health by other means. U.S. Reps. Diana DeGette and Jared Polis, both D-Colo., have been vocal in their skepticism of the bills’ intentions.

The WEST ACT would additionally include the expedited consideration of permits to drill in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Virginia and end what Republicans say is the Obama administration’s de facto moratorium on new offshore drilling. The Restarting American Offshore Leasing Now Act, or H.R. 1230, and The Reversing President Obama’s Offshore Moratorium Act, H.R. 1231, are the House versions of the legislation now in the WEST ACT.

According to Hatch’s editorial, the WEST ACT would also “end the confusion and uncertainty in the EPA’s decision-making process for air permits, which is delaying energy exploration in Utah and across America, including in the Alaskan Outer Continental Shelf, a project expected to create 50,000 jobs and produce 1 million barrels of oil per day.”

Barrasso said the GOP has laid out a clear path to energy security and job creation.

“For too long, the Obama administration’s anti-American energy policies have strangled western job creators,” he said. “By removing harmful EPA and public lands regulations, our legislation encourages American energy production and economic growth.”

In reality, drilling has reached its highest level under President Obama than at any point since the Reagan administration. Domestic oil production hit an eight-year high in 2011, and natural gas production hit an all-time high that year.

U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette (Photo via http://degette.house.gov)

“The researchers found higher lifetime cancer risks for people living closer to the wells,” reads the letter from DeGette and Rep. Henry Waxman. “They also concluded that these nearby residents have a higher risk of experiencing neurological and respiratory health effects, such as headaches, throat and eye irritation, impaired lung capacity, dizziness, fatigue, numbness in the limbs, and tremors.”

The study that DeGette, D-Colorado, and Waxman, D-California, referenced was based on a three-year review of the Battlement Mesa area of Garfield County where several companies are drilling for natural gas that a class-action lawsuit claims is endangering the community.

Escalated levels of ozone pollution have been recorded in the Uintah Basin in Utah and the Green River Basin in Wyoming near oil drilling sites and researchers say residents living near hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” operations in the Piceance and Denver-Julesberg basins in Colorado are also susceptible to dirtier air, which can impair breathing and worsen respiratory problems such as asthma.

Regulators at all levels of government are trying to establish safe standards for air emissions from fracking, which the EPA has also, at least preliminarily, linked to ground water contamination in Wyoming. Opponents of oil and gas drilling contend existing regulations are too lenient and that they are not adequately enforced. A recent report found there were 516 spills in Colorado last year and only five of them resulted in fines for the companies that allowed them to happen.

Gov. John Hickenlooper recently convened a task force to “help clarify and better coordinate” the regulatory jurisdiction between state and local governments but his critics claim the task force is a Trojan horse, designed to take away rights from local governments and instead leave their fates up to the allegedly inept state system. Boulder County, Longmont and Colorado Springs have already temporarily halted drilling activity while Commerce City, Erie and Aurora, Arapahoe County, Douglas County, Elbert County, El Paso County and Huerfano County are vying for their own regulations.

DeGette and U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, D- Colorado, have previously asked President Obama to strengthen federal environmental and public health standards to protect against the risks associated with fracking. In speeches this year and last, Obama has emphasized natural gas as a key resource in his “all-of-the-above” strategy to reduce the nation’s reliance on foreign oil.

Many Coloradans are protesting the increased drilling in the state, and asking for the federal government to stave off oil and gas development in the North Fork Valley and other locales.

Here is DeGette and Waxman’s letter in its entirety:

April 3, 2012

The Honorable Lisa Jackson
Administrator
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Ariel Rios Building
1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20460

Dear Administrator Jackson:

EPA is working to finalize new standards for oil and gas operations to reduce emissions of smog-forming volatile organic compounds and toxic air pollutants that can cause cancer and other serious health effects. As you consider these standards, we ask that you consider a new study from the Colorado School of Public Health that raises concerns about the potential public health impact of air emissions from unconventional gas drilling operations. The findings from this study, while preliminary, reinforce the importance of your forthcoming rules and the need for additional research.

Scientists at the Colorado School of Public Health examined three years of air monitoring data in Garfield County, Colorado and concluded that residents living near natural gas wells may face increased exposure to benzene, a known human carcinogen, and other toxic chemicals, such as ethylbenzene, toluene, and xylene. The researchers found higher lifetime cancer risks for people living closer to the wells. They also concluded that these nearby residents have a higher risk of experiencing neurological and respiratory health effects, such as headaches, throat and eye irritation, impaired lung capacity, dizziness, fatigue, numbness in the limbs, and tremors.

The authors concluded:

[P]reliminary results indicate that health effects resulting from air emissions during development of unconventional natural gas resources are most likely to occur in residents living nearest to the well pads and warrant further study. Risk prevention efforts should be directed towards reducing air emission exposures for persons living and working near wells during well completions.

We support the responsible and safe production of U.S. oil and natural gas resources. The good news is that we can control potentially harmful air emissions from drilling operations by implementing proven technology and best practices already in use today. We hope that you will consider the results of this new study in your rulemaking, and we look forward to reviewing EPA’s new rules once finalized.

Sincerely,

Henry A. Waxman
Ranking Member

Diana DeGette
Ranking Member

Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations

Shell in-situ oil shale research project in Rio Blanco County (USGS photo).

“Water is the defining resource in the West,” Mike Chiropolos, chief counsel for Western Resource Advocates, told reporters on a conference call this week. “There is an enormous uncertainty of what the impacts are of utilizing large quantities of that supply.”

The report, “Oil Shale 2050 (pdf), comes in advance of the Bureau of Land Management’s meetings in Colorado and Utah next week that ask for public feedback to the Department of Interior’s plan to dramatically scale back the acreage of lands available for oil shale and tar sands development. Federal officials are proposing to cut the Bush-era oil leasing inventory from 1.9 million acres to 462,000 for oil shale and from 431,000 acres to 91,000 for tar sands.

U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colorado, however, is sponsoring H.R. 3408, the “Pioneers Act,” which would revive the Bush-era plan to open vast amounts of public lands in Utah, Wyoming and western Colorado to oil shale and tar sands production. His bill made it out of the House Committee on Natural Resources last month, and House Speaker John Boehner has said oil shale revenues will partly pay for national transportation projects in the next five years.

Oil shale production, however, has yet to be proven commercially viable.

Oil shale is not to be confused with shale oil, which is oil trapped in rock formations. Shale oil only recently became a moneymaker as hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” techniques have proliferated. Oil shale, in contrast, doesn’t actually contain oil; it contains kerogen, or fossilized algae, locked in rock that requires an extensive heating process for it to be extracted and refined into oil.

Just weeks ago, Chevron abandoned its federal oil shale leases in Colorado to focus on more feasible energy plays — the latest in a long list of oil shale projects gone bust. The most infamous is Exxon’s exit from the massive Colony oil shale project 30 years ago on “Black Sunday” that left communities in western Colorado in economic ruin.

The resource’s potential keeps companies coming back. Shell recently said it had produced 1,700 barrels of oil from an oil shale project on private land in western Colorado and that it is now going to break ground on oil shale development on BLM land. The world’s most extensive deposits are in the Green River Formation, which underlies western Colorado, eastern Utah, and southwestern Wyoming.

“The history of oil shale is, quite simply, a recurring period of hype followed by bust. Interspersed amongst these cycles, and fueling dreams of striking it rich, are a litany of politicians, speculators, and news stories playing up oil shale’s great promise,” reads the Western Resource Advocates report.

The report draws comparisons between one company’s recent claim that by 2025 in Utah it will be producing 50,000 barrels of oil per day. In 1980, Exxon claimed that by 2010 it would be producing 10 million barrels of oil per day from oil shale. Exxon’s project went bust two years later.

Western Resource Advocates also notes that oil shale production — one of the dirtier forms of energy — would hinder goals to curb carbon emissions. The group says that water in the Colorado River Basin is projected to decrease anywhere from 5 percent to 20 percent by 2050 because of climate change. Sucking more water out of the rivers for energy production will pit industry versus communities, and threaten the survival of fish such as the Colorado pikeminnow, humpback chub, bonytail, and razorback sucker, the group said.

“Already, because of fossil fuel development, certain rural areas of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming have worse air quality than Los Angeles,” the report states. “The oil shale debate must, likewise, evaluate the potential impacts on our climate. As explained in this report, oil shale is projected to produce roughly 25 percent to 75 percent more greenhouse gases than comparable quantities of conventional crude oil. Colorado has adopted the vitally important goal of reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050. Other states are advancing similar goals. Large-scale production of oil shale would likely undermine these important goals.”

A forest decimated by pine beetles.

“We’ve been doing research on the effects of a changing climate to the vegetation on our nation’s forests for over two decades,” he told the Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources in Washington, D.C. “When it comes to fire, we’re definitely seeing much longer fire seasons in many parts of the country, another 60 or 70 days longer than what we used to experience.”

The Forest Service is not only dealing with an uptick in the number of wildfires, wind storms, droughts and other extreme weather as a result of climate change. “We’re also seeing much more severe fire behavior than we’ve ever experienced in the past,” Tidwell noted.

The wildfire risk is heightened as beetles make their way through the forests, sucking the life from trees and leaving dead, dried wood in their wake. The expansion of bark beetles “has started to slow a little bit,” he said, but “we’re still seeing about an additional 600,000 acres infested each year, so we’re going to have to continue to maintain this focus for the next few years.”

Sen. Udall

Referencing a new Forest Service report – “Increasing the Pace of Restoration and Job Creation on our National Forests” (pdf) – Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colorado, said that expanding the market for forest products from national forests will require streamlining contracting procedures and federal cooperation with private companies that want to use beetle-kill wood for commercial purposes.

“The private sector is key to dealing with this epidemic,” Udall said.

The federal government already is collaborating with communities and businesses to create wood and biomass supply for forest products, bioenergy production and home construction.

“We have examples all over the country now where these collaborative efforts are coming together,” Tidwell said. “People understand the type of work that needs to be done.”

He said the Forest Service is doing more with less by broadening its National Environmental Policy Act requests to include larger landscapes and by emphasizing agency efficiency and flexibility.

The Forest Service budgets about $100 million each year to mitigate bark beetles in Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, Utah, Montana, Idaho, Oregon, Washington and South Dakota, he said.

Sen. Franken

U.S. Sen. Al Franken, D-Minnesota, expressed frustration that politics are polluting scientific discussions. He said it only makes sense for Congress to begin incorporating the effects of climate change into budgetary decisions.

“To me it is so obvious the costs of climate change that we are already paying, and these are never factored in when we talk about the costs of things like burning more coal or burning dirtier oil,” Franken said. “This debate that has been going on in this country – it saddens me sometimes when what your scientists are telling us is called a hoax. I don’t know if it’s for political gain or to curry favor with big donors who can fund super PACs or what it is, but there is a climate-change-denial culture among some of my colleagues that I find very disturbing.”

President Obama’s budget requests $4.86 billion for the Forest Service, an increase of less than one-half of one percent over the 2012 appropriated level. The restoration of lands impacted by beetles, disease, fire, urban sprawl and warming temperatures are heavily emphasized.

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“Our region’s economy depends upon river flows that can support recreation and tourism,” said Arvin Ramgoolam, owner of Rumors Coffee and Townie Books in Crested Butte.

“The state should be working to protect and promote jobs out here rather than pursuing dead end projects that will rob the resources on which our jobs depend,” Ramgoolam said.

The Colorado Water Conservation Board recently funded a “project exploration committee” that is considering the Flaming Gorge pipeline. The task force held its first meeting Jan. 12 in Silverthorne, and is scheduled to continue meeting to discuss the pipeline through the end of the year.

Flaming Gorge Reservoir

The multi-billion-dollar project would suck 240,000 acre-feet of water a year from Flaming Gorge Reservoir, along the border of Wyoming and Utah, and ship it to Colorado’s increasingly thirsty Front Range. An acre-foot of water is about enough for two families to live off of for a year.

The proposal requires FERC approval because it is being pitched as part of a hydropower system but opponents have argued that pumping the water over the Continental Divide to reach Colorado’s sprawling cities along the Front Range would ultimately spend more energy than the project would produce.

Critics say the pipeline would drain 81 billion gallons of water each year from the Green River, a tributary of the already stressed Colorado River, and the state of Colorado projects the pipeline could cost as much as $9 billion to build, though other estimates have come in much lower.

A Western Resource Advocates study said the pipeline would deprive the Green River of almost a quarter of its flow, and result in a $58.5 million annual loss to the region’s recreation economy. The same study said it would produce the most expensive water ever seen in Colorado.

Protect the Flows, a coalition of over 370 businesses who depend upon the Colorado River system, says it is rounding up resolutions opposing the pipeline from local governments. “This is a victory for Colorado’s economy, the West Slope’s Economy, water users and our communities. It’s time to get past this proposal once and for all,” Mesa County Commissioner Steve Acquafresca said.

The civil penalty is part of a settlement Union Pacific reached with the EPA for allegedly violating the Clean Water Act and the Oil Pollution Act. In 2003 and 2004, the EPA claims the company spilled oil and coal along railroad lines in all three states and committed other violations at 20 of its rail yards.

“Today we have secured a settlement that will help prevent spills, protect water quality, and improve the safety of Union Pacific’s operations in 20 communities across Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming,” said Jim Martin, EPA regional administrator. “Union Pacific has already begun putting necessary measures in place and we will ensure they continue to do so.”

A Union Pacific Railroad locomotive.

Union Pacific will deposit $1.4 million into the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, which is used by federal agencies to respond to oil spills. The remaining $100,000 will be paid to the U.S. Treasury for the coal spills and stormwater violations.

The settlement also requires Union Pacific to develop a management and reporting system to ensure compliance with the EPA’s Spill Prevention, Control, and Countermeasure rules, Facility Response Plan regulations, and storm water requirements in all three states.

“Union Pacific must take further actions to control stormwater runoff at the Burnham Rail Yard in Denver, which are anticipated to prevent the discharge of approximately 2,500 pounds of chemical oxygen demand, 50 pounds of nitrate, 11,000 pounds of total suspended solids, and 30 pounds of zinc annually to waters in the Denver area,” an EPA press release said. “This settlement will benefit many communities in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming, many of which are disadvantaged, by requiring Union Pacific to install secondary containment to safely store oil and prevent oil spills from leaving its properties.”

Union Pacific will also be required to designate an environmental vice president responsible for complying with oil spill prevention and stormwater control requirements at its 20 rail yards.

The Colorado rail yards in question are located at Burnham, 36th Street in Denver, Denver North, East Portal Moffatt Tunnel, Grand Junction, Kremmling, Pueblo and Rifle.

“Union Pacific is working to ensure our response plans are up-to-date across our entire network and that our derailment response is as swift as possible while at the same time conforming to all applicable environmental laws,” Union Pacific spokesman Mark Davis said. “We are committed to protecting the environment now and for future generations. Our employees, customers, shareholders and the communities we serve can expect our full compliance with all laws and regulations.”

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Extracting fuel from oil shale can require anywhere between three and five barrels of water for every barrel of oil — one of the many reasons why it is more costly than producing conventional crude oil. Experts say commercial oil shale production is potentially a decade away, if it ever happens at all. Yet H.R. 3408, the “Pioneers Act,” would revive a 2008 plan by the Bureau of Land Management to open about 2 million acres of public lands in Utah, Wyoming and western Colorado to oil shale drilling.

“We already face a water shortage in the West that threatens farmers and ranchers,” said Bill Midcap of the Rocky Mountain Farmers Union. “We simply cannot gamble away our water on oil shale speculation at the risk of losing our farming and ranching economy that we depend upon for our food and fiber. A farm economy that is crucial for our State and that is helping our State out of the recession. We should use existing research and development projects to determine how much water will be needed before we consider commercial leasing of oil shale.”

Conservation groups challenged the plan on grounds that the analysis of impacts and the process were flawed and a new proposal re-evaluating the plan is due out soon. Lamborn’s bill (pdf) would mandate commercial leasing on 125,000 acres of public lands by 2016 even though the technology isn’t in place.

“Lamborn’s approach to oil shale is ‘Ready or not here it comes,’ and we are not ready,’’ the National Wildlife Federation’s Kate Zimmerman said. “There are still very important questions to be answered about the impacts of extracting oil shale on Colorado communities, on water quantity and quality and on fish and wildlife. Let’s wait for the results of the existing research into oil shale technology that is already taking place on public lands in Colorado and Utah before we give away more public resources.”

Oil shale was behind the huge western Colorado bust of the 1980s, when Exxon shut down a massive project that threw communities and families into economic and social turmoil. Nonetheless House Speaker John Boehner recently pointed to new oil shale legislation as a way to pay for transportation projects in the next five years — a check that may be hard to cash.

“Republicans on the House Natural Resources Committee botched Rep. Lamborn’s oil shale legislation hearing, which showed just how ridiculous the bill is,” said Matt Garrington, co-director of the Checks and Balances Project. “In two hours, the committee majority voted down guaranteeing oil shale technology to be American-made, ensuring that oil shale extraction won’t harm water supplies for municipalities and agriculture, and requiring commercial oil shale to be a proven revenue generator before handing over 2 million acres of public land for speculation. House Republicans did manage to preserve taxpayer handouts for oil companies by giving away oil shale at bargain-basement rates, undermining Speaker Boehner’s goal of raising transportation funds.”

The Lamborn bill would set royalty rates for oil shale starting at 5 percent for five years – compared to about 12.5 percent for extracted offshore oil and gas – and gradually raise the rate over several years. If they were ever paid, Garrington added, the lower royalties would mean less revenue for local governments, which would then shoulder the burden of costs associated with energy development such as new schools, hospitals, emergency services, roads, and other utilities.

The Pioneers Act is one of three bills concerning domestic energy that the committee approved. The GOP also voted to jump start offshore oil production and open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling. Republicans plan to attach the bills to a $260 billion transportation package.

“Instead of legislating seriously,” said David Goldston, director of government affairs for the Natural Resources Defense Council, what the Republicans have done is put out “an inventory of all the worst ideas they’ve had for the last two decades.”

Lamborn’s bill still must pass the House and if it does, like the other measures the House Committee on Natural Resources passed Wednesday, it will face opposition in the Democrat-controlled Senate.

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The Arizona law was sponsored by Russell Pearce, a Mormon. The law being considered in Utah was also written by a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Said Joseph Cannon, the paper’s editor, “What are the two commandments? Love God and love your neighbor. These people are our neighbors — incontestably, by any definition, they are our neighbors.”

After all, proponents argued at county hearing last summer and fall, look at nearby Telluride and Moab, Utah – both places with extensive mining histories that recovered to become meccas of alpine skiing and mountain biking.

True, bikers flock to the slick rock around Moab and happily pedal past tailings piles heaped along the Colorado River without giving their content much thought. Still, the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency were concerned enough to launch the massive and very expensive Moab Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action Project.

At a cost of up to $1 billion over the course of the next eight to 10 years (much of it in the form of stimulus dollars), the DOE will oversee the shipment of trainload after trainload of uranium tailings from the old Atlas Mill in a floodplain along the banks of the Colorado River to an EnergySolutions storage site 30 miles north along Interstate 70 at Crescent Junction.

The project just hit a milestone with a 136-container, 4,700-ton train arriving last week at the wide spot in the road where many Coloradans turn south off of I-70 toward Moab, Arches National Park and Canyonlands.

EnergySolutions, based in Salt Lake City, is the same company handling the storage of depleted uranium from Cold War-era nuclear weapons manufacturing that’s being shipped in by train from South Carolina. Some politicians and state regulators now want those shipments tested for radioactivity while state officials refine their storage rules. Seems like a good plan – perhaps one that should have been implemented prior to the first trainload rolling in last month.

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“I subscribe to the all-of-the-above energy policy, which means nuclear should be a big part of our future, and the benefit of nuclear power is its green footprint,” freshman U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz said. “I recognize it comes with great risk, but if you’re serious about greenhouse gasses, then you should be a serious supporter of nuclear development.”

That sentiment echoes those of Colorado Sen. Mark Udall, a Democrat, who has introduced a bill aimed a sparking a nuclear power revival in the United States despite serious trepidation about potential accidents and waste storage nightmares among both environmentalists and the general populace.

Nuclear power currently accounts for about 20 percent of the electricity in the United States (mostly on the East Coast), but following accidents at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania and Chernobyl in the Ukraine in the 1970s and 80s, no new nuclear plants have come online in the U.S. in decades.

Chaffetz wants to see 100 new nuclear plants built around the country in the coming years, and he’s confident technology can mitigate past contamination problems linked with mining and milling uranium – historically a big industry in far western Colorado and eastern Utah – as well as waste-storage issues associated with spent fuel rods.

Utah is currently embroiled in a storage controversy related to trainloads of depleted uranium from Cold War-era weapons production being stored at an Energy Solutions facility in Clive, Utah. And communities in Colorado have banded together to fight both a uranium mill proposal near Montrose and a uranium mine plan near Fort Collins.

New uranium claims have been filed across the West in anticipation of another nuclear power boom, as the industry finds more and more bipartisan support because of lower greenhouse gas emissions and a growing rep as an alternative to dirtier-burning coal, oil and natural gas. But opponents are concerned about impacts on national parks and other wild places and the risks of transporting yellowcake and nuclear waste across state lines.

Even though his Third Congressional District doesn’t include Green River or the historic uranium-mining hotbed of Moab, Chaffetz supports a statewide push to revive the industry. He said fears of increased mining impacting tourism in and around the state’s great national parks in southeastern Utah – a frequent recreation destination for Coloradans – are overblown.

“That’s a scare tactic that’s more rooted in hyperbole than it is reality,” he said. “The reality is we have borders for these national parks. These environmentalists argue there needs to be some big buffer zone, and I don’t buy into that. If we don’t want to be left beholden to the terrorist nations around the world, we’re going to have to get serious about nuclear development.”

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