The Wyoming wind (finally) blows itself out

It's as if I went to sleep in winter and awoke in spring.

For the past two days, hurricane-force gusts have toppled semis on the interstate and ripped roofs off of businesses. In Laramie County, we had gusts measured at 73 mph, just shy of the 75 mph that makes a hurricane. Big Horn Basin monitors measured a 91 mph gust. A weather station on the crest of Colorado's Monarch Pass, recorded a wind speed of 148 mph. Now that's a gust that could knock you down or send you flying, depending on your BMI.

Last night, for the second night in the row, wind rattled my window frames. The metal frames were installed with the house in 1960 and are not energy efficient, even with the storm windows in place. The cold greets the window and radiates inside my house, causing my furnace to kick into gear more often than it should. We replaced our 25-year-old gas furnace last winter. It went kaput. The new machine is as energy-efficient as I could afford. I looked at some fancy systems, some more than $10,000. Gas condensing furnaces, geothermal heat pumps, high-efficiency boilers, radiant floor heating, You could go totally solar, or combine wind and solar. Once you open to door to new energy, the sky's the limit.

This morning, spruce tree branches wave lazily in the breeze. The sun shines. When I turned on the TV this morning, a gardening show was on. The personalities on the Weather Channel spoke of a phenomenon called spring. Apparently, in some parts of the country, flowers and trees bloom in March. That's an odd concept at 6,200 feet in the Rocky Mountains. The arrival of spring here just means more snow and wind and cold. We get some blossoms in May, and usually delay planting until Memorial Day weekend. On the plus side, summers are glorious and often extend into October. Warm, dry days and cool, clear nights.

It takes its time getting here. But summer is worth the wait.

UW Prof Jeff Lockwood previews new book, "Living Behind the Carbon Curtain"

Jeff Lockwood

Who lives behind the carbon curtain?

I do. You do too if you're in Wyoming.

University of Wyoming prof and author Jeff Lockwood will preview his new book on the subject Saturday evening in Sheridan at the Powder River Basin Resource Council annual gathering.

Lockwood's book is Behind the Carbon Curtain: The Energy Industry, Political Censorship and Free Speech. The book won't be out for another year -- Lockwood's Saturday talk is but a teaser.

See Dustin Bleizeffer's article about this in Friday's Wyofile. Here's an excerpt:

On one level, the book is about a series of cases in which the energy industry has colluded with government in Wyoming to censor art and education. But in a larger sense, said Lockwood, Behind the Carbon Curtain is about something even more worrisome; it’s about how corporatocracy is rooted in the Equality State and throughout many levels of government nationwide. Corporatocracy is a term used to describe governments that are designed to serve the interests of corporations, and not necessarily citizens. A couple of examples of corporatocracy at work in Wyoming are the removal of Carbon Sink (the sculpture that offended coal industry interests) and the unofficially dubbed “Teeters Amendment” — a last-minute measure tagged onto the state budget bill that prohibited even the discussion of Next Generation Science Standards for its acknowledgment of man’s role in climate change. 

Read the rest at http://wyofile.com/dustin/uw-professor-previews-book-critical-energy-influence/#sthash.fhTLvQNs.dpuf

Gun totin' in schools, El Rancho Avalancho and red state energy bound for blue state

Some things that irked and/or entertained me this past week:

The state legislature is in session. Opening day included the Gov's State of the State speech, a "legalize pot" march by Wyoming NORML and performances in the House chambers by WY Poet Laureate Echo Roy Klaproth and the UW Collegiate Chorale. The week was filled with debates over Medicaid expansion, gun-totin' in schools, minimum wage increases, early childhood education, more guns, Common Core, increases to hunting and fishing licenses, a decrease in coal taxes and, of course, more gun-totin'. Most bills were killed early so the Housers and Senators can get on to the issue at hand, the budget. Only three weeks left to do so. The big surprise is that Sen. Chris Rothfuss (D-Laramie) fashioned a bipartisan bill on Medicaid expansion that still is in the mix. Way to go, Sen. R! This is a miracle in this Obamacare-bashing state.

From the library shelves: "This Land was Made for You and Me (But Mostly Me)" by Bruce McCall and David Letterman. Yes, that's the same David Letterman as seen on late-night TV. And illustrator Bruce McCall was one of the Scots-Irish geniuses behind the rise of National Lampoon, the others being Michael O'Donoghue and P.J. O'Rourke. Letterman is a millionaire with a Rocky Mountain getaway in Montana. I'm not sure about McCall's portfolio, but it's intriguing that Dave and Bruce would turn their comedic sights on the super-rich and their favorite playgrounds in the West, places like Jackson Hole. This from the book's intro:

It all began a decade and a half ago or so in the far American West, in Montana and Wyoming and those other states that appropriated and misspelled the Native American words for "Big Empty Space" and "Much Bigger Empty Space"; there, a few daring pioneers from the pharaonically wealthy top crust embarked on a spree, powered by lust, inspired by a vision only they could see.

Because it takes more than money, privilege and cronies in high places to ransack nature's bounty for the private pleasure of a privileged few, in what poets might call acts of sublime idiocy (as if anyone would ask poets their opinion!), in other words, obliterating what always was, and making out of it what never existed before, then flanking it with armed guards and electric fences and Rottweilers.

The writer/illustrator duo go on to explore "the only Montana hunting lodge with its own indoor airport,"  El Rancho Avalancho in Idaho -- the world's first skiable mansion, and "the biggest goddamn bison in Wyoming." During the legislature's first week, it was good to once again laugh at the humor of wretched excess.

Speaking of wretched excess.... A Los Angeles Times story excerpted in my local paper today is about the largest wind ranch in creation, coming soon to Carbon County. Big enough to fit all of L.A. inside of it, the 500-sqare-mile ranch -- owned by gazillionaire Philip Anschutz -- will be home to 1,000 wind turbines and the starting point for a transmission line to carry all the energy to California. Cali needs clean energy and Wyoming breaks wind incessantly -- a match made in heaven. The irony in all of this is that the the most blue of blue states, with more enviros per square mile than anywhere else on earth, will be getting its energy from the most red of red states, a place that keeps its energy rates the lowest in the nation by burning coal, the dirtiest energy-creating substance there is.

California has until 2020 to ensure that one-third of its energy comes from renewable resources. Meanwhile, its cities are clouded in a haze that travels from pollution generated by coal-burning plants in China. Some of that coal comes from Wyoming's Powder River Basin. Wyoming currently is working with officials in Washington to build new ports to ship more coal to China.

The world is indeed an odd place.

September Colorado floods spawn toxic sludge

Wyoming writer Laura Pritchett surveyed the Colorado floods as a passenger in a small plane. Her article appeared today on OnEarth. Also on board the plane was a camera crew from CNN. The big story is one that's been almost ignored by the media -- how the flooding affected fracking wells in Weld County, the sprawling swatch of land just to the south of Laramie County in southeast Wyoming (my home). Great article, and scary for all of us on the High Plains. Read it at http://www.onearth.org/articles/2013/09/a-view-from-above-shows-how-the-colorado-superstorm-damaged-fracking-facilities

350Cheyenne screens award-winning "Chasing Ice" Sept. 12

This announcement comes from writer and Wyoming Tribune-Eagle columnist Edith Cook:

We are showing the film Chasing Ice at the Laramie County Library in Cheyenne on Thursday, September 12, 2013, at 6:30 PM.

The event is free of charge, sponsored by 350Cheyenne. 

This film of electrifying beauty documents the quest of one man (National Geographic photographer James Bolag) to explore glaciers and ice-sheets worldwide; he wished to determine how and why they melt. 

Winner of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, Roger Ebert labeled the film “heart-stopping.” The New York Times made it its Critic’s Pick and the NY Daily News gave it a five-star rating.  Please attend if you can do so.

Wyoming coal dust a pollutant -- or not? Ask a bride...

On Saturday, I posted about Seattle and the fact that urbanites in that green bastion might have to drink their lattes with a spritz of coal dust if Wyoming and Montana and Peabody Energy get their way and send swarms of coal trains to West Coast ports. Most of the coal will be bound for energy-hungry China.

One reader told me that Powder River Basin coal companies are now spraying the tops of their coal cars with "surfactants" that adhere to the coal and prevent the dust from flying every which way. Burlington Northern Santa Fe officials said that "spraying cuts dust by 85 percent," according to a story in the Portland Oregonian.

I also found out from the same article that coal companies now load coal in a "bread loaf shape that reduces dust." Not sure how that works, but I'm willing to accept the fact that changing the aerodynamics of a train load can have a positive effect.

A war is being waged here between energy-producing red-staters and bluish greenies on the coast. Some of my fellow union members in the Pacific Northwest are in favor of the coal train shipments as it could mean up to 15,000 jobs at the ports and the railyards. Some of my fellow red-state Dems in the northern Rockies are against the coal shipments and the coal burning that will lead to more global warming. The mayor of Missoula, for instance. But you know how Missoula is. 

Yesterday the Army Corps of Engineers announced that it will not do an in-depth study of the possible pollution caused by a flurry of coal shipments to West Coast ports. The coal people saw this as a victory while the anti-coal people did not. As we all know, only part of this struggle is about scientific fact; the rest is about emotion and political clout. Repubs will shout about jobs and the free market. Dems will shout about pollution and global warming. 

But what will the brides be shouting about?

The in-laws, probably, especially the groom's drunken uncle. But they won't be complaining about coal dust ruining their dresses if they're getting married outdoors in Gillette "Coal City" Wyoming.  

I caught a short status update on Facebook today that addressed the issue. It was by Joe Lunne, PIO of the City of Gillette.  I work as a PIO when I'm not blogging, so I know that Joe is just trying to do his job in the face of overwhelming attacks from environmentalists and The Liberal Media Monolith. Coal pays the piper in Gillette and throughout the state. I thought his approach to this issue was touchingly personal, which is really what most political fights come down to. Take a look at the accompanying photo and then read the status update:

"This picture shows a stretch of the walking path around Cam-Plex park. The park is only 75 feet from Highway 14/16 and about 175 feet from the railroad tracks that carry millions of tons of coal out of the Powder River Basin every day. 

"Around a hundred weddings take place in the park each year, and that would not happen if coal were as dirty as its critics say it is. The park is clean...and so are the wedding dresses. The brides wouldn't have it any other way!"

I don't think that Joe will be called to testify at any Congressional hearings. Or any of the hundred brides that get married this year down by the railroad tracks. But who knows? Weirder things have happened. 

The future was now at the 1962 Seattle World's Fair

Michael McGinn, the mayor of Seattle, was interviewed on NPR's "Science Friday" today. He rides his bike to work and wants to make his city the greenest in the nation. During his remarks, he mentioned that the city was celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Seattle World's Fair and was looking ahead to city's next fifty years, which includes significant threats from climate change. 

I was a bit shocked to realize that the world's fair, subtitled the "Century 21 Exposition," was 50 years ago. In the summer of 1962 (that's actually 51 years ago, but Seattle likes long parties), my father and mother bundled their six kids into a Ford Falcon station wagon and drove us from Moses Lake in eastern Washington to Seattle. We were taking the long way to a new home in Wichita, Kansas. Dad was a builder of ICBM missile silos and apparently Washington was full up with missiles so we were now moving on to the wheat fields of southeastern Kansas. We needed more nukes lest a missile gap develop with the Soviets which would threaten our American way of life, our precious bodily fluids, and so on.

In Seattle, we rented an apartment a few miles away from the fair. If I had only forecast how hip Seattle was going to become, I would have stayed right there. Alas, we were only in residence for a few days, long enough to go up in the Space Needle, ride the monorail and eat some Swedish food that made me sick.

I'm not sure what possessed me to eat Swedish food when there was all sorts of good American grub around every corner. My parents may have wanted to give me a taste of a foreign country, expand my horizons. That way, when I turned 18, I would feel the urge to flee my homestead for foreign lands, thus opening up another place at the dinner table for the three additional siblings that soon would join us.

I got sick. It wasn't food poisoning, I don't think. It just didn't agree with me. I had recovered sufficiently the next day to eat a burger and fries at the American pavilion which was located a long way from where the Swedes were hatching plots against Americans.

It was a fun trip. We left Seattle via a ferry that took us by the Bremerton Navy Yards where we viewed hundreds of mothballed World War II ships. We cruised the Olympic Peninsula and ended up at a beach where I got my first glimpse of an ocean. As we ran barefoot into the cold Pacific, little did I know that in a few years I would be living by another (much warmer) beach, this one in Central Florida, while my father worked for NASA to get some guys on the moon.

I visited Seattle in 1972, ten years after I was almost poisoned at the world's fair. I was 21, hitchhiking cross country with Sharon, my 21-year-old girlfriend from Massachusetts. We were both college dropouts, footloose and fancy free. The Selective Service System lads had sent me a nice note earlier that year. Three years as draft bait was long enough and they were moving on to younger targets.

We stayed in a hostel near the university. We went to the world's fair site, rode the monorail and went up in the Space Needle. No Swedish food for me this time, thank you. I probably couldn't have found it if I wanted it. Seattle was still working on becoming a hipster enclave. Now it's probably lousy with Swedish food and Turkish food and Peruvian food and all the rest, although the portions are probably smaller.

I send my best wishes to Seattle. Global warming and rising sea levels are not going to be kind to this storm-tossed outpost on the Pacific Rim. Your air may also be fouled by coal dust from the myriad coal trains Wyoming soon plans to send to the West Coast. The coal is destined to shipping to China which will burn it, adding to the CO2 levels which in turn will fuel global warming which will send waves crashing into the base of the Space Needle. I live in Wyoming, by the way. But don't blame me. I'm on your side, Seattle. In case you have to flee the raging seas, there's plenty of room out here in the Wide Open Spaces under The Big Sky. Just be sure to bring along your blue politics (we few Wyoming Dems crave company) and some of those funky food trucks --Big Boys Filipino Food Truck, Kaosamai Thai Cook Truck or Tuk Tuk Mobile Feast. And don't forget the seafood, although the salmon may be swimming a lot closer to Cheyenne in fifty years.

Surf's up!

New Greenpeace video about our Powder River Basin coal

New video about plans for our Powder River Basin Coal (includes model trains and special effects).

"Creating science from sewage" is one benefit of new Cheyenne zero-carbon Data Plant

Science! It's a gas -- biogas, that is. The City of Cheyenne and UW and Microsoft and Fuel Cell Energy Inc. are building a pilot project east of Cheyenne to see if methane produced from sewage treatment can provide efficient zero-carbon power. A $7.5 million Microsoft Data Plant is the test case. The plant will use 200 kilowatts of energy from the fuel cell to power 200 computers. Any excess energy will go back to the Dry Creek Water Reclamation Facility to defray its electric bills. After an 18-month test period that will begin in the spring, Microsoft will give the facility back to the city and the university to use as a teaching lab. This is part of the deal, as Microsoft has to provide a "public benefit" in trade for taxpayer funding that's going to the project. Sounds like a win-win to me, a great public-private partnership. Read more about it here. 

The Western Research Institute is housed in the Bureau of Mines Building on the University of Wyoming campus in Laramie. WRI CEO Don Collins was instrumental in landing the project for the state. Said Collins:

“Microsoft is developing it as the first zero-carbon Data Plant in the world, and it will be in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Even Bill Gates had a tweet about how excited he was about this project.”

When Bill Gates tweets, people pay attention. 

Collins also said that:

...CO2 that comes out of the fuel cell can be captured and used for enhanced oil recovery in the state.  Wyoming currently does not have enough CO2 for such operations, he says. A company using a fuel cell in this manner could sell its CO2 at $25-$30 per ton to oil companies and make approximately $2.25 million, Collins says. That business scenario could make it more attractive for more fuel cell use in Wyoming.

“There might really be a strategic advantage for Wyoming for all energy-intensive companies that sell CO2 to cut costs,” Collins says. “Our goal is to turn CO2 into a valuable asset rather than something that must be disposed of at a high expense.”

At a recent meeting Collins attended in San Jose, Calif., Microsoft indicated its desire to keep the Data Plant in Cheyenne “as a long-term demonstration facility,” Collins says.

Use of a demonstration facility enhances opportunities for UW and WRI to secure competitive funding from the federal government and the Wyoming Energy Conversion Technology Fund, Collins adds.

Your taxpayer dollars at work. And I'm not being snarky. This sounds like an excellent use of state and federal funds.Microsoft may eventually use this technology for its cloud computing centers that are springing up all over the U.S. The City of Cheyenne and the State of Wyoming could do worse than having Microsoft for a partner.

Deadlocks and Jalan Crossland perform Dec. 21 for Save the Hoback benefit

The Deadlocks and Jalan Crossland perform a benefit for Save the Hoback on Dec. 21 at the Center for the Arts in Jackson. Money will go to a fund to stop energy exploration in the Wyoming Range south of Jackson, which is home to the Hoback headwaters. Tickets are $20 or $100 for VIP with food and cocktails. More info at jhunderground.

Seeing new West Coast coal terminals as a red-state, blue-state issue

On Wyofile, San Juan Islands' resident Charlie West offers a tongue-in-cheek modest proposal: You send us your coal, we'll send you our trash.

West notes that the wide open spaces of Wyoming and Montana have plenty of big holes for the trash of the 48 million residents of Washington, Oregon and California. It's only a fair trade, right? You send us your dirty coal and we send you our dirty trash.

A batch of inland Republicans, including our very own Cynthia Lummis, is trying to browbeat Washington's coastal residents in permitting a new coal shipping facility. West reports a lively conversation at the local tavern which goes something like this:

“We’re selling taxpayer-owned coal for next to nothing, so it can be sent somewhere else, to run someone else’s factories, and employ someone else’s people while we don’t have enough jobs in this country?”

“It makes no sense, pollute the air with trains and ships to get the coal there, then they burn it and their pollution drifts back here!”

We all pay for dirty coal. Global warming is real, no matter what the Know Nothings say in my Deep Red State of Wyoming. And while Wyoming rakes in taxes from its oil and gas and coal, including almost a billion federal dollars from energy resources extracted on public land (see previous post), coastal residents pay the price with rising sea levels and whopper storms.

Forward-thinking blue states such as WA, OR and CA invest heavily in alternative energy while WY continues burning and shipping coal. The coal is shipped to China and India where it is burned, creating more CO2 in the atmosphere -- this speeds global warming. The ice sheets melt, forcing a rise in ocean levels which swamps blue-state cities, drowning Liberal, latte-drinking, mountain-bike-riding voters by the millions. Wyoming builds a big wall at its borders to keep out the riff raff. We keep mining and burning and shipping coal, secure in the knowledge that sea levels have to get pretty darn high before bitchin' waves begin to break on the beaches of Cheyenne. Besides, the wall will keep the water out. We'll call them dikes. And we can open our own ports to ship our own coal to China and India, those parts that aren't at the bottom of Davy Jones Locker.

The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades. I better wear shades, what with the dissolving ozone layer and blinding sun and all.

"Carbon Sink" revisited by Cheyenne's Michaela Rife

Cheyenne's Michaela Rife penned a meditation on Chris Drury's late, lamented "Carbon Sink" sculpture at the University of Wyoming for the Nevada Museum of Arts Art + Environment site. Read the Nov. 21 piece here. Michaela is an arts writer who is in Vancouver, B.C., pursuing a master's degree at the University of British Columbia’s Critical and Curatorial Studies program.

Wyoming rakes in the federal dough for energy and mineral extraction

File this under That Darn Federal Gubment:

The Department of the Interior’s Office of Natural Resources Revenue (ONRR) announced today that more than $2.1 billion was disbursed to 36 states as part of the state share of Federal revenues collected in Fiscal Year 2012 from energy and mineral production that occurred on Federal lands within their borders, and offshore on the Outer Continental Shelf. 

One state that starts with a "W" received $995,169,098, or about 47 percent of the total. No, it wasn't Washington or Wisconsin or West Virginia.

It was Wyoming.

Several other big almost-square states also got big numbers. New Mexico and Utah. All that energy and all those minerals.

Get the numbers at http://statistics.onrr.gov

Tip of the hat to South Dakota's always-alert Interested Party blog.

King Coal holds a seminar in Gillette

An Overpass Light Brigade protest in Portland, Maine.These LED-light-fueled protests are coming to an overpass or state capitol near you.

King Coal holds a seminar in Gillette on Dec. 13, "Powder River Basin Coal: Domestic Challenges and International Opportunities:"

“Coal is important as an abundant, low-cost energy source for the U.S. economy,” UW School of Energy Resources Director Mark Northam says. “The energy programs at the University of Wyoming are looking at ways that coal can continue to be used in the decades to come, because maintaining a viable coal industry is important to ensuring stable, low-cost, reliable electric power generation.”

Domestic challenges, according to Wyoming, the nation's Republican-controlled energy colony: President Brack Obama
Unstated international opportunities: China
The international challenge whose name we dare not say: Global warming

Precious Wyoming water leaves the state with every trainload of coal

Did you know that Wyoming ships its water out of state with each shipment of coal? Maybe I'd heard that before, but sometimes I have to hear it anew for the facts sink in.

One of the speakers at the Wyoming Business Alliance's annual meeting in Cheyenne yesterday was Wanda Burget, director of sustainable development for Peabody Energy, a major coal producer in Wyoming.

Energy producers are notorious water hogs. The fracking process uses notorious amounts of water, polluting it in the process. Energy production is crucial to the state's economy, but we can't drink or eat coal, and our water resources --- lakes, streams, reservoirs -- are at the center of Wyoming's tourist industry.

Casper Star-Tribune business editor Jeremy Fugleberg wrote about the WBA conference in today's edition. Here's an interesting snippet:

Coal from the Powder River Basin is full of water. Burget recognized the Wyoming Research Institute’s work to establish a way to procure the large amount of water shipped out of the state in the coal — about 720 gallons per 1,000 tons of coal, she [Wanda Burget] said.

Let's hope the Wyoming Energy Institute gets busy on finding ways to suck that water out of the coal before it leaves our borders. That's a lot of H2O. According to UW's Coalweb, Wyoming ships 25,882 coal trains out of state each year. Each train has 100-120 hopper cars, each loaded with 100-115 tons of coal. That means that at least 19 trillion gallons of water leave the state annually locked inside lumps of coal. That would slake the thirst of a lot of people and irrigate a lot of crops and absorb the attention of thousands of fishing enthusiasts and boaters. So why isn't Wyoming pouring even more revenue into research on ways to coax the water out of coal?

A trio of Wyoming businesspeople say the future of the state depends on diversifying its economy, developing a statewide water policy, and investing in new technology and infrastructure.

Two of the speakers, members of a panel on Wyoming’s future at the Wyoming Business Alliance’s annual meeting in Cheyenne, said they were troubled by Wyoming’s commodity-dependent economy.

What's to be done? Don't expect much help from our Republican-dominated legislature. The energy industry calls the shots. If the past gives us any clues to activities during the 2013 session, we can anticipate an embarrassing amount of time and energy spent on social issues. Some Republicans seem obsessed with women's reproductive equipment. Others want to stop married LGBT people at the border. Still others openly call state workers "bums" and are intent in taking away our pensions. Others demonize teachers and will again try to strip them of any collective bargaining rights. Who has time to focus on diversifying our economy?

Interested Party blog: Bakken pipeline could mean the end for Wyoming sage grouse

Our blogging pals at Interested Party out of South Dakota had a post this morning about the Bakken Pipeline.

If completed, it would transport raw natural gas liquids (NGLs) south through easternmost Montana and Wyoming into northern Colorado, where it will connect to the existing Overland Pass Pipeline.

It may also spell the end of the threatened Wyoming sage grouse, and endanger equally tenuous (and drought-plagued) water supplies. The pipeline's projected path through Laramie County takes it west of Burns and Carpenter and east of Cheyenne. Did you know that? I didn't.

Read the rest at interested party.

Thanks IP!

Revealed: Full List of ALEC's Corporate Members (and a Wyoming company is on it)

Common Cause has a full list of ALEC's Corporate Members (via AlterNet). Couldn't find the names of any Wyoming corporate members, but there are very few major corporations based in WY. The list shows that Cloud Peak Energy is located in Colorado. But that's not what it says on the CPE web site:

Cloud Peak Energy Inc. (NYSE:CLD) is headquartered in Wyoming and is one of the largest U.S. coal producers and the only pure-play Powder River Basin (PRB) coal company. As one of the safest coal producers in the nation, Cloud Peak Energy specializes in the production of low sulfur, subbituminous coal. The company owns and operates three surface coal mines in the PRB, the lowest cost major coal producing region in the nation. The Antelope and Cordero Rojo mines are located in Wyoming and the Spring Creek Mine is located near Decker, Montana.

The company employs lots of people and sponsors worthy causes in the state. So why does it belong to an anti-worker org such as ALEC? Find out more about the American Legislative Exchange Council at ALEC Exposed. Here's a snippet from its site:

Through the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council, global corporations and state politicians vote behind closed doors to try to rewrite state laws that govern your rights. These so-called "model bills" reach into almost every area of American life and often directly benefit huge corporations. In ALEC's own words, corporations have "a VOICE and a VOTE" on specific changes to the law that are then proposed in your state. DO YOU?

For environmental writer Edith Cook, "tomorrow is today"

Cheyenne writer Edith Cook writes about many issues, but her hot topics concern the environment and sustainability. These are hot topics everywhere, but overwhelmed in Wyoming by the huge energy industry. The mere mention of "global warming" can get you run out of town. Edith's writing won a Frank Nelson Doubleday award from the Wyoming Arts Council in 2011. You can read her columns regularly in the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle. A particularly good one is posted here (click on to read). She also posts her work on her web site and is an active blogger.

Survey results show that Wyoming residents support a multitude of gas wells and scenic vistas

Foundation Coal's Eagle Butte Mine in Campbell County

Wyoming Public Radio had a news item this week about the results of a survey of Wyoming residents conducted by Colorado College. Here are the results, in a nutshell:

Most Wyoming voters view the state’s national parks, forests and wildlife areas as an essential part of the economy. That’s according to a bipartisan poll conducted at Colorado College. 

The survey found that Wyomingites support a broad range of environmental protections but also support energy development on public lands. 

Bob Budd with the Wyoming Wildlife and Natural Resource Trust says that’s not a contradiction.“Wyomingites really do believe that we can have it all,” Budd said. “I think our track record is pretty good that way. We’re bullish on development to some degree, and at the same time we’re very protective and bullish on our natural resource heritage.” 

Budd says surveys like this are important in helping policy makers plan for the future. “Wyomingites really do believe we can have it all.”

Beliefs are one thing, reality another. Air pollution in Sublette County, water pollution in Fremont County, fracking disruptions in Goshen and Laramie counties, oil-and-gas drilling on public lands all over the state, uranium and precious metals mining in northeast Wyoming, fights over the viewsheds for transmission lines, coal-fired power plants that are some of the worst polluters in the U.S., battles over locations of wind farms, gobbling up of Campbell County for more open-pit mining, millions of beetle-killed trees due to global warming caused by the burning of Wyoming’s carbon products, and so on.

We Wyomingites may believe that we can have it all. It’s not true.

When you’re an energy colony like Wyoming, there is no escaping the effects of energy extraction. And when you have an economy almost wholly dependent on severance taxes on oil, gas and coal, you can never escape those effects. This is a real quandary when the state’s second-largest economic generator is tourism. In 2010, tourists spent $2.6 billion in Wyoming and the industry generated $108 million in state and local taxes. A good chunk of that money was spent in Jackson and at Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, with its 3 million tourists annually. Jackson Hole is relatively free of commercial energy development. But there is a lot more to Wyoming than its very scenic Northwest corner.

But what are we to do with the state's Energy Sacrifice Zones? Those places with lots of coal/gas/oil but without tourist-pleasing scenic vistas? 

Campbell County, for instance.

No mountains in Campbell County. Plenty of buttes, mesas and wide-open spaces. The landscape features huge open-pit coal mines, some of the biggest in the country, and hundreds of coal-bed methane gas wells. The city of Gillette is perched out there in Powder River Country, located at the junction of I-90 and U.S. Hwy. 59. Summer tourists from Chicago and Milwaukee and Minneapolis have just visited the Black Hills and Devils Tower and now are wondering how far it is to the next scenic vista -- the beautiful Bighorn Mountains. That's just about the time they arrive in Gillette. Visually, Gillette offers nothing to write home about. If you were writing home about it on Facebook while holed up in the Holiday Inn Express during a March blizzard, you might say, "Help -- I'm stuck in Siberia." Or "Gillette is butt ugly."

Gillette still life (coal mine in background)

True, Gillette as seen from a Holiday Inn Express window during a March blizzard is a depressing site (been there!). Some ("some" meaning "me") have proposed erecting noise barriers along I-90 so that tourists don't have to actually see the city as they move westward, forever westward, toward Yellowstone. You've seen those barriers in every big city, erected to muffle the eternal racket of the interstate, an effort to spare the delicate hearing of suburbanites. Denver's I-25 noise barriers were made to resemble rock cliffs embedded with fossils of ancient flora and fauna. Very clever.


With Gillette, we're talking more "visual barrier" than noise barrier. I envision a 30-foot-high wall along both sides of I-90, from one end of the county to another. Local artists could limn scenic vistas on the wall. They'd be busy for years, generating millions for the local economy. We could also try to Denver approach and embed Powder River fossils (allosauruses, pterodactyls, state legislators, etc.) in the barriers. The idea is to spare motorists the sights and sounds of 21st century energy development.


Alas, what looks good on paper runs into the realities of real life. Gillette earns millions providing services for tourists. For that, they have to go into town and face the forest of motels and fast-food joints. And Gillette also is one of the most exciting arts towns in the state. It's home to the AVA Center, an old municipal building that's been turned into a place for arts classes and exhibits and gatherings. Its exterior now features a mural by local artist Christopher Amend. Chris is known more for his nudes and surrealist paintings.

Chris Amend's mural at the AVA Center

Gillette has an active public art program, "Avenue of Art," initiated by former Mayor Duane Evenson, who now sits on the Wyoming Arts Council board of directors. On the eastern fringes of town is the CAM-PLEX Center, known more for rodeos and monster truck rallies than art exhibits and concerts -- but it does all that. U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi was on the CAM-PLEX board and now sits on the U.S. Senate arts caucus. He buys books by Wyoming authors and actually reads them. Beneath Sen. Enzi's Gloomy Gus exterior beats the heart of a diehard arts supporter.


Gillette is home to the Powder River Symphony and the Donkey Creek Jazz Festival and a cool library and an active writers' organization and a slew of dedicated art teachers and....

See how complicated this is? An Energy Sacrifice Zone yearns to break free of stereotypes. Its residents don't want to be sacrificed. We want good jobs, many of which are in the energy industry, and we also want pretty mountains and pristine streams. For the most part, those two facets of Wyoming life don't exist in the same place.   

Forget the visual barrier idea. We'll have to figure out other ways to hide our Energy Sacrifice Zones while promoting our scenic vistas. Any ideas?

Wyoming's historic struggle: preserving vs. trashing its environment

We heard from Kate Wright of Wyoming Conservation Voters at a house gathering last night in east Cheyenne.

Kate talked about the WCV's 2011 Conservation Scorecard for the Wyoming Legislature. As expected, most legislators of both parties came up short when it comes to voting to preserve and protect one of the most beautiful environments in the world. Not surprisingly, the big money wielded by the energy speaks very loudly in the halls of the State Capitol. Severance taxes on coal, oil and gas pay Wyoming's bills. Legislators know it. When they forget, lobbyists from Encana and Peabody are there to remind them.

This will always be the case until Wyoming figures out alternative ways to pay the bills.

Tourism comes close. And tourism depends less on scenic oil wells and open pit mines than it does on towering mountains, crystal clean trout streams and waist-deep powder.

This is a traditional struggle in Wyoming. We're an "energy colony" for the U.S. and, increasingly, the rest of the world (coal for Australia and China). Tourists from China now make Wyoming a destination. A new housing development in China, located two hours north of Beijing, is called Jackson Hole and is based the the cute little Alpine village of Jackson, Wyoming. Or some sort of re-imagined version of Jackson. Isn't it fun to imagine a Wyoming-coal-fired suburb in China filled with people who can't wait to go to the Wyoming-coal-and-natural-gas powered village of Jackson, Wyo. While in our quaint energy colony, these tourists might want to take a side trip to the open pit coal mines of Campbell County. Industrial tourism is a growing trend. I know a number of people who've taken the coal mine tours and have been down into the deep trona mines of southwestern Wyoming. As a curious human being, how can you not be interested in the origins of the material that powers our laptop computers. I'm typing on one right now!

For the most part, tourists want scenic vistas. When they travel to scenic Sublette County, they want to ogle the Wind River or Gros Ventre Mountains, fish in Fremont Lake, hunt elk in the Upper Green River Basin. They also want to be able to breathe, which hasn't been easy with air pollution caused by oil and gas development in the Pinedale Anticline. Last winter, air pollution levels in Pinedale topped those in L.A.

Back to the Wyoming Conservation Voters. Check out its web site at www.wyovoters.org. Get a copy of the scorecard. In the Senate, some Repubs such as Tony Ross (Laramie), John Schiffer (Johnson/Sheridan) and Leland Christensen (Teton/Fremont) top those of Democrats Marty Martin (Sweetwater/Fremont) and Chris Rothfuss (Albany). In the House, however, Dems lead the way. You can't find a sorrier, more anti-environment group of Tea Party Republicans than those in Natrona County, home of Casper, "Oil City." These Natrona County Repubs are regressive in almost every imaginable way, so this is no surprise.

WCV will again be keeping score as the 2012 Legislature rolls into town. The org also will lobby for upcoming legislation, including the Aquatic Invasive Species Act, increased funding for the Wyoming Wildlife and Natural Resource Trust, and bills promoting Public Records and Public Meetings.

WCV is a 501(c)4 and works for all of us. It also has an education arm, a 501(c)3.

Go to the web site and contribute. You'll be glad you did.