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| 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."
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| 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.
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| 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?
