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PACIFICORP TO SHIFT STAFF TO UTAH
(Source: Gail Kinsey Hill, The Oregonian, 9/7/05)

Employment at PacifiCorp's downtown Portland headquarters could drop by dozens, even hundreds, of workers during the next several years as the utility gradually shifts some of its corporate jobs to offices in Salt Lake City.

The precise count isn't known, utility officials emphasized. But they say they are committed to moving more high-level positions to Salt Lake City because Utah now accounts for more customers and electricity revenue than any other state in the utility's six-state territory.

Details of the job shifts were disclosed recently by MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co. of Des Moines, Iowa, during a meeting with staff of the Public Utility Commission and consumer and business groups. MidAmerican Energy has agreed to buy PacifiCorp from Glasgow, Scotland's ScottishPower for $9.4 billion, but it needs the approval of Oregon regulators before the transaction can proceed to closing.

Greg Abel, president and chief operating officer of MidAmerican Energy, said the employment shift would occur gradually as key personnel retired or changed positions. Despite the changes, MidAmerican would keep PacifiCorp headquarters in Portland, a commitment outlined in the purchase application filed with state regulators, Abel said.

About 1,164 people work at PacifiCorp headquarters in an office tower near the Lloyd Center in Northeast Portland. About 246 people work at the utility's Salt Lake corporate offices.

"There's a significant presence in Oregon now, and that has to remain," Abel said. "But we need to find the proper balance."

When asked whether that "balance" meant an equal split in job numbers, Abel answered, "It has to be pretty close."

The changes respond to Utah's increasing importance to PacifiCorp, said Judi Johansen, PacifiCorp's chief executive officer. Utah now accounts for almost 41 percent of retail electricity sales, more than any other state. Oregon comes in second, with 29 percent of sales.

Its retail electricity revenue from all states totaled $2.65 billion for the year ended March 31.

Utah also boasts the most customers. PacifiCorp distributes electricity to 704,000 households and businesses in Utah. In Oregon, the count is 517,000 customers.

Together, the two states account for more than 70 percent of PacifiCorp's retail electricity sales and customer base. The utility also serves customers in Wyoming, Washington, Idaho and California.

Just four years ago, Oregon was the dominant state in terms of customers and revenue, Johansen said. Salt Lake City's stronger growth rate has flipped the rankings.

Also, PacifiCorp is still smarting from the last session of the Legislature, in which lawmakers passed a bill that could dramatically decrease the amount of income taxes utilities are allowed to collect from ratepayers. PacifiCorp vehemently opposed the bill, testifying that it treated utilities unfairly and discouraged investment in the state.

Neither PacifiCorp's Johansen nor MidAmerican's Abel said the tax bill influenced the decision to move more people to Utah.

Johansen said utility operations differ from state to state, increasing the need for local representation. The goal, she said, is to "enhance the executive presence and local decision makers" in Utah.

Johansen said PacifiCorp has come under increasing pressure from Utah customer groups and public officials to increase the utility's corporate profile in that state. "In their heart of hearts they would like our headquarters there," she said.

The core of PacifiCorp's executive team works in Portland: the chief executive, the chief financial officer, the chief general counsel and the heads of the human resources, transmission, regulation and electricity trading departments.

As these individuals retire or are promoted, PacifiCorp will decide whether to shift the position and support staff to Salt Lake City, Johansen said. No executive will be asked to move involuntarily, she said.

Consumer advocacy groups in Oregon said they found little comfort in MidAmerican Energy's assurances that PacifiCorp headquarters would remain in Portland.

"It sounds like competing promises are being made" by MidAmerican Energy to Oregon and Utah, said Jason Eisdorfer, an attorney with the Citizens' Utility Board, which represents residential electricity customers in Oregon. "Will there be nothing more than a shell here that you call a headquarters?"



MANY SAY WEST IS BETTER PREPARED FOR LATEST BOOM (Source: Sandy Shore, Associated Press, 9/25/05)
PARACHUTE, COLO. - John Loschke climbs out of his truck in the cramped parking lot outside the Outlaws restaurant and surveys the collection of cars, trucks and RVs.It's lunch hour on a hot summer day and he figures about 70 percent of the vehicles bear the unmistakable signs of oil and gas country. It reminds Loschke, the town's mayor, of the chaotic scene when Parachute's fortunes were changed during an oil shale boom 30 years ago. Today's energy boom, he says, is "managed chaos."

"We're better prepared. It's 25 years later and we've got infrastructure," he said.

Some two decades after the West's last oil bust, production of coal, natural gas, oil and uranium is on the upswing as the world's energy supplies dwindle and demand rises unabated. Even oil shale is getting a fresh look.

Operations are scattered across the sparsely populated land, prompting concern about potential impacts on land, water, air and even the communities, says Pete Kolbenschlag of the Colorado Environmental Coalition. "Communities in the West are not being given the opportunity to really see what this package of possibilities means," he said.

Roller-coaster ride

Audra Moore, who owns a video game rental shop in Battlement Mesa, is worried about the landscape, noting the oil wells seem to be sunk every few acres in the Grand Valley area.

"I'm concerned about the looks and how it will affect the wildlife," she said.

Natural resources have helped sustain the West's economy since it was settled — gold, silver, copper, coal, natural gas, oil. It's proved to be a roller-coaster ride with thousands of jobs created during prosperous times and then lost as demand ebbed.

A recent example occurred when Middle East oil producers shut off oil supplies to the United States in 1973 over U.S. support of Israel. The move sent companies scrambling to develop domestic supplies as gas was rationed and prices skyrocketed. Thousands of workers filled housing complexes; city and state coffers were bolstered with revenue and government began bolstering infrastructure. Then the price free fall began, sending the West spiraling into economic doldrums as tens of thousands of jobs were lost, bankruptcies jumped and businesses were shuttered.

Difficult years followed as the region eased its reliance on natural resources by diversifying the economic base to include tourism, manufacturing, technology, construction and services.

"All of Colorado has grown in the meantime to a much more sophisticated place," said Russell George, a native of nearby Rifle who heads the state Department of Natural Resources. "We have a much broader mix of people than we had then."

On the upswing

As the United States and other countries search for reliable energy sources, the West's industry has turned around yet again with a new demand for oil, natural gas, coal and uranium.

Luke Popovich of the National Mining Association said the resurgence is "almost unprecedented in modern times."

The bulk of the nation's electricity is produced in coal-generated plants, with nuclear power plants generating about 20 percent and natural gas, 17 percent to 18 percent, Arch Coal Co. spokesman Deck Slone said.

St. Louis-based Arch, which operates the world's largest coal mine near Gillette in Wyoming's Powder River Basin and three other mines in Colorado and Utah, is gearing up to open other facilities.

In Colorado, coal production hit a record in 2004 for the fifth consecutive year with 40 million tons produced. Wyoming, the nation's No. 1 coal producer, had a record 396 million tons, up 5.4 percent, according to the Wyoming Mining Association.

"This is a natural area for energy development. And it's not going to be stifled. People are going to complain and all that stuff but they're not going to stop it," said Robert Loucks of Grand Junction, a former manager of oil shale operations here for Shell and Occidental Oil Shale. "Hopefully, they'll get it to where it's far more acceptable to more people."

CHINA CLOSES COAL MINES
(Source: InfoMine 9-1-05)

China is suspending production at 7,000 coal mines - or about one-third of the countrywide total - in a safety crackdown on the accident-plagued industry, a government newspaper reported Wednesday. The mines, most of them small and poorly equipped, will be required to improve safety measures and won't be allowed to reopen if they fail to meet national standards, the China Daily said. The announcement came two days after 123 miners missing in a flooded coal mine in southern China were declared dead in a highly publicized disaster. Eleven mine officials blamed for the accident have been detained and two local mayors dismissed.

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ECONOMY

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SURPLUS STACK OF STATE CASH KEEPS GROWING
(Source: Matt Canham, The Salt Lake Tribune, 9/9/05)
Utah has now socked away more cash in its emergency reserve than ever before with the help of a hefty surplus in the fiscal year that ended in June.

The Governor's Office of Planning and Budget announced the additional $58.4 million added to the so-called "rainy day fund" on Thursday.

The additional money brings the fund up to $145.8 million, with a little more than $40 million earmarked to help Utah's schools in the case of an economic downturn or some other emergency.

Budget Director Richard Ellis called the surplus cash "a nice boost to build it up quicker than was anticipated."

The previous high for the rainy day fund was $116.4 million in the 2001 fiscal year, but a subsequent recession forced lawmakers to raid the fund to plug holes in the budget. They drained it to $19.5 million in 2002.

Since then it has inched up as the economy improved, with the biggest increases coming in the past two years. Unless there a natural disaster or some unforeseen event stunts Utah's strong economic growth, Ellis expects the fund to continue building in the years to come.

"The government is not in the business of building up huge savings, but it should have enough to weather a few storms," said Rep. Ron Bigelow, R-West Valley City, who is the House budget chief.

The cash-heavy fund not only acts as a kind of insurance policy against recession, but allows the state to obtain better interest rates on billions of dollars of loans, known as bonds.

The budget office also affirmed earlier estimates that lawmakers have $104.8 million in excess tax money to spend when they meet again starting in January. Much of the surplus came from higher-than-expected sales and payroll tax collections. Ellis expects legislators to use the money to build new structures or roads, as they did last year with surplus funds.

While excited about the surplus, Bigelow said the state should proceed with caution. He worries that Hurricane Katrina-related devastation in the South could slow the economy nationwide.


TAX SURPLUS TOPS STATE ESTIMATE BY $46.8M (Source: Matt Canham, The Salt Lake Tribune, 9/22/05)
Utah's economy continued to surge in the first two months of the new fiscal year, which began July 1. In the past two months, tax collections topped expectations by $46.8 million, due largely to an 11 percent increase in sales tax collections. Doug Macdonald, chief economist for the state Tax Commission, called the growth "very robust." Taxes collected from oil and gas extraction also greatly exceed economists' projections by $7.7 million so far. And despite the rising costs of gas at the pumps, Utah collected $1.7 million more in motor fuel taxes than expected. State legislators will have their first chance at spending this unexpected revenue during the next session, which begins in January.


SKILLED WORKERS IN SHORT SUPPLY (Source: Lesley Mitchell, Salt Lake Tribune, 9/14/05)
Like many construction companies in Utah, Big D's desperation can be summed up in two words: Help Wanted.

"I've been in construction for 25 years and I've never seen it like this," said Forrest McNabb, Big D senior vice president of operations. "Skilled labor is so hard to find right now."

Utah's economy continues to add jobs at the highest rate in nearly a decade - nearly 39,900 new positions in the year that ended August 31 for a job growth rate of 3.6 percent. Only a few other states can claim higher job-growth numbers so far this year, leaving employers in several industries facing shortages of qualified workers.

The opportunities aren't only in construction, where low interest rates have caused a flurry of activity and total employment is up more than 11 percent over last year. Jobs are being added in a variety of industries, including education, health services, financial services and hospitality, said Mark Knold, Utah Department of Workforce Services senior economist.

Strong job growth drove down the unemployment rate last month to 4.4 percent, down from 4.7 percent in July and 5.2 percent in August 2004. About 55,200 Utahns were unemployed last month compared with 63,000 in August 2004.

The good news is that Utah's economy is well-positioned to continue to prosper and add jobs even after Hurricane Katrina, which damaged several refineries and pipelines and caused gasoline prices to jump, Knold said.

The Hurricane is expected to hurt the economies of several states in the South.

"Because of Utah's relative distance from the Gulf Coast and a market focus that looks more west than east, our economy should not be severely impacted," Knold said. "Our commerce is tied more to California and the western United States than to the Gulf Coast."

That said, Utah residents and businesses already have felt the impact of the hurricane in higher gasoline prices.

The average cost of a gallon of unleaded gasoline in Utah is $2.89, among the lowest nationwide. That is down slightly from a peak of $2.91 on Sept. 10 but 53 cents higher than a month ago, and $1 higher than one year ago, travel services agency AAA Utah reported Tuesday.

Katrina also will result in higher natural gas bills next spring; some experts say costs could jump as much as 70 percent. Even without Katrina, Utahns are facing a 28 percent hike in natural gas bills compared to last year.

High fuel prices can hamper economic growth because families have less disposable income and companies have less money to invest in additional workers.

But even with the higher energy costs, hiring activity in Utah should continue to have one of the highest job-growth rates in the country, said Jim Robson, regional economist for Workforce Services.

Alan Rindlisbacher of the Layton Companies said many in the construction industry would not have predicted Utah would ever have a boom as large as the one that preceded the Olympics, when a variety of residential and commercial projects were built and Interstate 15 was being reconstructed.

But here they are, Rindlisbacher said, scrambling to employ enough laborers, carpenters, cement finishers, project managers, heavy equipment operators and electricians.

The situation is increasingly difficult, he and others say, because surrounding states have booming construction industries as well, and few workers have to cross state lines to find work. Utah construction companies may even lose workers to hurricane ravaged areas, which will need people to work on rebuilding projects.

At Big D, executives have resorted to erecting huge banners at work sites inviting people to work at the construction company.


GOLD REACHES 17-YEAR HIGH (Source: Bloomberg News, 9/15/05)
Gold climbed to the highest in 17 years in New York, extending a rally begun in July, as investors stocked up on bullion they expect will provide a haven against high consumer prices and energy costs.

Gold futures for December delivery rose $5.60, or 1.2 percent, to close Thursday at $459.50 an ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange, the highest since June 1988. The metal has gained 5.6 percent since Aug. 30, advancing in 10 of the past 11 sessions.

Signs of quickening U.S. inflation and the prospect of an economic slowdown following Hurricane Katrina com-bined to boost gold, analysts said.

''Gold has always been a safe-haven play, and gold seemed to fit the bill where we can add more inflation protection in our portfolios,'' said Zach Liggett, a fund manager at Financial & Investment Management Group. Liggett said his gold holdings have doubled since the beginning of the year.

A futures contract is an obligation to sell or buy a commodity at a set price by a specific date.


KATRINA BLOWS HOT AND COLD FOR METALS (Source: Charlotte Mathews, Business Day, 9/7/05)
CAPE TOWN -- Base-metals markets have wavered over the past few days on uncertainty about the long-term effects on prices of the devastation of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina last week.

Once the immediate personal tragedies are dealt with, the reconstruction of the city will begin, including the rebuilding of powerlines, railways, roads and buildings, using large amounts of cement and steel.

Offsetting that demand are factors such as the effect of high energy prices on the U.S. economy and the direction of the dollar. High energy prices affect the margins of base-metals producers, for which diesel is a major input cost, and a weak dollar shrinks the revenue of producers in countries such as SA and Australia. On the other hand, high oil prices are positive for coal producers.

The three-month aluminum price was $1,858 a tonne yesterday, down from $1,880 a week ago, while 3-month lead contracts had risen to $935 a tonne from $860.

Three-month nickel climbed to $15,300 a tonne from $14,875, and zinc, affected by uncertainty over warehouse stockpiles in New Orleans, was at $1,399 a tonne from $1,366 last week.

According to the Man Financial market report on Kitco.com last Friday, trading in base-metals markets last week was "choppy" as opinions were mixed about the effects of Hurricane Katrina on metal demand versus the drag of higher energy costs.

A major influence on the market was the weaker dollar on views that the U.S. Federal Reserve would slow its policy of increasing interest rates.

Bloomberg reported that Ingrid Sternby of Barclays Capital said in a report that the hurricane would increase demand for base metals. Reconstruction after hurricanes in the U.S. last year boosted U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) 0,1%.

"Capital spending is bound to surge in the region and support base metals demand," she wrote.

Afrifocus analyst Mark Madeyski said yesterday in the first instance the hurricane was a disaster for the U.S. and would knock U.S. GDP growth this year.

It had also stimulated demand for precious metals such as gold and platinum for their "safe haven" status although, as the dollar had weakened simultaneously, South African producers experienced little benefit.

A second analyst, who asked not to be named, said the main effect of Katrina was likely to be local and regional, rather than global. While there might be a small positive effect on global commodities prices, there were also offsetting factors such as high energy costs and the financial effect on the U.S. economy.


KENNECOTT SUPPORTS KATRINA RELIEF EFFORTS
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah (September 15, 2005) - Kennecott Utah Copper Corporation and its owner Rio Tinto Plc. in London, England have joined with other American based Rio Tinto companies to pledge more than $350,000 to support the relief efforts for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Today (10:30 a.m. Thursday, September 15) Tom Myatt, General Manager for Rio Tinto Shared Services Inc., representing Kennecott and all the Rio Tinto companies and employees in America, will deliver a check for $100,000 to Mariann K. Geyer, Chief Executive Officer of the American Red Cross, Greater Salt Lake Area Chapter. At the local Red Cross office Myatt commented, "The contribution to the American Red Cross is to assist in the wider relief efforts to the people and communities in the Gulf Coast impacted by the effects of the hurricane."

In addition, Kennecott's parent company Rio Tinto is contributing $250,000 to the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Fund, established by Louisiana Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco. "We hope this will make a difference to both an immediate recovery effort, and a long term rebuilding effort for the city and surrounds of New Orleans," stated Rio Tinto Executive Tom Albanese.

Besides the corporate support, many Kennecott employees have made individual contributions to the relief effort. To encourage employee contributions, all American based Rio Tinto companies are enhancing their Matching Gift Programs. The companies are either matching or doubling the value of any contribution that employees make to qualified aid organizations assisting in the massive relief effort.


ECONOMY'S SERVICE SECTOR ROBUST, BUT ENERGY COST WORRIES PERSIST (Source: Aleksandrs Rozens, Associated Press, 9/7/05)
NEW YORK - The service sector of the nation's economy grew in August, but many executives are concerned about rising energy costs, according to a survey of business managers.

The Institute for Supply Management (ISM), which surveyed about 370 purchasing executives in 62 industries throughout the U.S., said its non-manufacturing index rose to 65 percent in August from July's 60.5 percent.

A reading above 50 indicates the sector is expanding; below 50 indicates activity is shrinking.

The index's August reading is a high not seen since April 2004, when it hit an all-time high of 66.9 percent. The index was started in July 1997.

''This is quite a strong report. It certainly indicates we had strong momentum going in'' ahead of Hurricane Katrina, said Ralph Kauffman, chair of the ISM committee that issues the survey.

The August survey of purchasing managers was taken prior to Hurricane Katrina so it did not take into consideration disruptions to the U.S. economy that resulted from Katrina.

While respondents in the construction industry expressed optimism about the next six months, executives in other industries worried about fuel prices.

Wholesale-trade business executives expressed concern about railroad freight and fuel surcharges, while entertainment-business participants surveyed signaled concern about fuel prices affecting winter volume.

The ISM said its new-orders index rose to 65.8 percent from 61.9 percent and its employment index rose to 59.6 percent from 56.2 percent.

Businesses reporting growth in August included mining, transportation, utilities, real estate, construction and insurance.

Activity was little changed in August from July for businesses like agriculture, entertainment, finance and banking.


IS CHINA BECOMING THE WORLD'S LARGEST COPPER CONSUMER?(Source: Michelle Yuan, 9/01/05)
SHANGHAI (Interfax-China) -- As China becomes the largest copper consumer in the world, the copper industry is dealing with growing pains, such as record-high copper prices on Shanghai Futures Exchange and a shortage of concentrate. With the industry under such pressures, Interfax sat down with International Copper Association President Francis Kane to discuss the future of China's copper industry.

INTERFAX: With fears mounting of a raw material shortage, many domestic copper companies, especially large ones, are going overseas to develop copper deposits. What do you think of the global expansion of Chinese copper companies? What are the risks?

MR. KANE: The issue represents the globalization of Chinese enterprises. The mining industry has a long tradition of being a global industry by nature of the geological reality that ore deposits are where they are found and the demand for metal is related to the repopulation centers. The standard for a company to operate in one country versus another has become very similar in terms of policy, investment, safety, and environment. So what had been an artificial political barrier for economic growth is less so. China is beginning to enter into the world stage, not only in the treatment and use of copper but also in the natural progression of the global industry.

Any entity making an investment in mining operations anywhere in the world will have to comply to the world recognized standards, which are well understood now. The risks for an entity with principal offices in China will be no different from the entity with principal offices in other places of the world.

INTERFAX: What is your prediction of China's demand for copper over the next five years? Would the output expansion both overseas and domestic lag behind the change in the demand level?

MR. KANE: At present no one can predict the actual demand for copper or any other metal over the next five years. But we think the future of copper is very strong. Because principally copper is essential to the infrastructure and there is a huge potential for infrastructure. For example, electrical conductivity applications in most economies compromise 60% of total copper demand. The area like China tends to be more than 70%. So given the state of the country's continuing economy development acceleration to improve the quality of life here and the fast infrastructure development, as a consequence the copper demand growth here will be a few percentage points higher than the average.

As of the pace of growth, there is a great deal of discussions of the level of economic growth, policy actions, policy statements by the government about trying to slow the demand overall. Copper could be affected as any other material could be affected in general, but for the most part, because of the basic development of infrastructure, copper should be less affected than some other sectors.

There are more than adequate reserves to meet the demand from China and the world. But the difficulties are huge investments and a long time is needed to build and developing world-class deposits.

INTERFAX: Since the copper prices both on the spot and futures markets have been soaring and recorded historical highs, is it from speculation, which has driven the price level beyond the true value of the products, or the function of supply and demand?

MR. KANE: Any market at any point in time might be inefficient. Because a very large number of respective opinions thrive on the true value of commodity. More than 95% of the trading on LME, as well as on many other metals exchanges ,such as the Shanghai Futures Exchange, are not related to an underlined transaction that requires physical commodity, although nine out of ten trades may be regarded as financially driven, as opposed to supply and demand driven. But markets through time are very efficient in reflecting the respective value of the commodity.

On the other hand, the copper industry is very capital intensive and time consuming. It takes huge amounts of capital and five to seven years to turn a deposit from exploration to become productive. So when we are talking about the effect on the market it naturally follows changes in demand level and production level, it is important to recognize difficulties in finding world class deposits, though we have several significant number of deposits under development, upgrading, and expansion. When demand moves very quickly, the production response is affected by these factors and the gap between supply and demand is in the short term reflected by the market and shoots up the commodity prices. But historically the levels of production have matched up with the high levels of demand.

The International Copper Association Co., Ltd. (ICA) is the leading organization for promoting the use of copper worldwide. ICA is responsible for guiding policy, strategy, and funding international initiatives and promotional activities. ICA's 37 member companies represent about 80% of the world's refined copper output and are among the largest copper producers and copper alloy fabricators in the world.

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NUCLEAR WASTE STORAGE

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UTAH VOWS TO KEEP FIGHTING THE NUCLEAR-WASTE STORAGE (Source: Judy Fahys and Robert Gehrke, The Salt Lake Tribune, 9/10/05)
The federal government Friday signed off on a new home for the nation's nuclear-plant waste - not at the proposed Yucca Mountain dump in Nevada, but in something resembling a parking lot in the Utah desert about an hour's drive from the state's population centers.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved a license for Private Fuel Storage LLC to store used nuclear fuel on the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation for up to 40 years. Under the license, the $3.1 billion site could hold more than 10 million depleted nuclear rods in 4,000 steel and concrete containers.

The commission's 3-1 decision was historic. The Utah site is the first new high-level nuclear facility licensed in the United States since 1973.

Still, no one expected the commission to reject the private storage proposal, which is billed as temporary storage until the federal government opens its own permanent repository, presumably at Yucca Mountain. Both PFS, a limited liability company formed by eight electric companies, and the storage site's opponents, led by the Utah government, anticipated the commission would approve the project after eight years of legal and technical review that included everything from customer contracts to earthquake worthiness.

"It's been a lot of years, a lot of hearings and a lot of explanation," said John Parkyn, PFS chairman and chief executive officer. "We're glad it turned out this way."

Skull Valley Goshute Chairman Leon Bear did not return a phone request for comment.

PFS says the earliest the site could open for operation is 2008. It first needs to line up paying customers and finalize some government paperwork.

Utah vowed to keep fighting in other forums, such as the federal agencies, the courts and in Congress. Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. called the license approval a setback, but insisted keeping spent nuclear fuel out of Utah is "a battle I intend to win."

His chief counsel, Michael S. Lee, promised to appeal the NRC license immediately in federal court.

"The state is fighting tooth-and-nail to kill this thing, and we will kill this thing," he said. "We have to kill it. It's bad policy."

Utah's congressional delegation sent a letter to Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton, urging her to use her authority over the Bureau of Land Management and the Bureau of Indian Affairs to stop the project. PFS needs a right-of-way grant from BLM for a 32-mile rail spur and the BIA's final approval of a lease with the Skull Valley Band of Goshutes before the project could be built, notes the rare, bipartisan plea.

"PFS has never provided any assurance that [spent nuclear fuel] stored on the reservation will ever be moved, leaving open the possibility that the Band could be permanently saddled with an environmental hazard of gigantic proportions," the lawmakers wrote.

The consortium plans to build 100 acres of soil- and- concrete pads on the 820 acres it has leased on the re-servation, which is about 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. The massive casks would be stored on the pads untethered, surrounded by a chain-link fence just across the two-lane highway to the Skull Valley Goshute village, which is home to about three dozen tribal members.

The private storage could handle nearly all of the radioactive waste that has been generated so far in the nation's half-century of commercial nuclear power. But a U.S. Energy Department estimate maintains that by 2035 Yucca's 77,000-ton capacity will be filled and the nation will have an excess 40,000 tons to deal with.

The NRC made two key votes on the PFS-Goshute project Friday. They took less than two minutes.

First the commission rejected Utah's argument that a dangerous radiation release could result if the casks were struck by a bomb-laden jetfighter. The waste site is planned for a location a few miles from the largest test-bombing and pilot-training range in the mainland U.S.

The jet-crash scenario was the final one of more than 50 objections raised by the state to the PFS plan.

After that, the panel directed NRC staff to finish drafting the license. The dissenting commissioner said the aircraft ruling allowed too much uncertainty in engineering calculations and computer models, given the potential harm to the public.

"The adjudicatory effort, plus our staff's separate safety and environmental reviews, gives us reasonable assurance that PFS' proposed [storage facility] can be constructed and operated safely," the majority said.

Despite the new license, the consortium faces several obstacles before it can begin taking waste.

One is the dramatic change that has occurred in the marketplace for waste storage since the consortium was formed. Originally, 11 companies underwrote the project. Only eight remain, and six of those have developed their own "dry-cask" storage, usually adjacent to their reactors.

Plus, for the new license, PFS must address some questions about the project financing. According to company attorneys, who declined to discuss proprietary details, PFS must contract for enough waste to ensure there is enough to bankroll the project's construction, operation and decommissioning.

PFS also must secure final paperwork needed from the BLM and the BIA - all while beating back the state's legal, lobbying and congressional attacks.

Meanwhile, the 121-member Skull Valley Band continues to struggle with the complications that have come along with the prospect of the waste project. They have been promised hundreds of millions of dollars for leasing their land, but the community has been in disarray ever since the deal was inked in June 1997.

Their leader, who first volunteered Skull Valley land to PFS about a decade ago, recently pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges related to tribal funds. Bear agreed to serve three years probation, pay back taxes, pay IRS fines and reimburse his tribe for duplicate travel payments.

Meanwhile, three Bear critics now face criminal charges in connection with a disputed 2001 tribal election intended to unseat Bear.

The would-be vice chairman is set to be sentenced next week on theft charges. Two other disputed leaders, along with their attorney, face trial the following week on charges they illegally spent tribal funds.

Other members claim in federal court their civil rights are being violated by the allegedly corrupt tribal administration.

"The NRC can now be called the Nuclear Racism Commission," said Kevin Kamps of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, a Washington, D.C-interest group opposed to the PFS site. The group attacked the license for dumping the nation's nuclear waste on an impoverished American Indian tribe.

"The Bush administration needs to put an end to this outrage by rejecting the rail line and the lease," he said.

Why you should care:

• This is the first time federal regulators have licensed a site that would be used for nuclear power-plant waste independent of a reactor. Utah has no nuclear power plants.
  
• 67 percent of Utah's 2.2 million residents live within five miles of likely transportation routes for the waste.
  
• A typical shipment will carry 240 times the radiation of the Hiroshima bomb. The shipment containers have only been tested with computer modeling.
  

IF YUCCA PLAN FAILS, SKULL VALLEY IS A VIABLE NUCLEAR-WASTE OPTION (Source: The New York Times editorial 9/16/05)
While few people outside Utah were paying close attention last week, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission authorized the licensing of a private storage plant for spent nuclear fuel rods on an Indian reservation some 50 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. Utah's outraged political leaders pledged to use every legal and political trick available to block the project even though, as representatives of a very conservative state, they supposedly abhor bureaucratic or judicial interference with private corporate decisions. Their objection - that the storage site, backed by a consortium of eight utilities, would pose a safety hazard - seems overblown. If the project should clear all of the remaining regulatory, legal and commercial hurdles, it could provide a useful interim storage site while the nation seeks a more permanent burial site.

The government's long-term goal is to bury the waste in stable geologic formations that will be resistant to leaks for eons to come. Unfortunately, progress has been slow. The only site approved for evaluation - at Yucca Mountain in Nevada - has been hobbled by technical problems and legal challenges. Meanwhile, spent fuel rods have been piling up in cooling pools and in dry-storage casks at nuclear reactor sites around the country.

So far as is known, the used fuel rods can be left there safely for decades. But it becomes awkward and costly to guard and maintain the storage casks after the reactors themselves have been retired from service. Several reactors have already been shut down, and more are apt to follow. In some cases, the spent fuel rods sit on land that might have more valuable uses. Unless these used fuel rods can be sent to Yucca, a destination that has not yet been approved to receive them, it seems desirable to have a backup site.

The question of whether Utah is the best place for such a site has never been addressed. Private Fuel Storage, a company set up by the utilities, simply negotiated a deal with a small, poor Indian tribe, the Skull Valley Goshutes, for an undisclosed but presumably substantial amount of money. The site seems safe enough. Both the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission - both charged with protecting the public from nuclear hazards - approved the project after an exhaustive eight-year process.

There are hurdles to clear before the site can be developed. The state plans to appeal the decision in federal courts. It will also try to persuade the Bureau of Indian Affairs to withhold approval of the lease and the Bureau of Land Management to deny a right of way needed for a rail spur to haul spent fuel to the site. So there is plenty of room for political interference should the Bush administration wish to do Utah a favor.

Meanwhile, Private Fuel Storage will need to sign up enough customers to make the project financially viable. Some utilities in the consortium are reported to be in no great rush to ship fuel rods to the site only to then ship them a second time, to Yucca.

We remain hopeful that Yucca can qualify as a permanent disposal site. But if Yucca fails to pass muster with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the nation will need a centralized surface site to fill the gap until a safe burial site can be found. The Indian reservation in Utah can fill that purpose.


STATE OF IRONY -- SKULL VALLEY WASTE STORAGE PLAN STILL HAS PROBLEMS (Source: The Salt Lake Tribune, Our View, 9/10/05)
Even with the approval given Friday by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, it is unlikely that the storage facility planned for Utah's Skull Valley will be receiving any nuclear waste before 2008.

Until then, Utah will merely radiate irony. That's the irony of elected leaders who normally score points by decrying the interference of judges and federal bureaucrats now leaving no lawyer unturned in their search for a judge or a bureaucrat to interfere with the plans of the Skull Valley Goshute Indians and their business partners at Private Fuel Storage.

A deeper irony, perhaps, is the possibility that it may all have been for naught. The utilities that were supposed to be paying members of PFS, having grown accustomed to holding onto their own spent fuel rods, are now suggesting that they may just maintain the status quo.

NRC members Friday formally brushed aside state concerns about the possible crash of a Hill Air Force Base jet into the above-ground storage facility and granted their approval. Permission must also come from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which retains the paternal role of approving leases of tribal lands, and the Bureau of Land Management, which must sign off on the rail spur that would have to pass over federal land.

Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. and other officials have reiterated their resolve to block the plan. And they have some serious objections.

Prime among them is the fact that, while Skull Valley is envisioned as a temporary lay-over for 44,000 tons of spent power plant fuel, the endless delays to the supposedly permanent repository at Nevada's Yucca Mountain suggest that PFS may prove "temporary" only on a geologic time scale.

Also unclear is whether the devices and plans for transporting and storing the waste have been properly designed and whether any central storage facility is really better than keeping it all at the power plants that created it.

That storage-in-place option, together with hopes that we could learn to reprocess the waste so we don't have to keep it for thousands of dangerous years, is finally beginning to unite Utah's Skull Valley skeptics and Nevada's Yucca Mountain opponents.

Such an alliance is needed if better solutions to the nuclear waste problem are to be found. And, given the increasing need for energy that doesn't emit greenhouse gases and soot, solutions must be found.


DEMAND FOR FACILITY UNCLEAR (Source: Patty Henetz and Steven Oberbeck, The Salt Lake Tribune, 9/10/05)
Now that they finally have permission to proceed with development, most of the power plant operators who for years pushed to build a spent nuclear fuel storage facility in Utah say they no longer need it.

Eight years was just too long to wait.

Since coming together in 1997 to form the Private Fuel Storage consortium to push for construction of a spent nuclear fuel storage site on the Skull Valley Goshute reservation, at least six of the eight original PFS members pursued their own storage options.

"The possibility is pretty remote for at least the foreseeable future that we'll end up sending anything to Utah," said Ray Golden, spokesman for Southern California Edison's San Onofre nuclear power plant. "At the time we joined PFS we didn't have licenses for on-site storage [of spent fuel] but now we do."

Five other members, including Xcel Energy of Minnesota, one of the driving forces behind the consortium, agreed.

"We'll have plenty of our own on-site storage," said Charles Bomberger, general manager of nuclear asset management at Xcel. He noted that since PFS was organized Xcel has expanded the storage capacity at one of its two nuclear power plants and now is in the process of expanding the other.

PFS chief John Parkyn, who hailed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Friday decision to issue PFS a license to build and operate, is unfazed by his members' plans to handle their spent fuel on-site rather than send it to Utah for storage.

Nuclear power plants were never envisioned or designed to be long-term storage sites, Parkyn said. "Now that we're licensed and will soon have the capacity to put [spent] fuel in one place, I suspect that every company in the country will seriously consider using our facility," he said.

American Electric Power may be the first consortium member in line. Spokesman Bill Schalk said the reactor has enough storage capacity at its Bridgeman, Mich., plant for at least the next six years. "But after 2011 we're going to need a place," he said. "At that time the Utah facility could be a viable option for us."

Whether it's feasible for anyone else is a question mark, said Mitch Singer, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, a trade group. "I don't know on the economics, who it's going to be good for, who it's not," he said.

Attitudes about interim storage at nuclear reactors and reprocessing are evolving with more utilities willing to store the material themselves. Meanwhile, calls for federal interim storage continue, including a spending bill proposal from Ohio Rep. David Hobson, who wants DOE to take possession of spent waste and store it until reprocessing technologies mature.

The Senate, led by Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Sen. Pete Domenici, R-New Mexico, has rejected that proposal. But Hobson will continue to push it in the House, said spokeswoman Sara Perkins.

Parkyn is manager for nuclear and special projects for Dairyland Power Cooperative in La Crosse, Wis., which owns the shuttered La Crosse Boiling Water Reactor just downstream from the Mississippi River village of Genoa. He would like to move the reactor's 41 tons of spent fuel to Utah.

Parkyn has had to plead his case before a host of public officials, including skeptical members of the Western Governors' Association, who oppose siting any nuclear facility without express consent of governors.

At a recent appearance before the California Energy Commission, Parkyn said waste from decommissioned plants could not be returned if a planned permanent repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., fails to open.

PFS projects the life of the Skull Valley facility at 40 years. However, Parkyn told the California Energy Commission, if the PFS license is not renewed, "the most likely scenario would be that it would be assigned to someone else."

That kind of talk worries some observers, who see PFS becoming a convenient substitute should Yucca collapse - a very real possibility.

"Fortunately or unfortunately for Utah, this has a lot to do with the future of Yucca Mountain," said Bob Halstead, a consultant to the state of Nevada in its fight to stop Yucca. "The future of Yucca Mountain does not look very bright right now. Will PFS somehow be able to capitalize on the delay or failure of Yucca Mountain?"

Even if Yucca opens by its new expected completion date of 2015 - a big if, considering the Energy Department hasn't even filed an application for a license amid multiplying political problems - the DOE has stated flatly it won't accept the welded-shut waste containers PFS will store.

David Zabransky of the Energy Department's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, speaking in May in Salt Lake City to representatives of the Western Governors' Association, said DOE rules on accepting waste from nuclear reactors have been known since the late 1980s. Those rules require that it be "bare fuel," that is, packed to DOE specifications directly from reactors' cooling pools.

DOE's position only adds to concerns that once the waste is here, it won't leave.

Jason Groenewold, director of the anti-nuclear citizens group Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah, fears PFS could be a hazardous-waste business incubator, especially as spent fuel reprocessing becomes more economically and politically viable.

"You're hearing [Gov. Jon] Huntsman call for reprocessing, you hear [Sens. Bob] Bennett and [Orrin] Hatch call for reprocessing. That to me is the worst-case scenario," Groenewold said.

New enterprises could include expanded waste hauling business, expansion of Envirocare's low-level waste facility or even reprocessing at Dugway Proving Ground or Deseret Chemical Depot, which may be looking for new missions, he said. "If we're not careful, we're going to be the magnet for all nuclear waste and every harebrained idea related to it."

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ENVIRONMENTAL & REGULATORY

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HIGH MERCURY LEVELS FOUND IN TWO DUCK SPECIES Hunters Should Not Eat Shovelers and Goldeneyes
High mercury levels have been found in two species of ducks on the southern end of the Great Salt Lake, the Division of Wildlife Resources announced today.

Northern shovelers and common goldeneyes are the two duck species with the high levels.

On Sept. 29, the Utah Department of Health (UDOH) issued a waterfowl consumption advisory recommending people not eat either species of duck. Officials from UDOH, the Utah Department of Environmental Quality and the DWR worked in partnership to issue the advisory.

The results of testing that's been done so far is avail-able in a Health Consultation document at the Department of Health's Web site (www.health.utah.gov/enviroepi).

Eating meat from these two species could result in an intake of mercury that exceeds the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's health recommendations, according to the UDOH analysis. There is no health risk to other recreationists on the lake.

Several other duck species also have been sampled. "Green-winged teal and gadwalls were well below the screening level for mercury and hunters should feel safe eating them," said Jim Karpowitz, director of the DWR. "Mallards were just below the EPA's mercury screening level of 0.3 parts per million. We'll be doing more sampling and testing to further evaluate mallards and other duck species on the lake."

Duck Hunting Season Opens Oct. 1

Utah's duck hunting season opens this Saturday, Oct. 1, and Karpowitz recommends that duck hunters avoid shooting shovelers and goldeneyes. "If you kill any of these birds, you must retrieve them and include them as part of your bag limit," he said.

Tom Aldrich, migratory game bird coordinator for the DWR, says 487,000 ducks are currently on Utah's waterfowl management areas and the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge. Of those 487,000 ducks, less than 10 percent (47,000) are shovelers. No goldeneyes were found.

"It's very unlikely that hunters will bag a goldeneye in the next few weeks," Aldrich said. "Goldeneyes represent only 2 percent of the ducks harvested in Utah, and they usually don't arrive at the Great Salt Lake until mid-November."

Hunters could bag plenty of shovelers, however. During the past three years, 13 to 14 percent of the ducks taken by Utah hunters from mid-October to mid-December have been shovelers.

DWR Will Expand Mercury Study

A study to determine the level of mercury in ducks began this July when a small number of meat samples from several waterfowl species collected on the southern end of the lake last winter were tested.

Mercury was found in several of the samples, so the DWR decided to collect a larger number of waterfowl in August. Lab results from those samples also were assessed by the Utah Department of Health, which led to the Sept. 29 waterfowl consumption advisory.

"The Division of Wildlife Resources, along with the UDOH and the lab at Utah State University, have worked hard to get these birds collected and sampled before the start of the duck hunting season," Karpowitz said. "Now we'll work hard, throughout the fall and winter, to collect more birds and learn more about the mercury situation on the lake."

"A lot of work still needs to be done," said Clay Perschon, Great Salt Lake Ecosystem project leader for the DWR. "Only a small number of birds have been sampled so far, and all of those birds have come from the southern end of the lake. We don't know much about mercury levels in waterfowl using other areas of the lake.

"The next steps are to expand the survey by collecting a larger number of birds and collecting them from several areas on the lake."

Mercury Working Group

The officials who issued the advisory have established a Mercury Work Group to coordinate and collaborate on mercury studies and investigations that are ongoing in Utah. Stakeholders from a broad base of state, federal and nonprofit agencies, industry and the public are members of the group. Information about this work group is available at: www.deq.utah.gov/issues/Mercury/work_group.htm

Information about the waterfowl consumption advisory will also be distributed locally, and will be available at www.health.utah.gov/enviroepi and each of the agencies' Web sites.   More information about the health effects of mercury can be found at www.atsdr.cdc.gov/tfacts46.html   General information about mercury in Utah is available at www.deq.utah.gov/issues/Mercury/index.htm

Contact: Tom Aldrich, DWR Migratory Game Bird Coordinator (801) 538 4789 (office) or (801) 971-9827
Wayne Ball, Utah Department of Health Environmental Epidemiology Director (801) 538 6297
Mark Hadley, DWR Public Information Officer (801) 538-4737 (office) or (801) 546-9665 (home)


DEPARTING UTAH BLM LAND STEWARD WINS PRAISE FROM FRIENDS, FOES (Source: Joe Baird, Salt Lake Tribune, 9/6/05)
Sally Wisely waded into a thicket of conflicts when she became the Bureau of Land Management's Utah director six years ago. Now, as she prepares to take her leave this fall, not much has changed. The wilderness debate. Rural road claims by the state and counties. Off-highway vehicle impacts. All were frontline issues when she took the job, and still are. In some ways, the level of acrimony even increased during the course of her tenure. And yet another thorny issue -- fast-track oil and gas development – muscled its way into the mix.

Yet, few observers lay the continued stalemates at Wisely's feet. Friends and foes alike praise her professionalism and willingness to give all sides a fair hearing. Most recognize she had only a limited ability to solve long-standing disputes. And Wisely says she is departing Utah for the BLM directorship in Colorado feeling she got some important things done. "There's still contentiousness," she said, "but we've come a long way."

Wisely was shifted as part of a larger BLM shuffle in which the current Colorado director was transferred to Nevada following the retirement of the agency's chief executive there. Wisely will leave her Utah post in October; current plans call for her replacement to be installed by the end of November.

Wisely, 55, came to Utah from the assistant directorship in Alaska in 1999, the final two years of the Clinton administration. Beginning in 2001, her marching orders from Washington changed markedly, owing to the Bush administration's emphasis on energy exploration and development. Wisely's job became even trickier at the end of that year, when Kathleen Clarke, the former executive director of the Utah Department of Natural Resources, was tabbed by Bush to head the BLM.

"The challenge of working for Kathleen Clarke - who still has a lot of ties and interest in Utah - the administration making decisions behind her back and the political and cultural climate in Utah all combined to put a lot of pressure on Sally," said Martha Hahn, a former Idaho BLM director who now works for the Flagstaff, Ariz.-based Grand Canyon Trust. "When you've got all that going on, it's tough to get things done."

The Beehive State would be tough duty for a state BLM director under any scenario. The BLM manages 23 million acres in Utah, or about 42 percent of the state. Only Nevada has more BLM land. And a significant portion of that ground contains resources ranging from coal, oil and gas to rangeland. That creates an almost built-in tension between the BLM and local governments and residents over how those lands are managed.

Then there is the Wow Factor. Utah's BLM holdings also contain some of the most breathtaking natural scenery on the planet - the San Rafael Swell, Desolation Canyon and Vermillion Cliffs - that recreationists of all stripes want to access and environmentalists want to preserve.

"People feel very strongly about these places," Wisely said. "Everybody wants to weigh in."

And weigh in they have. Virtually every major interest group in Utah with a stake in public lands management has sued the BLM and Interior Department during Wisely's tenure, be it the state and counties over road claims, environmental groups over wilderness protection and OHV groups over motorized access.

While declining to point the finger at anybody specifically, Wisely bemoans what she calls a missing sense of pragmatism in the Utah land-use debates. Too often, she says, philosophies trump collaboration.

"If I have a disappointment - and a hope - it would be to have the public lands embraced as the incredible resource they are, by everybody," she said. "Sometimes it feels like we're fighting about it more than putting our heads together and figuring out the best way to move forward. We're at the point, quite frankly, where ideology is driving a lot of this - on both sides."

By nearly all accounts, Wisely has gone some distance to try to bridge the chasm.

"She's done more to try and open a dialogue with all the interest groups, including elected and state officials, than anybody in recent memory," said Lynn Stevens, the state's public lands policy coordinator.

"We've bumped heads with the BLM as an institution," added Stevens, who once publicly challenged the BLM by helping lead an unauthorized OHV event on federal land as a San Juan County commissioner. "But Sally has never been contentious. She's always been reasonable and sought solutions."

Added Scott Groene, executive director of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance: "We've had state directors in the past that were hostile to the values of wildlife, archaeology and wilderness. In that sense, Sally was a step forward. She understood and appreciated the importance of those values. Unfortunately, the agency has largely not taken the necessary steps to protect them. But the real blame for that lies with the pressure from D.C."

Wisely is hardly without critics. Most recently, her letter threatening legal action against Kane County officials over their OHV sign-postings in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument sparked a fiery response from members of the Legislature and Attorney General's Office, as well as off-road groups.

"Sally's been open to communicating with us. She's been good to work with. But as far as leaving a legacy, I don't think the public land situation in Utah is any better than when she got here," said Mike Swenson, executive director of the Utah Shared Access Alliance, the state's largest OHV advocacy group. "The way she threatened Kane County was shortsighted and terrible."

Wisely also has taken hits over the BLM's collaboration with oil and gas company employees who helped expedite environmental studies to thin out the backlog of drilling requests in the agency's Vernal Field Office. Critics castigated the arrangement as a blatant conflict of interest.

Wisely will say only that, "Our people have done a tremendous job given the resources they have to work with. It's important to view this in the big picture. We understand that our decisions have impacts. But it is our lifestyles that are creating this energy demand."

BLM observers, though, believe Wisely was squeezed by an Interior Department that wanted the pace of energy exploration and development in Utah speeded up.

"I think she was trying to resolve the issue the best she could," ex-BLM director Hahn said. "The [BLM] could have resolved it by recognizing the imbalance of the demand versus the number of employees [in the Vernal office]. They could have given her some help, but they didn't. So it's a quandary. She had to find a creative way to solve the problem. It was no-win situation."

In the larger sense, says Sierra Club representative Lawson LeGate, "It must be a very demoralizing time for federal land management agencies. Before the Bush administration, public lands were managed on behalf of the people. Now, I think people can see that our public land resources have been turned over to the industries that exploit them."

If Wisely feels that way, she won't say. Rather, she calls herself a firm believer in the BLM's "multiple-use" mandate, and goes out the door satisfied she at least made a dent in Utah's perpetual public lands feuds - pointing to the BLM's improving relationship with local communities around the Grand Staircase monument as it becomes a growing tourist destination. She also cites an initiative to update all of the BLM's Utah land-use plans, many of which date back to the 1980s, and the designated OHV route system implemented in the San Rafael Swell.

Finally, Wisely points to the fledgling partnership between state, local and federal agencies to address natural resource issues of common concern - such as the effort to recover Utah's shrinking sagebrush habitat.

"We've got a long way to go, but it's going to end up being something that will have a real positive impact," Wisely said. She hopes it's a start.


WILDERNESS IN LIMBO AS 'ROADS' ARE REDEFINED (Source: Judy Fahys, The Salt Lake Tribune, 9//05)
It was settled for a time, when a road is a road in backcountry Utah.

No longer.

The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals decided Thursday a lower court had the definition all wrong. Now U.S. District Court Judge Tena Campbell must apply a new definition, one set by the appeals court and lauded as a victory by three Utah counties and the state of Utah.

Still, neither side would predict whether the 120-page decision will eventually result in more or less designated wilderness. But everyone agrees it could have an enormous influence in settling which of roughly 10,000 rural Utah tracks are indeed "roads," and ultimately, whether the land around them still qualifies as wilderness.

Utah Assistant Attorney General Ralph Finlayson called the appeals ruling "a wonderful victory" for the state and Kane, Garfield and San Juan counties.

"It makes a huge difference in many ways," said Finlayson, who had argued against Campbell's adopted definition of roads.

In two past decisions on the case, Campbell had relied on standards set out by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance [SUWA] originally filed suit in 1996, after road crews from the three counties began grading dirt trails and stream beds on federal lands and calling them county-controlled roads under RS2477, a Civil War-era law that gave counties rights of way over federal lands.

"The previous decisions provided clear guidelines, and this decision is really confusing," said Scott Groene, executive director of the conservation group. "The result of this [ruling] will be enormous amounts of litigation to flesh out this decision."

The appeals court Thursday directed Campbell to scrap the definition that had guided her earlier rulings, based on criteria established by the BLM. For instance, the agency said a road was only a road when there had been "mechanical construction," such as grading.

But, the three-person appeals court, which includes former University of Utah law school professor Michael McConnell, said Congress never gave the BLM authority to decide the issue. And, siding with the state and the counties, the judges agreed with Utah law's guideline that roads are roads if they have seen "continuous use" for 10 years.

The BLM had no comment. Its attorneys had not seen the case.

Groene said SUWA would consider its options for fighting the ruling within the court's 45-day deadline. He predicted the ruling would create a "management nightmare" for federal land agencies, which oversee lands through which the disputed roads go in such places as the Grand Staircase National Monument and near Canyonlands National Park.

Under the Wilderness Act, land must include at least 5,000 acres and be road-free to be eligible for protection. By grading dirt tracks, counties effectively render wildlands ineligible for wilderness designation under the law and leave the lands open to motorized travel.

Finlayson denied the ruling was about wilderness and insisted it was about the control counties have over their backcountry routes.

"I'm after roads," he said. "I'm not after wilderness."



SUIT SEEKS TO REVERSE ESCALANTE STATUS (Source: Robert Boczkiewicz, Special to The Tribune, 9/16/05)
DENVER - Opponents of former President Clinton's establishment of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument asked a federal court Thursday to overturn its creation.

While the Mountain States Legal Foundation has asserted that Clinton overreached his authority in declaring the monument in 1996, the panel of judges from the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals focused the oral arguments on whether the foundation's interests were affected by the monument to such a degree that it could prove it was harmed and therefore have the right to sue.

"I see no indication of what right [of the foundation] was violated here," said Judge David Ebel.

The foundation's attorney, Jayme ShypA, responded that her group could pursue the lawsuit because one of its members once mined alabaster in the monument areas and was adversely affected by the presidential designation. An attorney for the federal government said that wasn't sufficient to permit it to sue.

Clinton, using the powers of the Antiquities Act of 1906, designated the monument by proclamation two months before the 1996 presidential election. The surprise designation angered Utah state and local officials and others in the West who saw it was a unilateral decision against Western interests.

Monument opponents want the appellate judges to reverse last year's ruling by U.S. District Judge Dee Benson in Salt Lake City that upheld Clinton's action.

The foundation argued in written briefs to the 10th Circuit that Clinton designated Grand Staircase not to protect scientific or cultural resources, but because he wanted to do something that "was specifically calculated to win the votes . . . immediately prior to the 1996 presidential election."

The foundation, which promotes land-use rights and limited government, charged that Clinton's decision deprived the state of Utah and Garfield and Kane counties the chance to develop lands in the 1.7 million-acre monument for oil and gas production, mineral extraction and grazing.

But federal attorneys wrote in briefs that Clinton's motivations are "legally irrelevant and unsupported."

The Denver-based appeals court probably will not make its decision until next year.

Environmental groups and businesses in and around the monument, such as outfitters and lodges, have intervened in the suit seeking to have Clinton's action affirmed.

The state of Utah, intervening on the behalf of Mountain States, challenged what it calls Clinton's broad interpretation of the Antiquities Act, and Benson's conclusion that the court has no authority to review whether a president exceeded the act's provision that only the smallest area needed can be designated for protection.

The state of Utah intervened in the original lawsuit in 1996, then bowed out after swapping state lands in the monument for $50 million in cash and 139,000 acres in federal lands elsewhere. The Utah Association of Counties, which had also sued to overturn the monument designation, did not join the legal foundation in appealing Benson's ruling.

Mountain States argues Clinton's decision to create Grand Staircase illegal because it went beyond the purpose, scope and size of national monument designations under the Antiquities Act, which allow a president to proclaim "objects of historic or scientific interest" on public lands and reserve parcels of land to protect the objects.


PANEL OKS REWRITE OF ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT (Source: Erica Werner, Associated Press, 9/23/05)
WASHINGTON - A House committee on Thursday approved a sweeping rewrite of the Endangered Species Act that hands major new rights to property owners while limiting the federal government's ability to protect plant and animal habitat.

The bill by House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo, R-Calif., bars the government from establishing ''critical habitat'' for species where development is limited, and sets deadlines for property owners to get answers from the government about whether their development plans would hurt protected species.

If the government doesn't answer in time, the development could go forward. If the government blocks adevelopment, the property owner would be compensated. The bill ''will place a new emphasis on recovery and eliminates dysfunctional critical habitat provisions,'' Pombo said. ''It's about a new era in protecting species and protecting habitat at the same time we protect property owners.''

Pombo's committee approved the bill on a 26-12 vote, over objections from some Democrats and moderate Republicans who said it would disfigure the landmark 32-year-old law that environmentalists credit with preserving species like the bald eagle and California sea otter.

''It is a drastic mistake to eliminate the provisions that have to do with the protection of habitat for endangered species,'' said Rep. Jim Saxton, R-N.J.

Saxton offered an amendment to restore critical habitat protections to the bill, but it failed on a voice vote.

The bill now goes to the full House, where Pombo says he has a commitment from Republican leaders to schedule a floor vote as early as next week. About a decade ago, Pombo failed to get the House to approve a rewrite of the Endangered Species Act, but he said he anticipates success this time.

Even if it passes the House, the bill has an uncertain future in the Senate.

Sen. Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I., a moderate who chairs the wildlife subcommittee of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has concerns about removing critical habitat from the Endangered Species Act, a spokesman said.

Conservatives and property-rights supporters like Pombo disagree bitterly with environmentalists and many Democrats about whether the Endangered Species Act has been a success. Pombo often notes that only about 15 of 1,830 threatened and endangered species have been taken off the list because they've recovered. Supporters of the law counter that an even tinier number - nine- have gone extinct.

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UMA CALENDAR

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2005
 

OCTOBER

5-7   Coal Market Strategies, location to be announced. For info visit www.americancoalcouncil.org

19-20   Coal Quality ‘05, Huntington, West Virginia, For info. visit: www.coalqualityshow.com or call 225-673-9400 ext. 203.

26   MSHA Part 48 - 8 hour refresher - $75.00, Utah Safety Council, 1574 West 1700 South, Suite 2A, Salt Lake City, Utah 84104. Pre-registration is required. Call (801) 478-7878 or (800) 933-5943 or by email at sbleazard@utahsafetycouncil.org. Updates are available at www.utahsafetycouncil.org



NOVEMBER

1-4   Joint Western Regional Safety Conference and Exhibition, Silver Legacy Resort Casino in Reno, NV. For info visit: http://www.fireacademy.unr.edu/msha

1   MSHA Part 48 - 8 hour refresher - $75.00, Utah Safety Council, 1574 West 1700 South, Suite 2A, Salt Lake City, Utah 84104. Pre-registration is required. Call (801) 478-7878 or (800) 933-5943 or by email at sbleazard@utahsafetycouncil.org. Updates are available at www.utahsafetycouncil.org

3-4   MSHA Part 48 - 24 hour training - $175.00, Utah Safety Council, 1574 West 1700 South, Suite 2A, Salt Lake City, Utah 84104. Pre-registration is required. Call (801) 478-7878 or (800) 933-5943 or by email at sbleazard@utahsafetycouncil.org. Updates are available at www.utahsafetycouncil.org



DECEMBER

8   MSHA Part 48 - 8 hour refresher - $75.00, Utah Safety Council, 1574 West 1700 South, Suite 2A, Salt Lake City, Utah 84104. Pre-registration is required. Call (801) 478-7878 or (800) 933-5943 or by email at sbleazard@utahsafetycouncil.org. Updates are available at www.utahsafetycouncil.org



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