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May 2008 Edition Cummins Rocky Mountain
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EVENTS
IRON COUNTY'S WWII-ERA OPEN PIT ORE MINES TO REOPEN Iron County apparently is on the verge of an iron ore mining revival. This fall, Palladin Ventures Ltd. plans to begin extracting crude iron ore from the Comstock and Mountain Lion open-pit mines in the desert mountains west of Cedar City, mines that originally supplied iron ore to the Geneva Steel mill when it was built during World War II. The mines have been dormant for a quarter of a century. Palladin announced last month that it had signed a five-year contract to deliver iron ore to China Kingdom International, which Palladin described to investors as a large company that has offices in China, Australia and London. Investors also were told the Asian company operates a steel mill near Beijing; has interests in poultry, textile and seafood-export businesses; and employs nearly 6,000 employees. "The five-year contract will gross the company over $1 billion," claimed Donald Foot Jr., president of Palladin Iron Corp., which will conduct the operation as a wholly owned subsidiary of Palladin Ventures and its venture capital financial supporter, Luxor Capital Group. Multiple calls to Palladin's Salt Lake City office seeking additional information were not returned by Foot or company Vice President Frank Dolce. But in an April 4 conference call with investors, Foot said Palladin is on track to complete the infrastructure improvements that will be needed to begin producing iron ore in the year's third quarter. "We are in great position where we will sell run-of-mine [crude] ore to start the operation," he said. "All we have to do is drill it, blast it, crush, blend, stockpile and ship." Foot also predicted Palladin will complete construction of an ore concentrator before the contract ends, allowing it to supply higher-grade iron ore at a much higher price per ton. Iron ore is in great demand, driven largely by industrial expansion in China and India. Brazilian mining company Vale do Rio Doce, the world's biggest producer, struck a deal in February with six Asian steelmakers that helped increase global iron ore prices by 65 percent. A report from Australia noted that employment nationally rose by 10,000 in April, the 18th consecutive month of increases, as mining companies hired more workers to meet Chinese demand for iron ore and coal. "We've already seen projections for another significant [price] increase next year," Foot added. "We find ourselves at a robust time in the market to be going into production." Palladin's plans were welcomed by Bryan Dangerfield, the Iron County/Cedar City economic development director. "It's huge. It's high-paying jobs. Everything we want to have here, it provides," he said, noting that company officials indicated the operations will provide about 60 jobs paying two to three times the county's average nonfarm annual wage ($25,404). "That's the focus of my office - high-paying jobs." Added Chad Nay, Iron County's building official and zoning administrator: "We're excited to see them rejuvenate the mine. They've worked with us for permits on upgrading their power substations to make it more modern and compatible with the commercial power they will bring in." A Palladin news release said work began Monday to install electric lines connecting a new substation to the Cedar City power grid. In the next few months, the company will install crushing, stacking and loading equipment so iron ore can be shipped by rail to a West Coast port, where China Kingdom International ships will ferry it across the Pacific. To get the ore to Union Pacific's westbound trains, Foot said Palladin is spending $1.2 million to upgrade 14.4 miles of a spur line. That work is scheduled for this summer. * Bloomberg News Service contributed to this story.
KENNECOTT DONATES $15 MILLION TO When he set out in search of inspiration and ideas from which to design a landmark museum for Utah, architect Todd Schliemann criss-crossed the state in a Jeep, examining the landscapes and cultures defining Utah's sense of place. "What struck me most of all is the land itself is architectural: the color, the texture, the scale and the way light over time affects its massing and presence," said Schliemann, a partner in the New York City firm Polshek Partnership Architects. The fruits of his investigation will be a copper-sheathed museum terraced in three levels into a shoreline bench where the waves of an ancient lake once lapped against the Wasatch foothills behind Salt Lake City. "It's a metaphor for the land," the architect said at a ceremony attended by top University of Utah administrators, as well as academic and community leaders. Schliemann pulled the veil from a scaled model of the Utah Museum of Natural History's future home, sparking a round of applause and a few "ahhhs." Groundbreaking on the $100 million project is scheduled for July 29 and completion of the 160,000-square-foot structure is expected by the beginning of 2011. Officials also announced a $15 million gift from Kennecott Utah Copper, a major mining concern with a long-standing ties to the museum and the author of the world's largest mineral excavation across the valley at Bingham Canyon. "Not only will it help the Utah Museum of Natural History build its beautiful new facility, but it will benefit all Utahns by supporting the museum's educational mission throughout the state," said U. President Michael Young. The new building will be named after Kennecott's corporate parent. London-based Rio Tinto maintains a global reach as a leading producer of copper, iron, aluminum and other industrial metals. "Through this partnership, we will continue to introduce youth to careers in the natural sciences," Kennecott CEO Andrew Harding said. "We also hope to expose people to mining and show them how it is important to modern life." The Kennecott gift brings total fund-raising on the project to $81 million, enough to put up the building, which recently won a $25 million appropriation from the Legislature. The selection of the site, just south of Red Butte Garden, was not popular among nature lovers who opposed the sacrifice of cherished open space along the Bonneville Shoreline Trail. But the 17-acre site is the last of three undeveloped lots in Research Park and would likely become the site of a corporate building had the museum not claimed it, proponents say. "With the new design we're allowing people to connect with the wild lands backed up against the heritage preserve," museum director Sarah George said. The museum aims for gold-certification under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design by minimizing its footprint, water use and energy needs.
CRANDALL CANYON: UTAH ARTIST CREATES Spring Glen - Those heartbroken women. Sculptor Karen Jobe Templeton's thoughts kept coming back to the wives and mothers as, day after day after day, she listened to radio accounts in August of the Crandall Canyon mine disaster. She would look around the light-filled studio she and her devoted husband, Kent, had spent two years building behind their home in this community between Price and Helper, and ponder: "How would I deal with losing Kent, if I had nothing to touch, to feel?" She resolved to do something about it. This week, Templeton is delivering clay bas-relief sculptures of the disaster's nine victims to a foundry in Lehi. There, they will be cast in bronze and mounted on a curved wall that will memorialize the tragedy. The monument, titled "Heroes Among Us," will be erected along the highway leading from Huntington to the mine, within eyeshot of the junior high school where the families gathered for nearly two weeks, hoping in vain for good news to emerge from the rescue operation. But the news only got worse, as three rescuers were killed Aug. 16 trying to reach the six men trapped when the mine's walls blew in 10 days earlier. The highly individualized faces of each of the nine will be displayed prominently across the breadth of the monument (16 feet wide, 6 feet tall), rescuers facing the original six. Their bronzed features will extend out from a concrete background, open to being caressed by a loved one, a friend or someone simply touched by the sadness of the whole thing. Each family also will receive a bust of their own, for home. Getting to this juncture has been a rich, meaningful but sometimes anxious journey for Templeton, a nurse by training. "It's been a very intense experience. It's loving. It's sorrowful. This whole mix of emotions," she said. "It takes all of my strength and thought power." There were money concerns, until Jon Huntsman Sr. stepped forward in early April with a $100,000 donation that assured the work could be finished. And deadlines come fast, too fast sometimes when the hope is to have the monument in place around the anniversaries of the twin-tipped disaster. But most enriching to Templeton - taxing too - has been the chance to get to know victims' family members, a few fairly intimately. "Every one of the families has these stories that come from the soul," she said. Some things she has heard "have never been shared anywhere, just sweet, personal things." Templeton's nursing experience equipped her well to interact with folks dealing with loss, resetting their lives. They have come to watch her work, individually and in family units, for short spells or for hours, sometimes silently. But often they talk. "It's like a door opens up and they tell you everything they knew about [the victim]. That's what a memorial is supposed to be." Her receptive ear quickly earned Templeton the respect of Wendy Black, whose husband Dale perished in the rescue effort. "It's not just that Karen's such a good artist. It's the way she comes across with her mannerisms," said Black. "She's the sweetest woman I've ever met. She wants our opinions and she lets you touch [the figures]. That's important." Black pushed hard for Templeton to get the memorial contract when the families chose a sculptor in mid-December, through a process overseen by Huntington Mayor Hilary Gordon and Mike Mower, Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.'s aide. The selection seems like a natural fit to Gordon, who visited Templeton's studio earlier this month and came away impressed, even though most figures were still works in progress. "The expressions in their eyes and the looks on their faces were amazing," Gordon said. "She didn't just capture the outside image. She captured what I would call their inner soul, that sense of what made them a person." Trying to achieve that was the source of Templeton's greatest angst. She did not want to disappoint the families, who already had suffered so much. But at times the photographs she worked from, some shot on cell phones, made it hard to precisely capture the prominence of cheekbones, the width of noses, the propensity for flashing a mischievous grin. And she knew precision meant everything to family members. "I try to be as real as I can," Templeton said, "but if the family says 'no, he wasn't like that,' I go with them." Getting it just right was not always easy. "Sometimes likenesses come quickly. Others, I have to fight to find it." Case in point: Carlos Payan. In her studio is a montage of nearly a dozen blown-up pictures of the 22-year-old, some with a goatee, some clean shaven, some with a full head of hair, some closely cropped. After five weeks of working on Payan, English-only Templeton zeroed in on him only after his Spanish-speaking mother came up from Mexico and "we communicated through a third party on a cell phone on speaker." Casandra Phillips found that every time Templeton added a little more clay, her big brother Brandon blossomed, sporting a familiar half smile. Her mother could not watch the process, Phillips said. It hurt her, too, but "I still wanted to go to make sure it looked good." A full-scale grin fills the face of fallen rescuer Brandon Kimber. Templeton wondered if a big smile was appropriate for a memorial, but became convinced it was after Kimber's ex-wife Kristin told her that "he smiled all the time. It was not just his face but his whole body. You could tell from his stance. To be honest, [his face] needed to be like that. There are a lot of complexities with life and death, and the monument will be like that." Such insight is familiar to Lisa Chamberlain, who used to share a studio with Templeton in Helper and is helping her now, mostly with her subjects' hardhats and miner gear. "A Karen person is a real person with foibles and all the things that came with being human," she said. "She feels really deeply about people and it shows up in her work." Because she does, it bothers Templeton a bit that "I'm developing relationships with nine dead men who I only got to know because they're dead." But those thoughts are fleeting, overcome by the realization she is giving the families something they can hold onto for generations. It's then, she knows, that "this is the most important thing I've ever done." As evidence, consider Kristin Kimber's reaction the first time she saw Brandon's finished face. "It was like him staring at me. For a second, he came back to life," she said. "It was a very sweet moment looking at him like that." Kimber was so touched she returned soon to Templeton's studio with their three children, 6-year-old Bryton and the twins, Peyton and Paxton, age 4. "My oldest has been struggling," she said. "She had to touch his face. All she said was, 'That's my daddy.' She whispered it. It was heart-wrenching, but it was beautiful at the same time. I'm just so grateful Karen gave us that."
SIMPLOT FAMILY TO KEEP IDAHO FIRM Boise, Idaho - After the death of its founder, the J.R. Simplot Co. will continue as a family owned agricultural company with no anticipated changes, said Scott Simplot. "It would be a surprise to me if we change anything," said Simplot, the company chairman and J.R. Simplot's son. "What opportunities walk in the door six months from now, it's impossible to know. But there isn't something in the hopper that's about to jump out." J.R. Simplot, a billionaire best known for providing McDonald's Corp. with its frozen french fries, died Sunday at his Boise home at age 99. His businesses manufacture agriculture, horticulture and turf fertilizers; animal feed and seeds; food products such as fruits, potatoes and other vegetables; and industrial chemicals and irrigation products. Simplot also invested heavily in computer chip manufacturer Micron Technology Inc., which has operations in Utah. J.R. Simplot and his family were ranked in 2007 at No. 89 on the Forbes magazine's list of the 400 richest Americans, with an estimated wealth of $3.6 billion. When he was 85 in 1994, J.R. Simplot stepped down as company chairman. The 10-member Simplot Co. board includes a five-person executive committee, four of whom are Simplot family members - Scott and sister, Gay, and two of J.R. Simplot's grandchildren, Debbie McDonald and John E. "Ted" Simplot. President and CEO Larry Hlobik, who has directed the company since 2002, is the fifth member. J.R. Simplot refused to take the company public because he didn't want to answer to shareholders. With 3,500 workers, it is one of Idaho's biggest private employers. "It's going to stay a private company," Scott Simplot said. "We're an Idaho-based company, and we're staying right here." After World War II, the company's food production business expanded into freezing and canning, developing the product that would become the company's mainstay, the frozen french fry. J.R. Simplot struck a deal with McDonald's founder Ray Kroc, and his fry business grew with Americans' love for fast food. The company operates potato-processing plants in Nampa, Caldwell, Aberdeen and Pocatello. It has a feedlot in Grand View, a seed-production plant in Post Falls, a fertilizer plant in Pocatello, and livestock feed production plants in Caldwell and Burley. There are also 16 Simplot Grower Solutions stores in Idaho that sell seed and fertilizer, rent farm equipment and offer other goods and services. In Burley, Jerome and Caldwell, it operates Western Stockmen's stores. The company also owns 15 ranches in Idaho, Nevada, Oregon and Utah. Simplot's 273,246 deeded acres and 2,327,568 acres of public land cover about twice as much land area as Delaware.
AT UTAH MINING ASSOCIATION by David A. Litvin Below is what I wrote in UMA's May 2007 Newsletter. I believe what was said is even more relevant today:
This is all exciting, but be prepared for higher energy costs in the future. The wise folks in our industry will take steps now to reduce energy costs through conservation, and renewable sources where justified, in order to be prepared for the future." Since last year, we have also seen an unprecedented raise in global petroleum costs. This is the result of continuing political instability in the Middle East, expanding economic growth in China, India, and the rest of Asia, coupled with the international weakening of the U.S. dollar.
SYMPOSIUM TO ADDRESS MINE SAFETY Two weeks before the first anniversary of the Crandall Canyon mine disaster, a three-day symposium on mine safety issues, will be held in Salt Lake City. The National Technology Transfer Center at Wheeling Jesuit University in West Virginia will hold its third annual symposium July 20-22 at the Sheraton Hotel. The agenda is still being finalized, the center's Web site said, but is likely to focus on "bounces" and "bumps," violent releases of pressure in underground mines that are blamed for a pair of wall implosions that killed nine miners in August at Crandall Canyon. Six miners were entombed Aug. 6 in the Emery County mine by an implosion equivalent to a magnitude 3.9 earthquake. Ten days later, three would-be rescuers were killed and six others were injured when the mine's walls blew in a second time. Wheeling Jesuit University began holding the symposiums after the 2006 Sago mine disaster in West Virginia. A key figure in putting them together has been Davitt McAteer, who was head of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) under former President Clinton and now is the university's vice president for sponsored programs. Co-sponsors of the Utah symposium are MSHA, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), the United Mine Workers of America union, the Utah Mining Association and the Utah Labor Commission. Additional information is available at http://www.nttc.edu/minesafety.
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DON'T BE DECEIVED, Let's be real: "Clean coal" is a marketing slogan not a technological reality. Coal does currently provide us with a reliable source of electricity but at an astronomical price that is hidden from us consumers. Maybe you pay for it with your child's asthma. Maybe you paid for it with your father's heart attack or your grandmother's stroke that took her speech away. Maybe you lost a baby to SIDS on a particularly bad air day. Emissions from coal-fired power plants are a leading cause of smog, acid rain, global warming, air toxins - and premature deaths. The EPA estimates that over 30,000 Americans are dying prematurely each year due to emissions from power plants, the majority of which are coal-powered. This doesn't even address the high mortality rates associated with the mining process. Thus, coal kills more people annually than homicides (16,000 in 2000) or AIDS (14,000) and nearly as many as traffic accidents (42,000). So when coal industry advocates like Joe Lucas, vice president of communications for the American Coalition for Clean Coal, and Bountiful resident Bruce Taylor, co-owner of the proposed coal plant in Sevier County, say "cleaner coal," what exactly do they mean? According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, a typical coal plant annually generates: * 3.7 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2), the primary human cause of global warming, * 10,000 tons of sulfur dioxide (SO2), * 500 tons of small airborne particles, which can cause chronic bronchitis, aggravated asthma, and premature death, * 10,200 tons of nitrogen oxide (NOx), equal to what would be emitted by half a million late-model cars. NOx leads to formation of ozone (smog) which inflames the lungs, * 720 tons of carbon monoxide (CO), which causes headaches and places additional stress on people with heart disease, * 220 tons of hydrocarbons, volatile organic compounds (VOC), which form ozone, * 170 pounds of mercury, an extremely potent neurotoxin; just 1/70th of a teaspoon deposited on a 25-acre lake can make the fish unsafe for human consumption. The Great Salt Lake is already heavily contaminated with mercury. * 225 pounds of arsenic, which will cause cancer in one out of 100 people who regularly drink water containing 50 parts per billion, * 114 pounds of lead, 4 pounds of cadmium, other toxic heavy metals, and trace amounts of uranium. None of these numbers sounds "clean" to me. So, does coal advocate Lucas consider a "clean" coal plant to produce only 7,000 pounds of annual sulfur dioxide emissions instead of 10,000 pounds? Does he consider 2 million tons of carbon dioxide instead of 3.7 million tons to be "clean" or how about 120 pounds of mercury instead of 170 pounds? Does "clean" coal only cause 20,000 premature deaths annually as compared to 30,000? The reality is coal is dirty and will likely remain so. If the American Coalition for Clean Coal is determined to funnel much-needed tax monies away from the development of real energy solutions that are sustainable and life-giving rather than life-taking, then I want to know exactly what is meant by clean. Please do not try to manipulate me with deceptive advertising, green-washing or in this case, clean-washing. Lucas and others in the energy sector must choose between investing in antiquated pulverized coal technology, desperately trying to make it "cleaner" or investing in innovative, renewable and truly clean energy technologies that will position the United States as a leader in the new global economy of the 21st century. You can guess which choice will be better in the long run for our pocketbook, our economy and our health. For more information about the high costs of coal check out: http://www.ucsusa.org/clean energy/fossil fuels/ --* Cherise Udell is the founder of Utah Moms for Clean Air and a mother of two daughters.
COAL-PLANT INITIATIVE PETITIONS IN ON TIME, In just over a week, Sevier County's Right to Vote Committee managed to gather more than enough signatures, pending verification, to put a power-plant proposal on November's ballot. The group's haste was motivated by a state law that took effect Monday, banning land-use initiatives and referendums. "It was fast and furious. People pulled their cars over and lined up," Elaine Bonavita said of the signature- gathering effort that took place in Richfield last week. Bonavita organized the right-to-vote effort to give county residents the final say on a coal-fired power plant planned for 299 acres of agricultural land between Interstate 70 and Sigurd. A total of 1,177 valid voter signatures were needed, and the group gathered 1,536 by Friday to allow a cushion during the county clerk's verification process, which should be completed during the next two to four weeks. However, the grass-roots effort could still be for naught, pending legal interpretation of SB53 and whether it can withstand a legal challenge. The state Attorney General's Office has given its opinion on the matter in a letter sent to Sevier County Attorney Dale Eyre, but declined to release it publicly, claiming attorney-client privilege. Eyre had sought legal advice on whether the new law could withstand a constitutional challenge. Jeff Owens, a land-use attorney representing the Right to Vote group, acknowledged ''SB53 could potentially affect [the initiative] but we hope we got under the wire.'' He also questions the new law's validity. "I don't think it's constitutional . . . It violates Article 6, Section 1, which states that the legal voters may initiate any desired legislation," Owens said. "SB53 curtails that right." Assistant Attorney General Thom Roberts would not reveal which direction his advice leaned, saying protocol required that he get Eyre's permission before releasing any information. Eyre could not be reached for comment. State law includes such correspondence in its list of records deemed public. "I have no other objections to giving you the letter but we have to follow protocol," said Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, adding that his office is trying to fill The Tribune's request for information. In mid-March, Shurtleff's office released the Open Book, a government-records guide he said was aimed at "making sure the public's business is conducted in public."
WILL COAL PLANTS CLOUD Proposed federal regulations risk sullying the fresh air in the national parks - including Utah's Capitol Reef and Zion - says the National Parks Conservation Association. "Right now, we're used to national parks in Utah that have pretty good air quality," said Karen Hevel-Mingo, who tracks air pollution and climate change with the group's Salt Lake City office. "There's a real threat that's going to change." The Washington-based group's new report, "Dark Horizons," identifies 10 national parks that are in the greatest danger of seeing their vistas sullied by the pollution from proposed coal-fired power plants. Meanwhile, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is poised to loosen clean-air standards now in place, the group contends. For Capitol Reef, the NPCA points to the added pollution from two plants already approved by state regulators. Both permits have been challenged by environmental groups. Five other coal-fired plants already operate within 186 miles. Near Zion National Park, three plants are under active development in a region where three are already pumping carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide nitrous oxides and mercury into the air. Hevel-Mingo said there's hope that efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the region, including the Western Climate Initiative backed by Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., intended to help improve air quality. Meanwhile, she said, few park visitors realize the EPA's Washington headquarters has proposed standards that are aimed at reducing clean air protections. "It's an awareness that needs to be improved in the Southwest," she said. Cheryl Heying, director of the state's Division of Air Quality, noted that Utah regulators take care to follow state and federal air-quality standards with the parks in mind. "We take our responsibility very seriously," she said. "We live here and we recreate here, and I personally hold the parks dear." She noted the pollution that contributed to hazy vistas in the parks has been declining steadily. "You're always going to get into that argument that it's never enough."
ENERGY
ECONOMIST: BIOFUELS A BLOW TO FOOD SUPPLY Brussels, Belgium -- The U.S. and European Union should reconsider a shift to biofuels that has helped increase food prices worldwide by turning agricultural land over to energy crops, American economist Jeffrey Sachs said. Targets to produce more fuels that release less carbon dioxide when burned "do not make sense now in a global food scarcity condition," Sachs, a special adviser to the United Nations, told reporters before he spoke to EU lawmakers at the European Parliament. "In the United States, as much as one-third of the maize crop this year will go to the gas tank and this is a huge blow to the world food supply, so these programs should be cut back significantly," he said. Top international food scientists recommended last month that the use of food-based biofuels, such as ethanol, be halted, saying that would cut corn prices by 20 percent during a world food crisis. So far, the U.S. biofuel program has had more impact on food shortages, but Europe's plans to rapidly boost biofuel output in coming years would also start to bite, Sachs said. "Neither of them makes much sense actually in terms of the environmental effect, the energy balance, or the food impact, so I would advocate a reconsideration of both under the new market conditions," he said. European Commission spokesman Michael Mann insisted that biofuels were not a significant factor in pushing up food prices. More important are recent poor global harvests, growing food demand in Asia and export restrictions in Ukraine and Russia, he said. "In Europe, we use less than 2 percent of our cereals production for biofuels, so their contribution to higher food prices is marginal, if not nonexistent," Mann said. Mann said the EU did not expect replacing 10 percent of all transport fuel with biofuels by 2010 to affect future food prices because Europe planned to increase the amount of land under cultivation and use crop waste, such as straw, to make some biofuel to meet the target. But Sachs insisted that biofuels in Europe were hitting the food supply to a "modest extent" because some wheat is turned into ethanol and "land is diverted from grains to rapeseed and other inputs for biodiesel." The U.S. ethanol industry also rejects claims that biofuels are responsible for food price increases, saying ethanol _ made from wheat and sugar cane _ and other biofuels account for just 4 percent of the price surge. The U.S. Department of Agriculture puts the figure closer to 20 percent. Sachs, the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, said it was unfair to blame financial speculators for soaring prices for basic foods such as wheat and rice. "The fact inventories are very low, that food supply is more stagnant compared to food demand, gives a reason for speculators to try and buy and hold grains," he said. Underlying problems _ "a tight food supply and vulnerability to climate shocks" _ need long-term solutions such as boosting aid to poorer nations to help them increase food production, he said.
HUNTSMAN BACKS OIL SHALE DEVELOPMENT WASHINGTON - Congress should allow regulations to be finalized on developing oil shale in Utah and other states, or miss out on a potential boom of domestic energy production, according to advocates that include Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. With gas prices reaching the $4 a gallon level, supporters of extracting oil shale say Congress' ban on finishing rules is hampering development of the new fuel source. "As the price of oil surpasses $120 per barrel and we become increasingly dependent on foreign oil, our national security is in jeopardy," Huntsman said in a letter to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. "We cannot afford to wait any longer to develop this critical energy resource. The opportunity for environmentally sound energy development must be supported." But in a Senate Appropriations Committee, an amendment to push forward with regulations on oil shale regulations failed on a party-line vote, with Democrats killing the move. Former Rep. Jim Hansen, a Utah Republican now lobbying for Alabama-based Oil Shale Exploration Co., complained before the committee that it seems there is an anti-oil-shale vendetta in Congress. "Who's got it in for oil shale?" Hansen asked, noting there weren't such restrictions on ethanol. "Oil shale seems like it's the whipping boy in this instance." Hansen also repeated the oft-used claim that Utah, Colorado and Wyoming are the "Saudi Arabia of oil shale" in that there are an estimated 1.5 billion barrels of recoverable oil there. "As far as we're concerned, this isn't a science project," Hansen told the committee. "This is a provable technology." There will be some disturbance of public lands, Hansen said, adding that, "I totally agree you should be environmentally friendly." But the area his company is looking to develop is made up of just "sagebrush." Supporters say extracting oil shale - which involves heating the rock until it produces a liquid that can be processed into heating oil or jet fuel - is key to the nation lessening its dependence on foreign sources of energy. But critics say the technology is still unproven and could create an environmental disaster if developers move forward too quickly. Congress passed a law barring the finalization of regulations for commercial oil shale development, a move Stephen Allred, assistant secretary of the Interior Department, says may discourage private investment in researching the oil shale extraction technology. But Steve Smith of the Wilderness Society challenged that comment, saying that companies have long had access to the land where they believe oil shale is available and are still far away from producing "tangible results." "No technology or company is, in any way, ready to develop oil shale at a commercial scale," Smith said, adding that those companies have yet to prove they can access the oil without using "immense amounts of energy" and generating "huge increases in greenhouses gases." Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman said he was sympathetic to the concerns about trying to move ahead on domestic sources of energy, but that the nation should be careful about rushing ahead too fast. "In this era of soaring prices and increasing dependence on foreign oil, our domestic oil shale resources can potentially play an important role," Bingaman said. "However, we must proceed with care as we craft a policy leading to its future development." Sen. Orrin Hatch, who testified at the start of the hearing in favor of repealing the ban on setting the final regulations, said there is no room in Congress for an "anti-oil or anti-oil-shale attitude." If local officials in Utah, Colorado or Wyoming want to slow down on development of oil shale, that's fine, Hatch said, but Congress should not hold those states back from exploring their vast amount of oil shale resources. "It's not right for my state and it's not right for Americans who are sending their money to our competitors overseas," Hatch said.
CRITICS DECRY PROPOSED SELENIUM STANDARD Advocates for the Great Salt Lake have fought for years to get pollution standards for the extraordinary body of water. Now, many of those supporters are disappointed, even as a high-powered advisory panel is suggesting a cap on selenium pollution - the very thing they wanted so badly. The proposed standard for selenium, though ground-breaking, is not high enough, the advocates say. Friends of the Great Salt Lake, the Utah Waterfowl Association and the Utah Wetlands Foundation are among the groups that say the standard the state adopts over the next few months should be tougher. Maunsel Pearce, of the Great Salt Lake Alliance, pointed out that if the state adopts the proposed standard, selenium levels would not be considered toxic until they reach more than 12.5 parts per million selenium. At that concentration, probably one egg in 10 won't hatch but it's possible as many as 1 in 4 won't hatch. "We should not allow any pollutant to increase enough to cause a 10 percent increase in bird mortality," said Pearce. "When the public thinks of clean water, they don't think of it as 10 percent toxic." The new cap has been developed over four years by a steering committee made up of people who represent Kennecott Utah Copper, the brine shrimp industry, duck groups, environmental groups, government and other groups. An expert panel that Walt Baker, the director of the Utah Division of Water Quality, called a "selenium dream team," based its suggestion for a cap on specially gathered data and from studies that have been done elsewhere. The science advisers have had their task made more difficult by the general lack of understanding about selenium in the Great Salt Lake and its impact on the wildlife. Formulating a selenium standard has taken years and cost more than $2.6 million. Meanwhile, Utah is a natural hot spot for selenium, which builds up in the food chain. It is a trace mineral needed for good health but that can harm people and wildlife. A majority of the science panel members supported the new standard, saying they are conservative because they are based on mallard eggs, which are more sensitive than a number of other species. It became an issue of public concern years ago when state regulators were asked for permission to discharge additional selenium into the Jordan River from the groundwater cleanup on the west side of the Salt Lake Valley. The selenium-in-eggs standard will be used to help state water regulators set limits for the amount of selenium that sewer districts and industry can discharge into the lake. Additional information can be found at: ENERGYSOLUTIONS SUES TO STOP STATE'S EnergySolutions has gone to court to protect its plan to import low-level nuclear waste from Italy. The Salt Lake City nuclear waste services company filed a lawsuit asking the U.S. District Court in Utah to rule that a regional organization, the Northwest Interstate Compact on Low-Level Radioactive Waste Management, has no authority over its Utah disposal site. At a meeting planned for Thursday in Boise, Idaho, the eight member states of the compact are to consider whether to give explicit approval for the importation of foreign waste to the EnergySolutions disposal facility in Tooele County. But because of a vow made last month by Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., Utah is set to use its deciding vote to block the Italy waste. Dianne Nielson, Huntsman's energy adviser and longtime director of the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, declined to comment late Monday, although she said the governor had been informed about the suit. But Steve Creamer, chief executive officer of EnergySolutions, defended the company's march to court and pledged to limit international waste at the Tooele County site to 5 percent of the remaining capacity at the mile-square facility. "This action is intended to clarify whether the Northwest Compact has authority to restrict or control the operations of our Clive facility, and therefore prohibit the company from undertaking an important international project," said Creamer in a news release. Under federal law, Utah is a member of the Northwest Compact. The compact is part of a nationwide system that appoints regional authorities to decide what kinds of waste are permitted in and out of its boundaries and from where the waste can come. Nearly 20 years ago, when EnergySolutions was called Envirocare of Utah, it went to the Northwest Compact seeking permission to accept low level waste. The state's top radiation official, Larry Anderson, and the company's founder, Khosrow Semnani, persuaded the compact to allow Utah to host the nation's first and only commercially owned and operated low-level waste site. Most years, the Utah site now takes up to 98 percent of low-level waste generated nationwide. The waste is significantly less radioactive than reactor fuel rods or transuranic waste. Now EnergySolutions contends that since Clive is privately owned and operated, the compact has no say over the Utah site as it does over the government-owned regional facility in Richland, Wash. The company proposed in September to take 20,000 tons from Italy's dismantled reactor program, process it at an EnergySolutions plant in Tennessee, sell some of the recycled metal as shielding and dispose of the remaining 1,600 tons in Tooele County. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been taking comments on the plan, but it will not be able to approve it unless the Northwest Compact votes to back the import. Huntsman said he would use Utah's vote to block the waste because there is no federal ban on foreign waste importation, as he says there should be. Last year, the Republican governor vowed to go to the compact to have EnergySolutions' capacity capped, but he signed a deal with the company to enact the cap without the Northwest Compact's help. "EnergySolutions offers the best technologies and facilities for the safe dismantling and decontamination of retired nuclear power plants, which is essential to the development of new nuclear power generation facilities," said Creamer. "Our services and facilities support greater global utilization of safe, clean and reliable nuclear energy - which is critical in addressing issues of energy security and global warming." S.L. COUNTY PICKS COMMITTEE MEMBERS Salt Lake County has picked more than a dozen panelists to snoop into the seismic safety of Kennecott's tailings pile in northwest Magna. The investigation comes after revelations that Kennecott, in the early 1990s, concealed the possibility of its mine-waste impoundment rupturing during a massive earthquake and inundating a nearby neighborhood. With a $250,000 donation from Kennecott to pay for the probe, the county assembled a committee that will oversee an independent study into the company's tailings. The county recruited a funeral director, a chamber of commerce president, a state senator, an LDS bishop and a hodgepodge of community members to serve on the 18-member panel. The 18-member committee - which Kennecott hopes will restore public confidence in its mining operation - will include company defenders such as Magna Community Council member Laura Jo McDermaid and critics such as Michael Sullivan, who publicly threatened the copper giant with a class-action lawsuit. State Rep. Carl Duckworth, a Democrat and longtime Kennecott employee who lives in Magna, will serve as one of five public officials on the panel. Kennecott President Andrew Harding insists that the tailings pond is safe, but has promised Magna residents that he will pay for any lost property values if an independent study shows that the now-retired tailings dump continues to put homes at risk. With the Salt Lake County Council's 6-0 endorsement of the panelists, the newly formed Kennecott Tailings Committee is expected to meet this month for the first time. NUCLEAR OPTION: CONGRESS SHOULD Just when we thought importing radioactive waste from Italy was out, EnergySolutions tries to pull it back in. The Utah-based disposal firm has asked the U.S. District Court in Utah to determine if the eight-state Northwest Interstate Compact on Low-Level Radioactive Waste Management has the power to regulate the source of waste dumped at the company's facility at Clive. Monday's lawsuit was a pre-emptive strike, coming just three days before the compact's board is scheduled to vote on the company's multi-billion-dollar plan to import low-level radioactive materials from Italy's decommissioned nuclear power plants. Approximately 1,600 tons of the materials would be shipped across the country and buried in Utah after processing at an EnergySolutions' recycling facility in Tennessee. The defeat of the proposal by the compact is virtually assured because Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman has instructed Utah's board member to vote against the plan. According to the law that created the compact, an affirmative vote of the representative of the state hosting the facility is required for waste to be accepted from outside the eight-state region. But EnergySolutions officials claim that only the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission can regulate foreign waste imports. Company attorneys will argue that the compact does not have authority over the dump because it's a private commercial facility, that the compact's authority is pre-empted by federal statutes and regulations, and that the U.S. Constitution forbids the compact from discriminating between identical foreign and domestic materials. (The firm's predecessor, Envirocare of Utah, didn't have a problem recognizing the authority of the compact nearly 20 years ago when, with Utah's blessing, it sought and received the compact's permission to open the dump.) Obviously, it's not in the best interests of Utah or the nation to allow foreign waste to be shipped to our shores. The dump in Tooele County already accepts about 98 percent of our nation's low-level waste, and by July it will be the only disposal option open to 36 states. Even if EnergySolutions limits international waste to just 5 percent of the dump's capacity as promised, every square inch counts. So, as a concerned citizen, whaddaya gonna do? Instead of sitting back and letting the courts decide our future, encourage Gov. Huntsman to stick to his guns, and tell Congress to exercise the nuclear option - HR 5632. The bill would impose an import ban on low-level radioactive waste, reserve our dwindling disposal space for domestic waste, and settle this issue once and for all. WASTE PANEL VOTES TO BAN ENERGYSOLUTIONS' BOISE, Idaho - Eight Western states derailed EnergySolutions' plans to import nuclear cleanup waste from Italy and bury some of it at the company's Utah landfill. Members of the Northwest Compact on Low-level Radioactive Waste voted unanimously here to tighten the compact's contract with the Salt Lake City nuclear waste company to make it clear that foreign waste is not permitted. They also closed a loophole that has allowed past shipments of foreign waste to be buried in Utah after being processed at the company's Tennessee processing plant. "It was an appropriate step in the process," said Larry Goldstein, the compact chairman and a regulator with the Washington state Department of Ecology. Bill Sinclair, deputy director of the Utah Department of Environmental Quality and the state's longtime top regulator over radioactive waste, pointed out that the compact simply clarified that there is no specific arrangement between the compact and the company to allow foreign waste. Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. announced two weeks ago he would use Sinclair's veto power on the panel to block the Italian waste import until a national policy can be set. "EnergySolutions can ask for anything they want," said Sinclair after the meeting. "We just said they have to come and ask for an arrangement" for foreign waste. The move comes as the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is considering the company's request to import 20,000 tons of Italian waste, process it at a plant near Oak Ridge, Tenn., sell the recovered metal for shielding and dispose of 1,600 tons of waste at the mile-square landfill in Tooele County, about 80 miles west of Salt Lake City. The company asked a judge to declare that the compact does not have authority over the EnergySolutions site in Utah, which is the only one of three in the nation that is not government-owned. In other words, EnergySolutions is arguing that the compact's decision is irrelevant. "We believe the courts will uphold the position that the Northwest Compact does not have authority over our [Tooele County] facility or the authority to interfere with interstate commerce at a private facility," company spokesman Mark Walker said in a statement following Thursday's decision. Val John Christensen, general counsel for EnergySolutions, assured the eight panel members that the company has plenty of disposal capacity available to handle the five or six rail cars of waste from the Italy nuclear-program cleanup. He also restated the company's pledge to limit its foreign waste imports to five percent of the Utah site's disposal capacity. He said the company has been safely importing waste from foreign companies for years and that this time the debate has become emotional because so many people have a "not-in-my-backyard" attitude. The company also told the panel why waste from Canada, Belgium, France and other nations has gotten a new radiological pedigree after going through the Tennessee processing plant, which the company bought in 2006. In short, the company said, the ash leftover is a new waste created from batches of radioactive waste from several sources that are scientifically indistinguishable. Congress set up the regional compact system in the 1980s to encourage states to collaborate on managing the flow of low-level waste and the development of disposal sites. EnergySolutions, back when it was called Envirocare of Utah, got permission from the Northwest Compact to accept low-level waste in 1991. Since then, the company's size and scope has ballooned. Low-level waste is significantly less radioactive than spent reactor fuel or transuranic waste. Beginning in July, EnergySolutions' Utah site will be the only one available in the United States for low-level waste generated in 36 states. And just the least radioactive type of waste, dubbed "Class A," is permitted in Utah. Critics of EnergySolutions' plans have said allowing the Italian waste import would be a national policy shift with international implications. A measure introduced in Congress - co-sponsored by Utah Democrat Jim Matheson - would ban future imports, except in rare cases. John Urgo of the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah thanked compact members and Huntsman on Thursday. "The actions of the compact and the influence of Gov. Huntsman today confirm that it was never the intent of state or federal law to open up Utah and the U.S. to the world's nuclear waste," he said. "We can all breathe a sigh of relief that someone was finally willing to reign in their global nuclear ambitions." MERCURY IN BIRDS RISES A new study says elevated mercury levels might be harming brine shrimp in the Great Salt Lake and the birds that eat them. The U.S. Geological Survey says it's still unclear how much lasting damage the mercury is causing. That will be the focus of another study expected to be completed early next year. The new study says the amount of mercury found in eared grebes increases during periods when they dine heavily on the lake's brine shrimp. Nathan Darnall, an ecologist with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, says mercury can cause neurological problems for birds and affect their ability to fight off diseases. He says there's no evidence that's happening at the lake. Meanwhile, the debate continues about where the elevated levels of mercury at the Great Salt Lake are coming from. Mercury occurs naturally but also comes from industrial emissions and other human-caused sources. Dave Naftz, the main author of the USGS report, said mercury is in the atmosphere and comes from sources around the world. ''We have global sources of mercury coming into the atmosphere from China,'' Naftz noted. He also acknowledged regional sources such as industrial activity in Nevada. Last month, the Utah Department of Environmental Quality issued methods for identifying sources of mercury in lakes and rivers throughout the state. Aside from warnings about eating fish from waters with elevated mercury levels, the USGS has warned against eating three types of waterfowl living around the lake. Jeff Salt, director of Great Salt Lakekeeper, wants state officials to get more involved in dealing with mercury in Utah. ''Our governor and state Legislature really need to step up and recognize the potential risks that mercury compounds can have on our human and wildlife populations and allocate significantly more funds for critical research and monitoring needs,'' Salt said. KENNECOTT BACKS NATURE CONSERVANCY'S Kennecott Utah Copper and Kennecott Land Co. have donated $210,000 to help The Nature Conservancy establish a Canyonlands Research Center as part of its Dugout Ranch Climate Change Initiative. The Nature Conservancy intends to conduct world-class research on climate and land-use interactions at Dugout Ranch, which is near the Needles entrance to Canyonlands National Park. That research could be beneficial to land-use decisions and policies in the semi-arid West, addressing issues that could be exacerbated by climate change, such as water quantity and quality in the Colorado River, wildfires and the proliferation of invasive species. "It is in the best interest of our company to support these initiatives and understand the science behind climate change," said Kennecott Utah spokeswoman Alexis Cairo, noting that her companies are members of The United States Climate Action Partnership, an alliance of businesses and environmental groups encouraging federal policy to address climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Dugout Ranch was acquired by The Nature Conservancy in 1997. It encompasses 5,200 acres of private land and 300,000 acres of associated public grazing allotments, including 42 miles of cottonwood/willows riparian areas valuable to wildlife and rare wildflowers. The ranch is also along an important monsoonal climate boundary, said Dave Livermore, The Nature Conservancy's state director in Utah. He said the Climate Change Initiative is expected to begin in 2009, once partnerships, research facility designs and scientific goals are finalized.
TAILINGS: TRUCK OR TRACK? Officials of the U.S. Energy Department toured the Atlas tailings cleanup site near Moab last week as deliberations continued on whether trucks or trains should be used to haul away the massive uranium waste pile. "Their number one priority is the safety of our community, which we support, of course" said Joette Langianese, a Grand County Council member who met with Energy Department officials. The 130-acre, 16-million-ton pile of uranium-processing waste, called tailings, leaches ammonia, uranium and other contaminants into the Colorado River, which serves more than 30 million people downstream. The pile is located just north of Moab in eastern Utah, on U.S. Highway 191 within a mile of the Arches National Park entrance. Members of Congress tangled with the Energy Department this spring over the timing of and funding for the $300 million project. Langianese notes the Energy Department has until the end of June to report whether it can stick to the cleanup schedule Congress has set. Costs and safety are key factors in the current discussions, she said. James A. Rispoli, the assistant secretary for Energy and Environmental Management, and Cynthia Anderson, headquarters deputy chief executive officer, met with Moab and county officials. "It sounds to me like everything is on the table," said Langianese. Originally, the idea was to haul the tailings to the mesa-top north of the Potash Road, but problems prompted the Energy Department to ask the contractor, Salt Lake City-based EnergySolutions, to consider using trucks instead. A decision hasn't been made. Locals didn't like the prospect of hundreds of dump trucks rumbling 30 miles up U.S. Highway 191 to dump the contaminated soil and debris at Crescent Junction. Though cheaper, it might have had a higher expected safety cost because of the narrow highway, which tourists use to access Arches National Park across the way from the tailings pile. Trucking is looking more appealing, though, because the road has been improved and rail costs are up. Whatever solution is chosen, Energy Department officials agreed that the public should be involved - possibly with meetings in Salt Lake City, said Langianese. John Ward, a spokesman for EnergySolutions, said preparations continue during the deliberations. Crews are preparing the massive tailings pile for removal and finishing the disposal site at Crescent Junction. "You've got to get the infrastructure set on both ends of the job before you can start moving material," he said. In its quarterly report last week, EnergySolutions noted that it plans to spend about $35 million on capital investment this year, much of it for trucks and other equipment needed for the Moab cleanup. "This is a major project," Ward said, "and we are working with the Department of Energy to meet their goals."
ROAD WAR RULING FAVORS THE FEDS Kane County's ongoing bid to claim ownership of roads in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and surrounding federal lands suffered a serious, and perhaps fatal, blow Friday. U.S. District Judge Tena Campbell ruled that the placement of 39 county road signs in the monument is illegal because it violates the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution - which declares that federal law trumps state and local law. She ordered the county to remove the signs in the next 20 days. "By placing signs within the monument, the county has encouraged, sanctioned and facilitated public motor vehicle use of federal lands that [the Bureau of Land Management] officially closed to protect the monument's values," Campbell wrote in her 33-page decision. " . . . the county's signs create a direct conflict with federal land management directions, in violation of the Supremacy Clause." At least for now, the case settles a five-year-old tussle between conservation groups and the county, which basically invited off-road traffic on trails in protected areas of the monument, the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, the Moquith Mountain Wilderness Study Area and the Paria Canyon-Vermillion Cliffs Wilderness Area. Campbell said the county must first prove in court that it has rights of way in those areas before directing vehicles over wildlands controlled by federal agencies, including the BLM and the National Park Service. "Certainly, the county correctly notes that federal land management agencies must manage the land without disturbing 'valid existing rights,' " Campbell wrote. "But this truism does not help the county, as the court has already found that the county has not established any valid existing rights." Kane County claimed the roads under RS 2477, a Civil War-era mining law that granted rights of way across public land. The law was repealed by Congress in 1976, but existing claims were grandfathered in, leading to numerous disputes. A landmark 2005 ruling by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals declared that state law - in Utah, 10 years of continuous use prior to 1976 - is now the standard for counties to claim ownership of roads. But Campbell ruled that Kane County must first prove its claims meet the continuous use standard. Kane County's attorney, Shawn Welch, said county officials will need to analyze the ruling before deciding how to proceed. "We're reviewing the decision and considering our options," Welch said. But the county, he added, "believes it is complying with the law." Efforts to reach Kane County Commissioner Mark Habbeshaw, who has spearheaded the road ownership fight, were unsuccessful. The Wilderness Society and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, the groups that filed suit over the Kane County roads, applauded the ruling. SUWA attorney Steve Bloch said it "confirms a basic point of law that continues to escape the county" that federal law trumps state and county law on federal public lands. "You can't go out and rip up federal signs contrary to the Supremacy Clause," he said. "Saying you have a right of way doesn't make it true. You have to prove [a claim to a road]; you have to prove it in court."
GERMS TO AID GREAT SALT LAKE? Tiny microbes might be the best hope for cleaning up the toxic mercury pollution in the Great Salt Lake. As part of their biological routine, microbes with certain genes make mercury less poisonous, according to the Center for Integrated Biosystems at Utah State University. It was one of the ideas that surfaced this week at an international gathering of salty-lake researchers from around the world. The scientists shared their latest findings at the University of Utah during a joint meeting of the Friends of the Great Salt Lake and the 10th International Conference on Salt Lake Research. The scientists sprinkled their presentations on saline ecosystems with field trips to the nearby Great Salt Lake, the second-saltiest and fourth-largest terminal lake in the world. Friday morning lectures brought the Great Salt Lake mercury problem into sharper focus. Bruce Waddell, a retired biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, told about the lake's widespread contamination by urban Utah's byproducts. His tests of water, bird eggs, fish tissues, sediment and invertebrates turned up a broad range of pollutants. Heavy metals from mining, mercury from polluted air, pesticides from runoff, organic chemicals from plastics, oil refining, drugs and petrochemicals - all turned up in samples Waddell collected over four years. Mercury is a health and environmental problem because, when transformed in the lake's low-oxygen water, it becomes toxic methylmercury and builds up in the food chain. Consumption limits have been placed on four Great Salt Lake game birds because of methylmercury contamination. Nathan Darnall, currently with the Fish and Wildlife Service, looked at trends in migratory eared grebes. He found that: * Toxic methylmercury increases in the grebes during three to four months they nest and molt on the Great Salt Lake. * Great Salt Lake grebes ingest more mercury than their cousins at Mono Lake, Calif. * Mercury contamination has increased threefold in the past 10 to 15 years. Jacob Parnell, a USU researcher, discussed findings about the interrelation between sulfates, mercury and some microbes. The dynamic between them speeds up methylation - the process that transforms mercury metal into its highly toxic form. It also fuels the chemical process that restores mercury to its less poisonous form - about 10 to 1,000 times less poisonous. The Center for Integrated Biosystems has identified two genes that are common to the many tiny organisms involved in the process. Some day, said Parnell, it might be possible to boost the processing power of these microbes to help reduce the amount of methylmercury. "If we are going to remediate the lake, it has to be done biologically," he told fellow researchers. The scientists often lamented the limited funding that is available for understanding unique ecosystems associated with supersalty lakes.
GREENHOUSE GAS FEES GET BOARD APPROVAL San Francisco – Air pollution regulators in the San Francisco Bay area voted overwhelmingly to approve new rules that impose fees on businesses for emitting greenhouse gases. The Bay Area Air Quality Management District's board of directors voted 15-1 to charge companies 4.4 cents per ton of carbon dioxide they emit, an agency spokeswoman said. Experts say the fees, which cover nine countries in the Bay Area, are the first of their kind in the country. The new rules ar set to take effect July 1.
NOEL CALLS RULING ON ROADS BIG LOSS State Rep. Mike Noel says a federal judge's ruling demanding that Kane County take down signs in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is potentially devastating to Utah and the state will appeal the ruling. "This is probably the most egregious loss we would have on our roads in the history that I know, back to 1976" when Congress passed a federal lands management act, Noel, R-Kanab, said. U.S. District Judge Tena Campbell ruled that the county could not simply post 39 county road signs inside the monument and claim the roads as county rights of way. Instead, the counties must go to court to show they should have ownership of the disputed roads across federal lands. A 2005 ruling by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that state law should be the standard for a county to prove ownership of a road. In Utah, that means 10 years of continuous use prior to 1976. Noel, who lives in Kane County, said Campbell's ruling "basically guts" the ruling from the 10th Circuit, which the counties had hailed as a victory, making it easier for the counties to gain ownership of roads. "It took away the things the 10th Circuit gave us," said Noel, who said the limited access could cost the state $150 million in mineral royalties. "It will be a major, major impact on the state of Utah." Noel said he has met with House Speaker Greg Curtis, the new legislative general counsel, Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert and Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.'s lawyer and he anticipates appealing Campbell's ruling to the 10th Circuit. "There will be an appeal on this. It's very, very important," said Noel. Herbert said that remains to be seen. He and others have been briefed on the ruling and the effect of the ruling is being digested. "Then the state, led by Governor Huntsman, will say, 'Here's what we ought to do. Here's where we ought to be and here's how we protect Utah's interests.' "
WESTERN CLIMATE INITIATIVE: You can buy and sell world currencies on a trading floor. And you can pick up produce at a neighborhood marketplace. But how do you construct a market for climate change pollution? More than 200 people from the western United States and Canada gathered at a Salt Lake City hotel Wednesday to help do just that. The latest public meeting of the Western Climate Initiative brought government together with the companies, students, labor unions, industry groups and environmental organizations eager to have a hand in shaping a cap-and-trade market for the West. Industries such as logging and electricity have a stake, as do new companies such as Holladay-based Blue Source, which manages some of this new carbon-pollution currency. "There's a large amount of capital coming into this market," said Lauren Kimble, Blue Source's vice president of marketing. Participants considered that capital as stakeholders commented on a draft of a cap-and-trade program. The states involved are: Utah, Arizona, California, Montana, New Mexico, Washington, Oregon and three Canadian provinces. Stakeholders, like the member states, want the program to fairly balance the costs and benefits of carbon-trading. Kimble reminded the team drafting the proposal that companies like hers already have valuable experience in offsets, or credits for greenhouse gas pollution avoided by technology or climate-friendly practices. Blue Source started seven years ago and now has seven U.S. offices and projects in 48 states, plus operations in Canada. In a marketplace that grew threefold to $300 million last year, the Utah company has 200 million tons of offsets in its portfolio, she said. The suggestions made and concerns aired will be factored into the next draft of the plan that will be released in a couple of months. "It's giving the states a seat at the table," said Kimble, noting that Congress is expected to begin considering a national cap-and-trade program next month.
FED SLICES INTEREST RATE WASHINGTON - Scrambling to shore up the faltering economy, the Federal Reserve cut interest rates to the lowest point in nearly four years Wednesday as the nation teetered on the edge of recession. The economy dodged outright contraction during the first three months of the year, growing at a 0.6 percent annual pace for a second quarter in a row. The statistic did not meet what economists consider a definition of a recession - which is a contraction of the economy for two consecutive quarters. This means that although the economy is stuck in a rut, it is still managing to grow, though slightly. Many analysts were predicting the gross domestic product (GDP) would weaken a bit more - to a pace of just 0.5 percent - in the first quarter or might actually lurch into reverse. Now, they say they believe that could happen during the current April-to-June period. Wall Street rallied at first on the Fed's action but then pulled back, concerned that the reduction might be the last for a while. In fact, the Fed's trim was smaller than those of recent months amid indications the central bank might pause to see if months of powerful rate-cutting medicine and billions of dollars in stimulus checks will be enough to lift the country out of its slump. Chairman Ben Bernanke led a divided Fed, in an 8-2 vote, in slicing its key rate by one-quarter percentage point to 2 percent. In turn, the prime lending rate for millions of consumers and businesses fell by a corresponding amount, to 5 percent. The prime rate applies to certain credit cards, home equity lines of credit and other loans. Both rates are the lowest since late 2004. ''The substantial easing of monetary policy to date . . . should help to promote moderate growth over time and to mitigate risks to economic activity,'' the Fed said, strongly hinting that more cuts may not be needed. Enthusiastic Wall Street investors drove the Dow Jones industrial average up more than 178 points - lifting it above 13,000 for the first time since early January - right after the Fed action. Then traders' caution returned, and the index ended the day 11.81 points below where it started. Although the Fed didn't take another reduction off the table, a growing number of economists believe the central bank is winding down its rate-cutting campaign because of concerns that further cuts could join with galloping energy and food prices and spread inflation dangerously higher. By all accounts, the country's economic health is fragile. Job losses for the first three months of the year neared the staggering quarter-million mark, and a government report on Friday is expected to show that employers shed jobs again in April. ''Financial markets remain under considerable stress, and tight credit conditions and the deepening housing contraction are likely to weigh on economic growth over the next few quarters,'' the Fed said. Two members - Charles Plosser, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, and Richard Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas - opposed cutting rates Wednesday, a crack in the usually unified front the Fed often shows the public. Both men have a reputation for being especially vigilant about fighting inflation. At the Fed's previous meeting in March, they opposed cutting rates by a whopping three-quarters point and preferred a smaller reduction.
COINS COST MORE TO MAKE WASHINGTON - Further evidence that times are tough. It costs more than a penny to make a penny. And the cost of a nickel is more than 7 1/2 cents. Surging prices for copper, zinc and nickel have some in Congress trying to bring back the steel-made pennies of World War II, and maybe using steel for nickels, as well. Copper and nickel prices have tripled since 2003 and the price of zinc has quadrupled, said Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., whose subcommittee oversees the U.S. Mint. Keeping the coin content means ''contributing to our national debt by almost as much as the coin is worth,'' Gutierrez said. A penny, which consists of 97.5 percent zinc and 2.5 percent copper, cost 1.26 cents to make as of Tuesday. And a nickel - 75 percent copper and the rest nickel - cost 7.7 cents, based on current commodity prices, according to the Mint. That's down from the end of the 2007, when even higher metal prices drove the penny's cost to 1.67 cents, according to the Mint. The cost of making a nickel then was nearly a dime. Gutierrez estimated that striking the two coins at costs well above their face value set the Treasury and taxpayers back about $100 million last year alone. A lousy deal, lawmakers have concluded. On Tuesday, the House debated a bill that directs the Treasury secretary to ''prescribe'' - suggest - a new, more economical composition of the nickel and the penny. A vote was delayed because of Republican procedural moves and is expected later in the week. Unsaid in the legislation is the Constitution's delegation of power to Congress ''to coin money [and] regulate the value thereof.'' The Bush administration, like others before, chafes at that.
NEXT PRESIDENT MUST TELL AMERICAN PEOPLE Traveling the country these past five months while writing a book, I've had my own opportunity to take the pulse, far from the campaign crowds. My own totally unscientific polling has left me feeling that if there is one overwhelming hunger in our country today it's this: People want to do nation-building. They really do. But they want to do nation-building in America. They are not only tired of nation-building in Iraq and in Afghanistan, with so little to show for it. They sense something deeper - that we're just not that strong anymore. We're borrowing money to shore up our banks from city-states called Dubai and Singapore. Our generals regularly tell us that Iran is subverting our efforts in Iraq, but they do nothing about it because we have no leverage - as long as our forces are pinned down in Baghdad and our economy is pinned to Middle East oil. Our president's latest energy initiative was to go to Saudi Arabia and beg King Abdullah to give us a little relief on gasoline prices. I guess there was some justice in that. When you, the president, after Sept. 11, tell the country to go shopping instead of buckling down to break our addiction to oil, it ends with you, the president, shopping the world for discount gasoline. We are not as powerful as we used to be because over the past three decades, the Asian values of our parents' generation - work hard, study, save, invest, live within your means - have given way to subprime values: ''You can have the American dream - a house - with no money down and no payments for two years.'' That's why Donald Rumsfeld's infamous defense of why he did not originally send more troops to Iraq is the mantra of our times: ''You go to war with the army you have.'' Hey, you march into the future with the country you have - not the one that you need, not the one you want, not the best you could have. A few weeks ago, my wife and I flew from New York's Kennedy Airport to Singapore. In JFK's waiting lounge we could barely find a place to sit. Eighteen hours later, we landed at Singapore's ultramodern airport, with free Internet portals and children's play zones throughout. We felt, as we have before, as if we had just flown from the Flintstones to the Jetsons. If all Americans could compare Berlin's luxurious central train station today with the grimy, decrepit Penn Station in New York City, they would swear we were the ones who lost World War II. How could this be? We are a great power. How could we be borrowing money from Singapore? Maybe it's because Singapore is investing billions of dollars, from its own savings, into infrastructure and scientific research to attract the world's best talent - including Americans. And us? Harvard's president, Drew Faust, just told a Senate hearing that cutbacks in government research funds were resulting in ''downsized labs, layoffs of post-docs, slipping morale and more conservative science that shies away from the big research questions.'' Today, she added, ''China, India, Singapore ... have adopted biomedical research and the building of biotechnology clusters as national goals. Suddenly, those who train in America have significant options elsewhere.'' Much nonsense has been written about how Hillary Clinton is ''toughening up'' Barack Obama so he'll be tough enough to withstand Republican attacks. Sorry, we don't need a president who is tough enough to withstand the lies of his opponents. We need a president who is tough enough to tell the truth to the American people. Any one of the candidates can answer the Red Phone at 3 a.m. in the White House bedroom. I'm voting for the one who can talk straight to the American people on national TV - at 8 p.m. - from the White House East Room. Who will tell the people? We are not who we think we are. We are living on borrowed time and borrowed dimes. We still have all the potential for greatness, but only if we get back to work on our country. I don't know if Barack Obama can lead that way, but the notion that the idealism he has inspired in so many young people doesn't matter is dead wrong. ''Of course, hope alone is not enough,'' says Tim Shriver, chairman of Special Olympics, ''but it's not trivial. It's not trivial to inspire people to want to get up and do something with someone else.'' It is especially not trivial now, because millions of Americans are dying to be enlisted - enlisted to fix education, enlisted to research renewable energy, enlisted to repair our infrastructure, enlisted to help others. Look at the kids lining up to join Teach for America. They want our country to matter again. They want it to be about building wealth and dignity - big profits and big purposes. When we just do one, we are less than the sum of our parts. When we do both, said Shriver, ''no one can touch us.''
UTAH'S JOB MARKET NOT FAZED BY DOWNTURN While the rest of the country teeters on the brink of recession, Utah's economy is showing surprising resilience, a new report shows. The state's job growth in April was 2 percent, virtually unchanged from 2.1 percent in March, the Utah Department of Workforce Services said. The state created 24,800 jobs in the year that ended in April, bringing total employment to nearly 1.3 million. Although Utah's job creation rate is down sharply from a peak of 5.4 percent nearly two years ago, it remains markedly higher than the national rate of 0.3 percent, which translates to a gain of 381,000 jobs nationwide in the past year. Utah, a state that has less than 1 percent of all U.S. jobs, created 6.5 percent of all the jobs added nationwide. "We're still one of the best-performing economies in the nation," said Mark Knold, Workforce Services senior economist. "Considering the current environment, we're in great shape, really." In a note of caution, Knold said he's not sure whether employment growth in Utah will level off or retreat further. As with the national economy, it's anybody's guess just how deep the downturn will go. Utah's employment growth, as in many other areas of the country, is slowing down in great part because of the sharp downturn in the residential real estate market. As home sales have declined from a blistering pace, people working for home builders, mortgage and title companies, and other companies related to real estate have lost jobs in recent months. But the effect of the decline in that sector has not spilled over into other employment sectors or to the economy as whole, Knold said. Utah's unemployment rate in April was a comparatively low 3.1 percent, down from 3.3 percent in March and well below the U.S. rate of 5 percent. About 42,700 Utahns were considered unemployed in April. Only two sectors in Utah had overall job losses over the past year. Information services was down 1.2 percent, but the decline in jobs at publishing, motion picture, telecommunication and Internet service companies can largely be attributed to a change in the way those jobs are accounted for rather than real job losses, state officials said. Losses in construction, however, are very real, with an overall loss of 3 percent from last year. Knold said Utah's economy continues to see job gains in areas such education and health care, a sector that added 5,700 jobs in the past year in such places as hospitals and private educational facilities. Knold said this sector and the government sector are largely "recession-proof," meaning they aren't going to see huge job losses during a downturn. The trade, transportation, and utilities sector - which includes jobs at retail establishments - is more directly affected by economic downturn. But Knold said even that sector is still strong in Utah, adding about 7,500 jobs in the past 12 months. This sector generally benefits from increases in new-home construction as owners buy items to outfit their properties. But with sales and prices down in a number of areas, owners might be less likely to spend as much at retail establishments in coming months. Also, Knold said, "People who are not feeling as rich as they once did may not go out and buy that new boat." Although he expects employment growth to slow in this sector, he doesn't expect to see overall job losses given the relative strength of Utah's economy. At the warehouse club chain Costco, spokesman Dave Harruff said his company has noticed sales of some home-related items are off from recent years. "It's a little soft, but it's not down," he said, adding that sales of high-end items such as diamonds are holding up in Utah. "Our [overall] sales are strong in the Utah market." Knold said he hasn't seen a significant slowing in the leisure and hospitality sector, even though restaurants are included. Nationally, many restaurants are struggling as consumers cut back eating out. Even sectors that nationally are losing jobs, such as manufacturing, are doing well in Utah, adding 2,400 jobs in the past year. INDUSTRIAL OUTPUT FALLS Industrial output plunged in April as factories making everything from autos to heavy machinery felt the adverse effects of the weak economy. Analysts held out hope that production will revive in the second half of the year, helped by the government's economic stimulus checks. Industrial production dropped 0.7 percent last month, the Federal Reserve reported Thursday, more than double the decline that economists had expected. Manufacturing output dropped 0.8 percent with half of that weakness coming from large cutbacks in auto production with automakers struggling with falling demand for new cars because of the slumping economy and production cutbacks caused by a strike at a parts supplier for General Motors.
APRIL WAS A BAD MONTH FOR JOBS A tally of individual state figures shows the U.S. lost almost eight times as many jobs in April as reported earlier this month. Payrolls fell by 151,000 workers last month, led by a decline of 25,300 in Florida and 18,600 in Michigan, the Labor Department reported Friday in Washington. Employment decreased in 39 states. The total compares with a 20,000 drop in payrolls reported nationally by the Labor Department earlier this month. The deviation represented a reversal from the first three months of the year, in which the state-by-state tally showed a gain of 34,000 jobs, compared with a 240,000 drop in the national number. ''Don't put a lot of stock in the month-to-month disparity,'' said Michael Feroli, an economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. ''It reflects technical factors and different seasonal adjustments, and that's the story. This month is in line with the normal disparity.'' The state and local employment data are derived independently from the national statistics, which are typically released on the first Friday of every month. The state figures, because they come from smaller surveys, are subject to larger sampling errors, according to the government's Bureau of Labor Statistics. ''The BLS will tell you, and with good reason, that the national numbers are probably the best numbers they have to determine trends in the labor market,'' Feroli said. ''If you are looking at national trends, you should look at the national estimates,'' Kirk Mueller, a supervisor of state data for the BLS, said in an interview. The states use different seasonal-adjustment factors and the timing of their surveys may differ from the national report, he said. The state report also shows the jobless rate dropped to 4.9 percent last month from 5 percent in April. The national figures, issued May 2, also show a decline in the unemployment rate, to 5 percent from 5.1 percent. ''The sum of state data often diverges from the national number and there is absolutely no new information in the report to signal a revision to payrolls later,'' said James O'Sullivan, a senior economist at UBS Securities LLC in Stamford, Conn.
AUSTRALIA'S EX-PREMIER A former Australian prime minister and a senior Bush administration trade official pressed their cases for open-trade policies at a time of sudden global food shortages and criticism that free trade has led to job losses in the United States. "I think the world cries aloud in 2008 for a reaffirmation of the view that protection is something of the past," said John Howard, who led Australia for over a decade until he was turned out of office by voters in November. "Because if the world goes back into protection we will aggravate some of the difficulties that are now being faced and I think that will present very significant challenges and very significant difficulties for all of us," Howard said. Howard, a staunch defender of global trade and one of President Bush's most steadfast allies in Asia was the keynote speaker at the Zions Bank International Trade and Business Conference in Salt Lake City. The conference held at the Marriott Downtown hotel was attended by hundreds of business people from across Utah. It came at a time when Intermountain West companies are experiencing vigorous export growth, fueled in part by the weak U.S. dollar. Last year, Utah exported goods and services worth almost $8 billion - a 65 percent increase over 2004, according to state figures. Nationally, exports account for nearly 13 percent of the country's gross domestic product, topping $1.3 trillion in the first quarter of this year, and up from 4.4 percent a half-century ago, said Christopher Padilla, U.S. undersecretary of commerce for international trade. "Openness is vital and must be defended," said Padilla, who contended liberal trade policies are cushioning the U.S. economy from deeper economic woes. "Today, some American politicians advocate economic isolationism as a panacea for economic uncertainty. This is wrong. Protectionism is dangerous and it doesn't protect." Trade policy has surfaced during the presidential primary campaigns of Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee. Obama has promised to amend the North American Free Trade Agreement to help American workers and would pressure the World Trade Organization to enforce trade agreements and stop countries from continuing unfair government subsidies. Clinton has said she would overhaul NAFTA and would take a breather from new trade agreements until her administration has formulated new trade policies. Only McCain has pledged to push for more open trade. He has called for an end to ethanol subsidies, tariff barriers and quotas that drive up the cost of imports. Howard spoke repeatedly about his faith in global trade as a vehicle for lifting undeveloped countries from poverty. He said the rapid rise of food prices during the last year is causing enormous social and political consequences in poor countries worldwide that call into question the basis for subsidies and tariffs. "This is really a time for scaling down rather than scaling up or maintaining agricultural subsidies," Howard said. "If you have a relatively heavy demand for a commodity, it doesn't make sense to maintain subsidies that were designed to protect producers at a time when people didn't want to buy their product," he said. Howard called for developed countries to engage China and not fear its rising economic clout. With a population of 1.3 billion, it is helping to lead a profound adjustment of buying power from North America and Europe that by 2030 will have produced a middle class in Asia that numbers in the hundreds of millions. "The center of gravity of the world's middle class is shifting from the Atlantic to Asia. This is, in a way, one of the most significant developments since the industrial revolution," Howard said.
FED RATE CUTS The Federal Reserve's aggressive rate-cutting campaign may be at an end. In the minutes of the Fed's previous meeting, central bankers sent the strongest signals yet that they planned to hold interest rates steady, barring ''a significant weakening'' in the economy. The hawkish tone of the remarks cast a cloud over Wall Street, where the major stock indexes entered a free-fall just after the report's release. The Dow Jones industrials lost more than 220 points and the broader Standard & Poor's 500-stock index slid 1.6 percent as investors digested warnings from Fed officials that sky-high prices for food and fuel could cause inflation to spike in coming months. The comments were made at a meeting in late April. But their public release capped a week of tough economic news that underlined the bankers' concerns. Crude oil jumped to a record of $133.17 a barrel on Wednesday, a day after a government report showed that businesses were struggling to cope with higher wholesale costs. But Wall Street focused primarily on the minutes of the Fed meeting, where central bankers signaled a willingness to freeze their rate cuts, even if subsequent evidence showed the economy was contracting. Several Fed officials said at the meeting that they would lower rates only if ''economic and financial developments indicated a significant weakening of the economic outlook.'' In expressing a reluctance to lower rates further, Fed officials might have been drawing a lesson from Alan Greenspan, the previous Fed chairman, whose insistence on keeping rates low in the early part of this decade has been blamed by some for the current credit crisis. The minutes also said that most Fed officials were on the fence in April over whether to cut rates by a quarter point, saying that the decision was a ''close call.'' It was the Fed's seventh cut since September, including a three-quarter-point cut between meetings in January. Two Fed governors dissented from the decision to lower rates in April, arguing that rising prices for food, energy and other commodities raised ''substantial concerns about the prospects for inflation.'' Those governors, Richard Fisher of the Dallas Fed and Charles Plosser of Philadelphia, warned that ''another reduction in the funds rate at this meeting could prove costly over the long run.'' The minutes revealed deep divisions among the bankers, who acknowledged the ''difficulty of gauging the appropriate stance of policy in current circumstances.'' Those circumstances referred to the dual demons facing the Fed - the broad economic downturn that has depressed spending habits and hurt the job market, and the high costs of oil and food, which have escalated the threat of inflation. Central bankers projected that prices would rise in 2008 at an annual rate of 3.1 to 3.4 percent, far faster than the year before. At the same time, they predicted that the nation's rate of overall economic growth would significantly slow, to an anemic annual rate of 0.3 to 1.2 percent. The bankers agreed that inflation would probably taper off in the latter half of the year and fall back to moderate levels in 2009, as businesses found it more difficult to pass on prices to hurting consumers, the minutes said.
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1-5 International Technical Conference on Coal Utilization & Fuel Systems, Sheraton Sand Key, Clear water, Florida. For more info. visit www.coaltechnologies.com 10 UMA Educational Golf Touranment, Riverbend Golf Course, Riverton, Utah Click here for Registration form 14-19 American Society of Mining & Reclamation, Richmond Marriott, Richmond, VA. For more info. visit http://www.cses.vt.edu/revegetation/ASMR_2008.html 17-18 Safety First: Be part of the solution to prevent substance abuse in the mines. University of Utah Campus, Salt Lake City, Utah. Details regarding registration fee and lodging will be available early in 2008. See website: uuhsc.utah.edu/uas 29-1 RMCMI Convention, The Canyons, Park City, Utah. For more info. visit www.rmcmi.org
17-19 Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Institute, Snowmass Village, Aspen, CO. For more info. visit: www.rmmlf.org
11-13 Practical Oil Analysis and Cooling System Maintenance, Salt Lake City. For more info. visit: www.polarislabs.com 14-15 UMA 93RD ANNUAL CONVENTION, GRAND SUMMIT HOTEL, PARK CITY, UTAH
22-24 MineEXPO 2008, Las Vegas, NV. For more info. visit: http://www.minexpo.com/
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