Energy or the ancients
The New York Times offers an inventory of another rising cost of energy — damage to Utah and the Southwest's priceless archaeological treasures.At Nine Mile Canyon in central Utah, truck exhaust on a road to the gas fields is posing a threat, environmentalists and Indian tribes say, to 2,000 years of rock art and imagery. In Montana, a coal-fired power plant has been proposed near Great Falls on one of the last wild sections of the Lewis and Clark trail. In New Mexico, a mining company has proposed reopening a uranium mine on Mount Taylor, a national forest site sacred to numerous Indian tribes.
With only 20 percent of the 193-million-acre national forest system surveyed for archeological content, LouAnn Jacobson, the manager of the Anasazi Heritage Center near Four Corners says:
We’re caught in the middle between traditional culture and archaeological research and the valid existing rights of the oil and gas leaseholders.The most direct damage to the sites comes from what Indian tribes and land managers call piling on— oil companies build the roads to drill, then the roads are swarmed by off-road vehicle riders, who stray to erase the last evidence of the Southwest's prehistory.
7 Comments:
I just happened to drive through 9-mile canyon on a river shuttle, and it is getting hammered. What used to be a nice scenic drive is now a rat race, dodging huge trucks, wallowing through gigantic dust pits created by those trucks, and driving over what appears to be oil sprayed on the road to keep the dust down. All in all it's pretty sad to see.
I'm not saying conservation and preservation aren't important but this is a classic environmentalist scare tactic. They make it sound like every track of land in the Southwest is under attack so we must lock up the entire area from exploration.
Kenny's comment is the old canard of the pro-developer: the environmentalists want to "lock up" the land! Last I heard, they only want to save it from being ripped up, strip-mined, and paved over for some greedy developer who doesn't even live in the state. And you want to see locked up, just wait until big corporations own all the land; they build big fences and patrol them with armed guards and the force of law if you trespass. You can walk, bike, drive, even ride an ATV on just about 95% of government (i.e. "locked up") land belonging to the USFS, the BLM, even National Parks; try doing that on land owned by Kennecott or some other big corporation. You'll get arrested if not shot. Now that's "locked up."
Energy or the ancients? That's a false choice. We can obviously have both.
In his second comment, Rdale unknowingly confirms Kenny's concern about environmentalist scare tactics.
Is it a scare tactic if it's true? Or is it a wake-up call? Tell me which is more "locked up": any USFS, BLM, or NPS land, or Utah state lands, or any land owned by a major extraction corporation. One you can enter, one you can't. To say otherwise is classic head in the sand, oh, the private sector is the only way! Again, if you feel so strongly about land being "locked up," go over to the west side of the Salt Lake valley and take a stroll in the Oquirrhs.
The choice between the living and the past generations has always producted conflict, if the needs of either are ignored. "No" is not the answer when with thought and respect both identities may be best served. It is the mandate of the living to resprest the past. Representatives of the past ,when consulted have a dual role and will seldom destroy themselves in the conflict. If you want to met a man in conflict, ask a major stockholder on the environmental impact of intruding into his ancestoral lands or going around, whcih will costs ten of thousands of corporate dollars.
We've heard these scare tactics before when Big Oil built the Trans-Alaska Pipeline and when Big Oil started drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
The world didn't come to an end afterall.
Post a Comment
<< Home