Funding for CUP must be continued

By Sen. Orrin G. Hatch

Published: Monday, Oct. 18, 2010 12:00 a.m. MDT

In a political move devoid of any policy rationale, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has recommended that the Office of Management and Budget cut the construction budget for the Central Utah Project (CUP).

This recommendation would cut CUP funding just as the decades-long project is nearly ready to deliver water to Utahns. Thus, Salazar would turn hundreds of millions of dollars worth of water infrastructure into a giant white elephant — one that sits in our mountains but does not actually deliver critical water.

The CUP is a federal–local partnership created years ago to build a system of reservoirs and pipelines to store Utah’s annual share of the Colorado River. Projects like the CUP keep the peace among the seven Colorado River Basin states by ensuring each state receives its share of the river.

Fully authorized by law, the CUP has been included in every president’s budget request to Congress since Jimmy Carter. There was an effort to give CUP funding a one-time boost in President Obama’s Stimulus bill, but I did not support it in that form. Otherwise, the project has never been a partisan issue, an earmark or pork. In fact, participating communities in Utah have already paid 35 percent of the cost of construction for the project, and the state’s water users would repay the remaining federal share with interest once the water is delivered. So there is no savings to the overall budget by cutting CUP funding.

So Senator Hatch opposed it for political reasons and now he wants to change his mind. Perhaps Obama listened to him the first time.

We happen to agree that here is another government project that needs to be funded, but what is Obama to do? Hatch wants to stop government spending—but not in his back yard.

Yes, fund the project, but please Senator Hatch, be consistent.

This begs the question of why the secretary would try to cut funding for this vital project. If he succeeds, he would stop the final delivery of CUP water to Utahns. He also would remove the requirement for Utahns to reimburse the federal government for its costs in constructing the project. Utah would be left with reservoirs and pipelines that supply no water (more…)

COMBINED NEWS SERVICES

Published: October 11, 2010 04:21PM
Updated: October 11, 2010 09:49PM

Dallas • China’s state-owned offshore oil and gas company has bought a one-third interest in 600,000 acres that Chesapeake Energy leases in a south Texas oil and gas field.

CNOOC Ltd. and Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake announced the deal worth up to $2.16 billion Sunday in the Eagle Ford Shale project between Laredo and San Antonio. A joint statement says CNOOC will pay Chesapeake $1.08 billion in cash at closing and share 75 percent of Chesapeake’s drilling and completion costs up to another $1.08 billion.

Chesapeake expects to produce 400,000 to 500,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day at the project’s peak.

For Chesapeake, the deal provides capital to put toward drilling and other aspects of its Eagle Ford operation. For its part, CNOOC is looking to tap into the expertise that Chesapeake has used to cheaply tap reserves of oil and gas buried deep in shale rock formations.

Chesapeake has entered into similar deals with other foreign oil and gas companies like Statoil of Norway and Total of France.

Chesapeake chief executive Aubrey McClendon said in an interview that CNOOC probably wants to “see how an American independent [oil and gas company] conducts its business and learn a few things along the way.”

Chesapeake currently has 10 rigs developing its Eagle Ford lease. The additional capital from CNOOC should allow it to boost that total to 12 rigs by the end of this year, 31 rigs by year-end 2011 and about 40 rigs by year-end 2012.

McClendon said he expects the deal to result in 20,000 new jobs.

The Eagle Ford shale is expected to contain mostly oil and natural gas liquids, as opposed to strictly natural gas. Chesapeake is in the midst of an effort to expand its shale oil drilling operations.

The development of cheaply accessible natural gas resources by Chesapeake and others has pushed natural gas prices to below $4 per 1,000 cubic feet. It is far more profitable to instead drill for oil, which is trading above $82 per barrel.

The deal is the second in as many days for CNOOC. It announced Saturday that it has bought 2.6 million tons of liquefied natural gas from French utility GDF Suez.

By Jeremiah Stettler

The Salt Lake Tribune

October 6, 2010 10:21PM

The Salt Lake County Council isn’t fighting it.

Instead, the council appeared willing this week to sell more than 800 acres of publicly owned open space in the Oquirrh Mountains to Kennecott.

The copper giant has reached an agreement with county officials to purchase almost half of the county’s Rose Canyon wilderness in the hills above Herriman to explore for profitable ore thousands of meters below the surface — a sale that would split a property once considered the “crown jewel” of the county’s open-space holdings.

The price: $5.3 million.

“It is the right decision,” said Councilman Steven DeBry, explaining that Kennecott has a right, with or without buying the property, to explore for ore beneath that land. “It is my hope that we can put that money into the open space fund, and specifically into the Jordan River project.”

And the county will get more money than it started with — about $1.1 million more. That portion of Rose Canyon originally cost $4.2 million, according to open space coordinator Julie Peck-Dabling.

The council agreed 7-0 Tuesday to proceed with the purchase. Council members Jenny Wilson and Jim Bradley were absent.

This is still not a done deal, but it looks like the public is asleep at the switch. Perhaps someone will stir this up. The Tribune has mentioned this story twice, but it hasn’t stirred (more…)

By Jeremiah Stettler

The Salt Lake Tribune

Published Oct 1, 2010 11:38PM
Updated Oct 4, 2010 05:36PM

Once considered the “crown jewel” of Salt Lake County’s open-space holdings, Rose Canyon is poised to get split between the county and a second owner: Kennecott.

The copper giant plans to buy almost half of the Oquirrh Mountain wilderness to explore for profitable ore thousands of meters under the mountainside.

And the county — which bought the property three years ago to create one of the largest tracts of preserved open space on the west side — has agreed to sell. Once the papers are signed, Kennecott would own about 800 of the county’s 1,700 acres.

It’s the outcome of sometimes-prickly negotiations between the county and Kennecott about the future of Rose Canyon, which rises from sagebrush-speckled slopes into high-altitude forests above Herriman.

Despite county efforts to protect the property from prospecting — Mayor Peter Corroon once threatened Kennecott with trespassing if it tried to land helicopters on the mountainside — officials failed to stop the company from searching for subsurface ore. Why? Because Kennecott has mining claims there.

So Kennecott — now interested in drilling — has brokered a deal with the county to pay $5.3 million (more…)

By MALCOLM RITTER

and KARL RITTER

The Associated Press

October 6, 2010 12:14AM

New York • It is the thinnest and strongest material known to mankind — no thicker than a single atom and 100 times tougher than steel. Could graphene be the next plastic? Maybe so, says one of two scientists who won a Nobel Prize on Tuesday for isolating and studying it.

Faster computers, lighter airplanes, transparent touch screens — the list of potential uses runs on. Some scientists say we can’t even imagine what kinds of products might be possible with the substance, which hides in ordinary pencil lead and first was extracted using a piece of Scotch tape.

Two Russian-born researchers shared the physics Nobel for their groundbreaking experiments with graphene, which is a sheet of carbon atoms joined together in a pattern that resembles chicken wire.

Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov of the University of Manchester in England used Scotch tape to rip off flakes of graphene from a chunk of graphite, the stuff of pencil leads. That achievement, reported just six years ago, opened the door to studying what scientists say should be a versatile building block for electronics and strong materials.

And the world takes another step forward. These Russian born scientists are working at the University of Manchester in socialist England.

The research project has undoubtedly been financed by taxpayer funds, another achievement of good government.

The anti-government crowd will be swarming all over this government sponsored discovery to get patents on new products that will all flow from this government research project, and then they will take their exorbitant earnings and spend campaign money to elect anti-government candidates so that the government will damn well never have any more research projects at taxpayer expense.

The anti-government crowd is nuts.

“It has all the potential to change your life in the same way that plastics did,” Geim, 51, a Dutch citizen, told The Associated Press. “It is really exciting.”

Michael Strano, a chemist at MIT, said trying to predict its uses (more…)

By John Thune

October 2, 2010 12:07AM

(John Thune is a U.S. senator from South Dakota and a Republican member of the Senate Western Caucus.)

Throughout the end of the 19th century, countless pioneers traveled across the country westward in search of economic freedom and prosperity. This Western entrepreneurial spirit lives on today in Utah and other states throughout the West, but is now increasingly threatened by intrusive government action, which has become the hallmark of President Obama’s administration.

The president’s policies are costing the country jobs and halting economic growth. These policies specifically target the economies of the American West. This war on the West waged by the president and his allies in Congress must come to an end.

Senator Thune’s op-ed piece was typical Republican. He offers no solutions except the standard Republican line that has about destroyed capitalism—-get the government out of our lives.The American free enterprise system can only survive in conjunction with a very active government to prevent the excesses that a capitalist system always generates.

Thune makes wide, sweeping, unsupported accusations of government overreach without one single example.

He says ‘farmers and ranchers are the best stewards of the land’ and that is utterly ridiculous. They would not survive their own selfish infighting without government regulation. They would be shooting their neighbors, cutting down their fences, stealing each others water, over graze their watersheds and look for more to abuse, and then come begging for more government subsidies which they already couldn’t live without.

Like all of us, farmers and ranchers are absolutely dependent upon government intrusion. Yea for good government!

Thune’s op-ed piece contributes nothing—-right in tune with his Republican friends.

One clear example of the Obama administration’s hostility to the economic health of the West is its ferociously anti-business energy policies. Since President Obama was sworn into office, domestic energy producers across the country have operated with targets on their backs. Heavy-handed federal policies coming from Washington, D.C. stand to (more…)

By JUDY FAHYS

The Salt Lake Tribune

August 18, 2010 10:41AM

Federal regulators may well have the authority after all to decide how a Utah magnesium plant manages its hazardous waste, under a Denver appeals court’s ruling released Tuesday.

The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals threw out an Oct. 17, 2007, decision by U.S. District Judge Dee Benson that US Magnesium in Tooele County is exempted from the nation’s cradle-to-grave hazardous waste law, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA).

In short, the appeals court said the Environmental Protection Agency can update its “tentative” interpretation of a regulation into a final one without additional public input. It ordered Benson to reconsider the case.

Is it any wonder we are in an environmental quagmire. Action began on this issue in 2001. The  case was eventually decided by Judge Benson in 2007. Three years later the Appeals Court overturns the decision and orders Benson to reconsider the case, thus it is still unresolved. This is a near total failure of the court system. All this delay has been worth millions to Mag Corp and to New York businessman Ira Rennert, and the public be damned.The corporate polluters are benefited by the slow moving court system and the earth and its inhabitants suffer irreparable damage.

The delay in this decision is far more devastating than the long and tedious process of the death penalty. This needs fixed, and who will fix it? Nobody. This is a horrible condemnation of our justice system.

“Even under the case law US Magnesium asks us to follow, the agency is at liberty to adopt without notice and comment a reasonable interpretation of that ambiguous regulation,” said the opinion written by Judge Neil M. Gorsuch and joined by the two other judges on the appeals panel.

Although neither side has said what it will do next, it is possible the ruling will finally settle the two-decade-old (more…)

By Leonard Pitts Jr.

Miami Herald

August 6, 2010 12:01AM

“Today, I quit being a Christian.”

With those words last week on Facebook, Anne Rice delivered a wake-up call for organized religion. The question is whether it will be recognized as such.

“I remain committed to Christ as always,” she wrote, “but not to being ‘Christian’ or to being part of Christianity. It’s simply impossible for me to ‘belong’ to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I’ve tried. I’ve failed. I’m an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.”

You will recall that the author, famed for her vampire novels, made a much publicized return to the Catholicism of her youth after years of calling herself an atheist. Now, years later, she says she hasn’t lost her faith, but she’s had it up to here with organized religion.

“In the name of Christ,” she wrote, “I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life.”

If that was not nearly enough for atheist observers, one of whom berated her online for refusing to completely give up her “superstitious delusions,” it was surely plenty for people of faith. But Rice is hardly the only one who feels as she does.

According to a 2008 study by Trinity College, religiosity is trending down sharply in this country. The American Religious Identification Survey, which polled over 54,000 American adults, found that the percentage who call themselves Christian has fallen by (more…)

by Justin Pritchard

Associated Press

Los Angeles » The federal agency responsible for ensuring that the Deepwater Horizon was operating safely before it exploded last month fell well short of its own policy that the rig be inspected at least once per month, an Associated Press investigation shows.

In fact, the agency’s inspection frequency on the Deepwater Horizon fell dramatically over the past five years, according to federal Minerals Management Service records. The rig blew up April 20, killing 11 people before sinking and triggering a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Since January 2005, inspectors issued just one minor infraction for the rig. That strong track record led the agency last year to herald the Deepwater Horizon as an industry model for safety.

The inspection gaps are the latest in a series of questions raised about the agency’s oversight of the oil drilling industry. Members of Congress and President Barack Obama have criticized what they call the cozy relationship between regulators and oil companies and vowed to reform MMS, which both regulates the industry and collects billions in royalties from it.

We arrive once again at the core of most of our current problems—the federal government has failed to do its job of regulating the various industries that must be closely supervised for the benefit of all Americans.

The Bush Administration and the anti-government Republican Party are responsible for most of this failure of regulation. They simply don’t believe (more…)

Published on Wednesday, May 5, 2010 by The Progressive

Time to Prosecute Corporate Criminals at Massey, BP

by Ruth Conniff

Nothing prevents the government from criminally prosecuting corporate CEOs who willfully ignore health and safety standards, killing workers, as in Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch Mine disaster, and causing environmental catastrophe, as in BP’s massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

And why not include Goldman Sachs?

For years, we haven’t seen many corporate criminals prosecuted in the United States, thanks to the power of corporate lobbyists and the reluctance of government officials to take on business interests.

A PBS Frontline show “A Dangerous Business“-notes that, in the 32 years since OSHA was created, there have been over 200,000 workplace deaths. But OSHA has referred only 151 of these cases to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution. Of these, only eight have resulted in prison sentences for company officials.

There is a lot of political pressure not to seek prison terms for CEOs of unscrupulous companies, and little public sentiment pushing the government and prosecutors to get tough on corporate criminals.

But that may be changing.

Corporations have provided a hiding place for the wealthy. It’s time that wall of protection comes down. No more slap on the hands with fines. It’s time for prison for corporate crimes. Corporate executives responsible for selling colored water as orange juice should be in jail. Corporate crimes far exceed blue collar crimes in total dollars. Wall Street, including bankers, and all other types of money changers, have stolen more money than bank robbers, and they go scot free.

Why? Because the corporate executives are calling the shots on everything in America. We can’t get health care passed because of corporate objections. We can’t get financial reform because of corporate objections. We can’t get fair elections because of corporate influence. We can’t elect an honest legislator because corporations by them or beat them.

The immigration problem is caused by corporations hiring illegals to enhance their bottom line. Throw the corporate executives that hire illegals in jail and suddenly the problem will be solved.

Corporations should not be immune from vigorous prosecution. By law they are not immune, but by practice it happens too rarely.

The explosion at the Deepwater Horizon rig off the coast of Louisiana that killed eleven people and led to an oil spill that will soon surpass Exxon Valdez in its (more…)

Federal regulators clamped strong new controls Wednesday on the pesticide believed to have caused the deaths of 4-year-old Rebecca Toone and her 15-month-old sister Rachel the week after an exterminator fumigated rodent holes outside of their Layton home.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said aluminum and magnesium phosphide fumigants can no longer be used near homes. The agency also expanded the buffer zones required when using it outdoors and imposed a new requirement for posted warnings when the pesticide has been applied.

Great article by Judy Fahys. Excellent reporting on the background of the regulation process. Please read the story to the end.

A side note— the deaths of two Latino girls in the Logan Canal disaster didn’t result in any significant increase in regulatory protections. What will it take to get proper regulation of our canal systems?

“Phosphine fumigants are poisons and must be kept away from where our children live,” said Steve Owens, assistant administrator of EPA’s Office of Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances. “These new safeguards prohibit the use of these toxic pesticides near homes and impose restrictions to protect our families from exposure to them.”

Agency spokesman Dale Kemery said the Layton sisters’ deaths had “focused EPA to get these tighter restrictions as quickly as possible. Today’s action demonstrates that concern.”

State and local authorities continue to investigate the pesticide’s role in the girls’ deaths and will discuss possible criminal charges next week.

Phosphide pesticides create deadly phosphine gas, which has been used for decades to kill insects and burrowing rodents. Federal law limits the fumigant to use by trained (more…)

(Opinion piece by Rep. Kay McIff in Salt Lake Tribune, April 10, 2010)

Advocates for forcing public access to streams, against the will of landowners, have advanced a raft of theories all designed to circumvent or trump the Utah Constitution’s prohibition against “taking or damaging private property for public use without just compensation.”

They have harkened back to the Magna Carta, the laws of England, Spain, the Roman Empire, Greece, the laws of the early American colonies and, most recently, Brigham Young. The exercise may be interesting and educational, but in the end the controlling document remains the Utah Constitution. It cannot be made subservient to other laws at other times and places.

If the effort to bypass the Utah Constitution were successful, what would be put in its place to protect private property rights listed by the framers as “inalienable” and second only to the rights of life and liberty? There is little comfort in the court-created easement in the Utah Supreme Court’s 2008 Conatser v. Johnson decision because it lacks constitutional side-boards and could be expanded by judicial or legislative fiat deemed necessary to make effective the public’s enjoyment of the easement.

Rep. McIff, Governor Herbert, and others, are taking considerable heat for this ill advised taking of public property and giving it to the adjacent land owners. The idea that the public doesn’t own the rivers and streams and reasonable access to them just doesn’t fly. Those who bought property alongside our rivers, streams, and lakes are just like those who bought property adjacent to our roads and sidewalks.

The Conatser decision necessarily relied upon a statute. The delegates to the Utah Constitutional Convention in 1895 had declined to declare public ownership of water, even though our neighboring states had done so. The reason may be found in the fact that Utah had been settled for almost 50 years and most of the water had already been appropriated. Delegates were uneasy about declaring public ownership, fearing it would compromise private vested rights. Hence, Article XVII, Section 1 of the Utah Constitution looked only through the rear-view mirror and protected only “existing rights.” It provided no guidance for the future.

Eight years later, the 1903 state Legislature adopted an extensive water code declaring public ownership of water, appointing a state engineer, fixing the procedure for acquiring the unappropriated water and authorizing the use of eminent domain to acquire rights of way for the beneficial use of water. All rights of way, even for the most basic uses of water, required payment of just compensation.

Beneficial uses identified in the debates and statutes related to irrigation, industrial, mining, milling, manufacturing, livestock watering, domestic and culinary. While the statutory scheme has been tweaked from time to time over the years, it remains largely intact. Noticeably absent for most of our (more…)

Article by Tim Lydon

Writers on the Range

Lately, I’ve been struggling to stay positive about the climate. It’s not easy. The 190 nations at the November summit in Copenhagen failed to reach agreement on greenhouse gases, and Congress seems determined to avoid the issue. Worst of all, polls show cooling anxiety about climate change among Americans; these days, we are too consumed by economic woes.

And so, I’ve decided to create my own “bucket list” for Alaska and the West. A bucket list usually tallies what a person would like to experience before kicking the bucket, as made famous in the eponymous 2007 movie. I can’t put it off much longer: With climate change rapidly degrading our landscape, I’m afraid time is running out for some of my favorite natural wonders.

Things are a changin’ and fast. Now is the time to see the wonders of the world that are vanishing from existence right before our eyes. The climate skeptics are almost all anti-government, anti-regulation, anti-science, and free enterprise ideologues and religious zealots, i.e. fringe Republicans who are rapidly bullying and silencing the more mainstream, more thoughtful Republicans into extinction.

I’ll start in northern Alaska, home to the polar bear. Ursus maritimus tops my list even though the U.S. Geological Survey says it might not become extinct in Alaska for a few more decades. But U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service research reveals that disappearing sea ice is already causing nutritional stress, decreased weight and lower reproduction. In other words, the bears are getting smaller and fewer. The longer I wait, the less likely I am to see a big, healthy bear.

Alaska’s walruses are also on my list. For ages, these giant marine (more…)

The Utah Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Conatser v. Johnson that fishermen have an easement to walk up and down privately owned streambeds, so long as it is reasonable under the circumstances. The Utah House recently passed HB 141, which would overturn the 2008 court decision if the Senate also passes it.

The Supreme Court got it right. The rivers and streams are public property and the public should have reasonable access to them. Private property rights must allow for reasonable access and egress for proper public uses of the rivers and streams.

The main argument in the House for passing HB141 was that allowing a fishermen’s easement on private property violates the Utah Constitution by taking property rights without compensation. This argument appears valid on the surface, but it falsely characterizes the Conatser decision (more…)

From the webpage, UnknownNews.org. Democracy depends on an informed public discourse, and it’s imperiled when lies and misinformation are multiplied by mass media, or by bloggers or panicked emailers. Please — our nation and our world face very serious, very real problems, and you can help, by being a little skeptical about all the phony, non-existent problems that are only distractions. —H&HH

This seemingly unending list of lies vomited up by pathological liars is so long you won’t have the patience to read it all. Sadly, this is what the Republican Party has come to. A ridiculousness that should result in an almost complete abandonment by anyone with a brain. Oh, the awful embarrassment of being associated with this stuff.

Latest update: Feb. 14, 2010

No, it’s not true that global warming stopped in 1998 and the world has been cooling ever since. This video does a good job tracking down the single wingnut who made that bogus claim, which has been repeated ceaselessly by climate change deniers ever since.  #

No, Republicans are just lying when they claim that prosecuting terrorists in ordinary American courtrooms is something unusual or dangerous. There’s nothing outrageous or even out of the ordinry about how the Obama administration is prosecuting the so-called underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.  #

No, contrary to conservatives’ claims, big snowstorms don’t disprove global climate change. A snowstorm doesn’t mean science is a fraud. As explained briefly, we’re going to see more snow, not less, because more precipitation — including heavy snowstorms — is a sign of global warming, as atmospheric moisture levels have increased with warmer temperatures, meaning more storms with heavy snow or rain.  #

No, it’s not true that Sen Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts) has proposed legislation the would establish universal voter registration, including votes for ex-felons and welfare recipients and oh my!
It sounds like a great idea to me. I believe people should be encouraged to vote and voting should be as easy as is practically possible — but for their own reasons, other people like to have a few hurdles in the way so that only people who bother to jump those hurdles get to vote. You could make reasonable arguments for the latter notion, and maybe that’s a conversation we should have.
But instead of making those reasonable arguments, right-wingers like John Fund, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck are simply lying, because Senator Frank has made no such proposal. There’s no universal voter registration legislation to oppose. When you hear or read about this proposal from Senator Frank, you’re hearing or reading a lie.  #

No, the widespread right-wing meme that the underwear bomber quit talking as soon as he was read his Miranda rights is bull.  #

No, it’s not true, despite columnist George Will’s claim, that the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) would “abolish workers’ rights to secret ballots”. It’s a right-wing talking point, but it’s no more true today than the last time it was debunked on this page. It’s untrue every time you hear it, which sure is often.  #

No, it’s not true that President Obama used a teleprompter to address a class of sixth-graders at an elementary school in Falls Church, Virginia.  #

No, despite Investor’s Business Daily‘s hokum, the Community Reinvestment Act didn’t cause (more…)

by Judy Fahys

Salt Lake Tribune

Rep. Mike Noel, the Legislature’s chief climate-change skeptic, declared Thursday that global warming is a conspiracy to control world population.

The House Natural Resources Committee then approved a resolution that expresses the Utah Legislature’s belief that “climate alarmists’ carbon dioxide-related global warming hypothesis is unable to account for the current downturn in global temperatures.”

The resolution, sent to the House on a 10-1 vote, would urge the Environmental Protection Agency to drop plans to regulate the pollution blamed for climate change “until a full and independent investigation of the climate data conspiracy and global warming science can be substantiated.”

“We’re at the breaking point,” said Rep. Kerry Gibson, the resolution’s sponsor, who warned that the supply of safe and affordable food is already threatened by over-regulation.

Eleven Brigham Young University scientists defended climate science in a point-by-point rebuttal to parts of the resolution and urged the panel in an e-mail to reject the measure.

“Even if all the political solutions proposed so far are flawed,” they said, “this does not justify politicians attacking the science that indicates there is almost certainly a serious problem.”

The Utah Farm Bureau, a strong backer of the (more…)

Tribune Editorial

Updated: 01/29/2010 06:16:45 PM MST

At 4,703 words, Utah House Bill 60 sets a record. Never have so many words accomplished so little when a situation demands so much.

In the wake of a canal collapse that killed a Logan woman and her two children last summer, and another that destroyed dozens of homes in Riverdale a decade ago, the Water Conveyance Facilities Safety Act is weak medicine for Utah’s aging canal systems. Nearly 1,200 irrigation companies operate a combined 6,600 miles of unregulated canals in the state, including some more than a century old.

The situation screams for stringent safety standards, a strong regulatory framework and periodic safety inspections. Liability insurance mandates and emergency response plans and operator certification programs are also needed. Simply put, strict government oversight is needed to protect the public from dangerous canals.

Instead, HB 60, sponsored by state Rep. Fred Hunsaker, R-Logan, and endorsed by the state’s Executive Water Task Force, offers what amounts to a suggestion, a strictly volunteer program to identify and remediate hazardous canals.

Irrigation companies, if they want, can draft canal management plans for potentially hazardous canal segments. And, to shield the companies that choose to comply from public scrutiny, the law would make the management plans exempt from the state’s Government Records Access and Management Act, and thus hidden from public view. In other words, persons who are put at risk by hazardous canals will, unconscionably, never learn of the danger.

This is simply not adequate protection for the public. There is a huge regulatory gap regarding canals that must be filled. Who is in charge? No one. No government agency has stepped forward to accept responsibility for canal regulation and oversight. It can’t be left in the hands of the canal owners. The free enterprise system only works with strict government regulations to protect the public.

The most odious part of the bill is (more…)

Two stories appeared in The Salt Lake Tribune on Thursday, February 4th, one indicating that Senator Hatch took a $25,000 campaign contribution from parties interested in seeing that the Comcast-NBC merger is approved, and a $10,000 contribution to Gov. Herbert to grease the skids for a strip-mining permit.

The stories are printed below.

It makes one wonder if their pockets are a bottomless pit, or if they have limits, and makes one wonder if the general public can get together and pool our resources and negotiate an exclusive deal with them. Senator Hatch and Governor Herbert, how much would it take for the public to pay you for an agreement that you wouldn’t take any campaign donations from any special interest group except us?

Article on donations to Gov. Herbert

by Paul Foy

Associated Press, published in Salt Lake Tribune

On the same day Gov. Gary Herbert sat down with a coal company that complained regulators were taking too long to issue a strip-mining permit, his campaign aides were cashing a $10,000 check from the company.

The pleas from Alton Coal Development LLC. did not go unanswered. According to a memo obtained by The Associated Press, state regulators at the meeting agreed to fast-track a decision approving the mine near Panguitch, despite opposition from residents.

Herbert’s office said Wednesday he never ordered regulators to give their approval and didn’t know about the company’s donation.

The decision has some residents of the small tourist town about 200 miles south of Salt Lake City concerned, with one business owner characterizing the payment as a blatant effort by the coal developer to influence the Herbert administration.

“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out,” said Bobbi Bryant, owner of the gift and coffee shop Bronco Bobbi’s, who is opposed to the strip mine because the operation would send coal trucks as often as 300 times a day through Panguitch, which is near Bryce Canyon National Park.

“There’s a lot more people down here against it than officials want you to know,” she said.

The three-page memo from the Utah Division of Oil, Gas and Mining said the result of the coal company’s September meeting with the Republican governor was to fast-track a decision (more…)

Lt. Governor Bell; President Waddoups; Speaker Clark; Members of the Utah Legislature and of my Cabinet; Utah’s Supreme Court justices; the State’s First Lady, my wife Jeanette; my children, my mother and my fellow Utahns; I am humbled and honored to stand before you tonight as Utah’s 17th Governor to offer this annual report to our great State.

Tonight, I first pay tribute to the many Utahns who have answered the nation’s call to serve. Whether it’s as a soldier in Afghanistan, a Utah National Guardsman in Iraq, a humanitarian volunteer in Haiti or Ambassador Jon and Mary Kaye Huntsman in the People’s Republic of China, we give them all our heartfelt thanks.

I also recognize those who put their lives on the line every day to protect ours. We suffered a great loss when Millard County Sheriff’s Deputy Josie Greathouse Fox of Delta lost her life in the line of duty. Her family is here with us tonight. Please join with me as we remember a life of service and pay tribute to our entire law enforcement community, whose sacrifice helps to keep us free and to keep us safe. In my inaugural address, I spoke about the importance of, and the need for, unprecedented partnerships. This will be a continuing theme for my administration. Our success will be measured by the way we unite stakeholders from across the state, and from across the aisle. We must join together to combat the challenges we face and to seize the opportunities ahead.

Over the past four months, we have formed several such partnerships. Let me highlight two of them.

First, we created the Advisory (more…)

Tribune Editorial

Updated: 01/06/2010 06:06:49 PM MST

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has promised to bring a “balanced approach” to permitting more drilling for oil and natural gas in America’s Western states. That will be a welcome change, and not only for people concerned about protecting fragile arid lands, wildlife, water and air quality, but for energy development companies.

Under former President George W. Bush’s “drill at all costs” policy, lands near national parks and in wilderness-quality areas that never should have been leased to development companies appeared on the auction block. Environmental groups and others rightly went to court to prevent drilling on those parcels. Oil and gas developers had to wait months or years to learn the outcome, and the uncertainty was not good for business.

Salazar said that about 40 percent of oil and gas leases on public lands were protested in 2008, a huge increase from the 1 percent targeted in 1998. He correctly blamed the increase on the Bush administration’s policies that allowed leases “in places where they should not have been or without enough agency scrutiny or public participation.”

But under policy changes Salazar announced Wednesday, federal agencies will take a closer look at all possible uses of public lands and listen to the public’s environmental concerns long before deciding to sell leases on any parcels. That’s how the system should work, but did not under President Bush.

Salazar justly criticized the Bush administration for its “headlong rush” to lease Western lands “anywhere and everywhere.” He was particularly critical of the lease sale of lands near Utah’s (more…)