“What are you going to do? They dumped
millions on my head.”
—Rep. Richard
Pombo, R-Calif., on election night, as he realized he would get
voted out of office. Democrat Jerry McNerney upset Pombo with the
help of an infusion of cash from various environmental groups.
Indian Country thaw. The Hopi and
Navajo tribes this month ended a long-standing feud over
reservation boundaries in Arizona. The agreement lifts a
40-year-old ban on development on 700,000 acres on the western
Navajo Nation and allows Hopis access to religious sites on Navajo
land. Tensions go back to the 1800s, when Navajos encroached on
ancestral Hopi land; later federal expansion of the Navajo
Reservation exacerbated problems. The ensuing row dragged through
the courts for decades and forced thousands of Navajos and about
100 Hopis from their homes on land considered sacred by both
tribes. In 1966, the feds banned construction and infrastructure
development on a swath of the Navajo Nation until the dispute was
settled, leaving residents in a “time warp,” unable to build roads
or repair their homes without Hopi permission. “It’s a
milestone to negotiate this to an end in a peaceful manner,” says
former Hopi Chairman Ferrell Secakuku. “We both have to co-exist
here.”
“Black Sunday” redux? In 1982,
hopes that oil could be squeezed from shale died when Exxon shut
down its $5 billion oil shale project near Parachute, Colo.,
leaving 2,200 workers without jobs and sending the area’s
economy into a tailspin. Now, the industry is showing new signs of
life: On Nov. 13, the federal Bureau of Land Management issued five
oil shale leases in western Colorado’s Piceance Basin,
despite environmental concerns raised by state agencies as well as
the U.S. Geological Survey. Shell, Chevron and EGL Resources will
use their 160-acre parcels to test a process in which shale is
heated underground to release oil, and then the oil is pumped to
the surface. Although it may take a decade to prove the
method’s feasibility, the 2005 Energy Policy Act requires the
BLM to be ready to issue commercial oil shale leases by 2008.
“It’s hard to watch us go down this path again,” says Pat
Kennedy, a local businessman who is on the BLM’s Northwest
Colorado Resource Advisory Council. “If oil shale turns out not to
be feasible, the companies will just walk away again.”
Opening the gate to energy, halfway. Northern
Cheyenne voters in Montana gave the go-ahead to open up the
tribe’s ample reserves of coal to development, but they
killed a similar initiative on coalbed methane. Supporters of
energy development tout the economic boost it could bring to the
impoverished tribe, holding up as a model Colorado’s Southern
Ute tribe, which has prospered by drilling the coalbed methane on
its reservation. Others argue that financial gains — the
tribe’s coal is worth at least $3 billion — can’t
offset the environmental and cultural impacts brought by the
industry. This isn’t the first time the tribe has grappled
with the issue: In the 1960s and ’70s, the Northern Cheyenne
fought off a half-dozen energy companies that tried to grab the
tribe’s coal.
Developers sunk in vernal pools. On Nov. 2, U.S.
District Court Judge William B. Shubb upheld the federal Fish and
Wildlife Service’s designation of critical habitat for 15
species on 860,000 acres of “vernal pools,” or seasonal wetlands,
in California and Oregon — and told the agency to consider
designating more than twice as much. A coalition of homebuilders
had challenged the designations, arguing that the Service failed to
adequately consider the economic impacts of making such areas
off-limits to development. But environmental groups, including
Defenders of Wildlife, contended that the federal government
improperly excluded another 900,000 acres from consideration. The
Fish and Wildlife service has until March to write a new critical
habitat rule.
Vole victory. A panel of
judges from the federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Nov. 6
that the federal Bureau of Land Management illegally removed
protections for the red tree vole in order to approve two
old-growth timber sales near Grants Pass in southern Oregon. The
“survey and manage” rules of the Northwest Forest Plan —
which the BLM and the Forest Service are in the process of
rewriting — prohibit logging in areas where rare species like
the vole that depend on old-growth forests would be disturbed. The
panel ruled that the BLM cannot change the status of such species
without formal environmental review and public input.
Vote values
$35 Amount spent per vote for
Republican Sen. Conrad Burns of Montana. He lost.
$19 Amount spent per vote for Jon
Tester, Burns’ Democratic opponent and the new senator-elect
of Montana.
$36 Amount spent
per vote for Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., who lost.
$14 Amount spent per vote for Jerry
McNerney, Pombo’s opponent and the representative-elect for
California’s 11th District.
$197,547 Amount donated by the casino
and gambling industry to the losing campaign of Rep. Pombo.
$82,596 Amount donated by
labor unions to McNerney.
5th Rank of New Mexico’s
District 1 House race among the nation’s most expensive. At
press time, a recount was under way. Rep. Heather Wilson, R, held a
slim lead over Democrat Patricia Madrid.
SOURCES: Federal Election Commission; The Center
for Responsive Politics
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Two weeks in the West.
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