The last great boom
that lit up Wyoming’s economy happened 25 years ago. The
predictable bust followed, and it was the mid-1980s when oil prices
crashed, nationwide demand for energy plummeted, interest rates
soared and, overall, many get-rich dreams that had been hatched
during the heady days turned to nightmares.
Now, we are
in the fifth year of the next big boom. The optimism is back, and
it’s a time for the dreamers to dream. We know where all this
new money is coming from — severance taxes on minerals, especially
natural gas. Lawmakers have met in Cheyenne in recent years with
budget surpluses nearing $1 billion a pop. At the start of this
year’s session, Gov. Dave Freudenthal said the outlook is
still very, very rosy, though he cautioned the legislators to spend
with discretion.
Still, the time for innovation is when
you have money to do things. And future-thinking leaders have been
doing some great things in recent years. For example:
• The University of Wyoming, thanks to a $5 million grant
from BP America, has begun planning a wind-energy research center.
• Over a billion dollars has been budgeted and
spent for new school facilities in our state.
• An
initiative called the Hathaway Program will provide any qualified
student in Wyoming with a college education, thanks to a $500
million endowment.
• Over $100 million has gone
into endowed chairs at the University of Wyoming and the community
colleges. A Department of Energy has been created at the
university.
• More than $124 million has been sent
to our communities in the business-ready community program, helping
them create the infrastructure that will survive a future bust.
• The super-computer project in Cheyenne under the
National Center For Atmospheric Research is already a boon for the
state.
• A wildlife trust fund has been established
to guarantee an income flow for projects involving our game and
fish, whether they’re hunted or not.
• The
state is paying for new prisons and remodeling old prisons.
• Money has been allocated to deal with substance
abuse, alcohol and tobacco abuse, and new facilities are being
built to treat addicts.
• Wyoming has begun
long-overdue maintenance of state buildings and facilities.
All of this is impressive, but it is a time for even
bigger ideas. Here are some proposals that have emerged:
Why not consider building an energy reservation that could
incorporate coal-to-gas technology — besides the one on the
drawing board in Carbon County in southern Wyoming? It could
incorporate nuclear power, a natural gas-fired power plant or
perhaps a new refinery. Such a reservation could be located at some
spot located in a square cornered by Douglas, Buffalo, Newcastle
and Lusk.
A second grand idea is to get Wyoming involved
in the ownership of energy projects, or at least as a partner. This
would significantly lower the costs of power to our own citizens,
plus give us the upper hand in creating local development
surrounding such a project.
Meanwhile, we have some
challenges, and perhaps this is the toughest: How can we preserve
our wild environment in the face of unprecedented growth? Can we
have our cake and eat it, too? Then there’s tourism, which
continues to boom, though we need more and better roads. Some new
four-lane highways would help, and as an airline advocate, I have
long supported the idea of the state becoming more innovative when
it comes to providing commercial air expansion. Gov. Dave
Freudenthal says Wyoming needs some more reservoirs — and this
makes a lot of sense in a state where the climate at best is
described as semi-arid. Despite recent rains, we have also had
drought five of the last six years.
So, what are we
leaving out and where are our big thinkers? Now is when they need
to come forward with big ideas. We’ve got the dough;
let’s figure out creative things to do with it.
Bill Sniffin is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a
service of High Country News (hcn.org) He is a
longtime Wyoming journalist from Lander.
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