“the B.L.M. has scheduled nearly twenty oil-and-gas-lease sales on federal land nationwide through the end of 2020, and the Administration has shrunk the size of wildernesses and national monuments, paving the way for more drilling…It is a classic land rush.”
Even if you’ve never been to the vast red-rock desert country around Moab, Utah, you’ve been there—its mesas and buttes, its towering arches, have been the backdrop for a thousand movies (and even more S.U.V. commercials). It’s what we think about when we think about “the West,” a truly mythic place. Some of it has been protected in national monuments and parks: Arches and Canyonlands. But the fate of a large swath of it, though nominally belonging to the American people, may soon fall to a guy named Craig Larson.
Here’s the story so far. Under a long-standing law known as the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920, anyone can “nominate” a parcel of federal land for oil-and-gas development—it doesn’t cost a thing. The rules are so lax that you don’t even have to supply your name if you want to nominate a piece of land, but Prairie Hills Oil & Gas did provide at least that much context when it asked the federal Bureau of Land Management to set aside land between Arches and Canyonlands. Prairie Hills Oil & Gas, of North Dakota, it turns out, is headquartered at a home that Larson, an attorney, co-owns in Big Lake, Minnesota, about forty miles northwest of Minneapolis. After the land is nominated, and certain review processes are completed, the B.L.M. moves to set up a lease auction, which, in the case of Larson and Utah, is scheduled for September. (Although Larson has nominated the parcels, anyone, in fact, could be the ultimate winning bidder.)
“County commissioners in the rural American West possess the daunting authority of Afghan warlords, it’s been said. They wield their power by demanding federal agencies do their bidding in the vast expanse of public lands in which the counties are embedded.”
By STEPHEN TRIMBLE
County commissioners in the rural American West possess the daunting authority of Afghan warlords, it’s been said. They wield their power by demanding federal agencies do their bidding in the vast expanse of public lands in which the counties are embedded. Too often, they have their way.
Last week, the Trump administration announced a plan to move the Bureau of Land Management’s top officials out of Washington and into regional western offices. The scheme will only exaggerate the influence of county commissioners, to the detriment of most Americans.
Western counties are enormous. Utah’s largest county, San Juan, at nearly 8,000 square miles, is larger than Connecticut and almost as big as New Jersey. Like many counties in the rural West, San Juan is too dry and too remote for dense settlement; fewer than two people per square mile live there.
Under the Trump administration, local officials in dozens of such unpopulated counties have been flexing their muscles, especially in Utah. Read the rest of this article HERE.
Officials in San Juan County are conducting a case of political and malicious criminal prosecution against Mark Franklin and Rose Chilcoat. The case, over a year old now and not yet even in the trial phase, is already a blow against Mark and Rose and a black eye for San Juan County. They saw a nefarious way to seek revenge against Rose, who is a successful, effective conservationist, and they are getting it. Mark and Rose have accumulated over $100,000 in related legal bills defending themselves against trumped up charges for an utterly insignificant event. They suffer the stress of being falsely accused of crimes that could incur substantial fines and decades in prison. It is a travesty that court proceedings have been allowed to grind on to this point. There is, alas, more legal grinding yet to go. More
Author, Chuck Frank
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The sovereign states of the West are no more and States Rights are gone. They have been lost to a conniving and corrupt federal bureaucracy that is intent upon establishing their own land baron footprint through a maze of un-constitutional and environmental legalism that is meant to isolate western lands for the purpose of controlling people, water, precious minerals, oil and wood products.
And while livelihoods are destroyed, thriving communities become ghost towns and families relocate for the sake of their own survival. But, let’s not forget, it is being done by design, compliments of Washington D.C. which now lords their authority over the western states without listening to the voice of the people. Federal agency “hearings” are but superficial and are a staged formality that is only meant as a sideshow.
Now, let’s just look on the map at the State of Nevada which is right next to California and see how much “sovereignty” is left. The Bundy family and the rest of the other Nevadians know the score. It’s the same game plan that mother Russia and the Soviet Union used on the Ukraine in 1933 when 7 million men, women and children lost their livelihoods and were forced into starvation and died under the tyrannical rule of Joseph Stalin. More
Debbie Coffey (c)copyright 2011 All Rights Reserved
____________________________________________ “8) Glaringly omitted in this DEIS was the “NEED” for this GDP. The “necessity” was not discribed. Perhaps this water, which will be taken from farmers and ranchers, is to be used for Las Vegas’ many golf courses, fountains and new development projects, and Henderson’s need for watering grass in city parks, etc. “____________________________
The Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) wants the rights to pump billions of gallons of water annually from rural central Nevada and Utah toLas Vegas. This will be catastrophic for farmers and ranchers in central Nevada and Utah. SNWA would drain the groundwater below the existing vegetation of about 19,000 square miles (about the size of Vermont). More
Debbie Coffey (c)copyright 2011 All Rights Reserved
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A Six-Point Plan to Avert a Global Crisis” and the 2010 National Geographic’s special issue cover story was “WATER: Our Thirsty World.” Would it be too much to hope that Dept. of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar or BLM Director Bob Abbey might have read these and consider water issues? (Oh wait a sec, the Gulf Oil Spill happened under their watchful eyes.) Or that as leaders of U.S. land management agencies, they’d be concerned with vanishing supplies of uncontaminated water?
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The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is selling YOUR land right out from under you. Concurrently, the BLM is blitzing the media with PR spin to justify removing all of our publicly owned wild horses off of our public lands. If you want to see what has really been happening to our wild horses at recent roundups, go to http://blog.grassrootshorse.com/
Do you know how many acres of your public lands are being sold off in each state? This is a policy being pushed by your President, your Congress, Ken Salazar (Secretary of the Dept. of the Interior) and Bob Abbey (BLM Director). Your state and local governments have their hands out to receive part of the profits. Your “public agencies” (like the Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Land Management) are actually corporations and their priority is to make money.
Each BLM office is required to have quarterly “lease sales” of your public lands. The BLM is making their money off of you and the remains of your United States of America.
To keep this simple, we’ll just look at one state’s lease/sales of our public lands to oil and gas companies.
Wyoming, as it turns out, is going gung ho on oil and gas “leasing.” The BLM calls giving the use of our public lands to extractive industries for as little as $2 an acre a “lease sale.” These are 10 year leases and they can be renewed. Oil and gas companies can ask for certain parcels of public property to be leased.
However, unless you’ve ever heard of an oil pipeline being ripped out after it was installed, I’d call this a “permanent” use of our public lands. An oil or gas (or mining) company will extract all of the oil/gas/ore. They often contaminate water, land and air. They use a LOT of our water from aquifers in their extracting process. More
Lynn Swearingen (c) copyright 2010 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Last week I wrote a little blog about HB 365. Thankfully PPJ was contacted by Conner who commented:
I am the state coordinator for the Utah Tenth Amendment Center and drafted this bill. It is currently under legislative review with Mr. Asplund. The text should hopefully be released this week.
According to the UTAC site, last year Utah took up Gun Rights as well:
In 2010, the Utah legislature passed, and the Governor signed, SB-11 (as did many other states). This law exempts firearms that are manufactured and sold within Utah from any federal regulation. A key paragraph reads:
A personal firearm, a firearm action or receiver, a firearm accessory, or ammunition that is manufactured commercially or privately in the state to be used or sold within the state is not subject to federal law or federal regulation, including registration, under the authority of congress to regulate interstate commerce.
If you reside in Utah, or would like more information concerning 10th Amendment Freedoms, I encourage you to visit their blog for timely updates.
Lynn Swearingen (c) copyright 2010 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
I received a tip this morning with a curious request “Can you make an anti-NIB of Utah’s HB 365”. I tried, I really did. The Title of this Bill looked very promising:
Federal Regulation of Local Agricultural Products
As one can see from the PDF there is no text, although apparently an Attorney (Peter Asplund) was paid to draft HB 365.
1 FEDERAL REGULATION OF LOCAL AGRICULTURAL
2 PRODUCTS
3 2011 GENERAL SESSION
4 STATE OF UTAH
5 Chief Sponsor: Bill Wright
6 Senate Sponsor: ____________
Not content with a title only, I did a bit of looking about and discovered this little snippet from Lexology: More
Marti Oakley (c)copyright 2011 All Rights Reserved
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“So we have 72 of these centers operating across the US, spying, data-mining, gathering useless information of all kinds on everyday people so as to empower the militarized police departments, sheriffs departments and a host of agents of all kinds operating under the umbrella of the federal government and existing almost for no other reason than to spy on …us. “
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We identified the terrorists! Its YOU!
We can no longer afford to waste our time fearing some unknown and unidentifiable terrorist from some far away country; our greatest threat is far closer and much more present: the department of Homeland Security. While the numerous spy agencies existing today in the US become bloated with not only unlawful powers and authority, massive amounts of borrowed money is used to expand these threats to a once free, America.
Too many of us still think that Homeland Security exists to protect the nation from foreign terrorists. The truth is, this behemoth agency exists to protect the federal government and all its agencies, agents, operatives and federal officials from …you!
Across the country, fusion centers methodically gather data of all kinds on everyday American citizens. According to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) website: More
(NaturalNews) Many of the freedoms we enjoy here in the U.S. are quickly eroding as the nation transforms from the land of the free into the land of the enslaved, but what I’m about to share with you takes the assault on our freedoms to a whole new level. You may not be aware of this, but many Western states, including Utah, Washington and Colorado, have long outlawed individuals from collecting rainwater on their own properties because, according to officials, that rain belongs to someone else.
As bizarre as it sounds, laws restricting property owners from “diverting” water that falls on their own homes and land have been on the books for quite some time in many Western states. Only recently, as droughts and renewed interest in water conservation methods have become more common, have individuals and business owners started butting heads with law enforcement over the practice of collecting rainwater for personal use.
Check out this:
a news report out of Salt Lake City, Utah, about the issue. It’s illegal in Utah to divert rainwater without a valid water right, and Mark Miller of Mark Miller Toyota, found this out the hard way. More
Marti Oakley (c)copyright 2010 All Rights Reserved
A big Stinkfly award goes to Ken Salazar!
Ken Salazar, quite possibly one of the most insidious characters to occupy an appointed federal office since maybe, Donald Rumsfeld, has just topped his own high measure of malfeasance. Heading up what has become notorious for being one of the most grossly mismanaged agencies of the federal government, the Department of the Interior (DoI), Salazar has set into motion some of the worst plans and policies ever implemented by the DoI. Among these policies is the eradication and zeroing out of herds of wild horses and burros all supposedly protected under the 1976 Wild Horse & Burro act.
Its unfortunate that the 1971 Act contained no provisions allowing for the protection of the herds from the BLM, itself. The BLM represents the most formidable threat not only to the wild herds, but also to the environment and biodiversity as well. More
Public Encouraged to Attend Meeting on BLM Plans to Round up Hundreds of Utah’s Wild Mustangs
Salt Lake City, UT (June 8, 2010)—On June 9, 2010 the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) will hold a public meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah to discuss the use of helicopters and motorized vehicles during massive wild horse roundups scheduled to begin throughout the state in August. Advocates are encouraged to attend this meeting at the West Desert District office at 6:30 p.m., 2370 South 2300 West, Salt Lake City, Utah.
This meeting will impact pending roundups of Utah wild horse herds including those in the Winter Ridge area of NE Utah (slated for complete removal this summer) and the Confusion and Conger (where a planned spring roundup was successfully delayed) as well as the famous Sulphur herd, all of Western Utah, among others. Additional herds in danger of removal include North Hills (Iron and Washington Counties), and Chokecherry and Mt. Elinor (Beaver and Iron Counties).
“Surface natural gas lines crisscross much of these areas, particularly Winter Ridge and Hill Creek,” said Herd-Watch Project Manager Laura Leigh, who visited the area recently, noting steep drop-offs and canyons, which could be deadly in a helicopter roundup. “Yesterday in Texas we had a buried line apparently hit by a piece of equipment and three people are presumed dead. The lines in Winter Ridge lay on the surface. Not just one line, but many, that in places are hidden from immediate view by vegetation. A roundup in this area could be devastating.”
The Winter Ridge and Hill Creek Herd Areas are slated for removal of 450 horses beginning July 18, 2010 and concluding July 31 despite thousands of public comments urging BLM to cancel the roundups in the West before all the horses are gone. Nearly 12,000 wild free-roaming mustangs and burros are to be permanently removed at a cost of over $30 million in 2010 alone.
The interested public is asked to attend the meeting and raise concerns about the natural gas lines and the current protocol utilized for roundups in Utah, characteristic of those across the West.
“The majority of Utah’s iconic mustangs will be warehoused for life at an enormous expense to the American taxpayer,” states filmmaker and director of the Cloud Foundation, Ginger Kathrens. “At the same time, taxpayers will continue to shell out their tax dollars for the thousands of head of cattle that will remain on Utah’s legally designated wild horse ranges. In addition we have an expanding extraction industry on our public lands. When does management for multiple use cross the line into management that has nothing to do with wild horses?”
Wild horse advocates rally in Denver to stop roundups, ask Senator Udall for help in BLM investigation
Denver, CO (January 7, 2010)—The Cloud Foundation asks the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to reveal the truth behind removing healthy wild horses from the Calico Complex of northwestern Nevada. It does not appear to be coincidental that the multi-billion dollar corporate project, the Ruby Pipeline, would run through the Calico Complex—site of the controversial roundup of more than 2,500 mustangs and the Buckhorn Wild Horse Herd Management Area. BLM removed over 200 wild horses at Buckhorn in December 2009 without public notice.
Director of the Interior, Ken Salazar, has told members of the public that the horses will starve if not removed because there is nothing for them to eat. The Director of the BLM, Bob Abbey, also supported Salazar’s claim when he stated this week that horses are being removed “to restore an ecological balance” even though this claim is nullified by numerous experts including a biodiversity science specialist with 8 years experience in the range and the sworn testimony of BLM employees Eckel and Drake. Abbey went on to reassert the BLM policy position that “we will need to continue removing excess wild horses from the public rangelands in areas where the land can no longer support them.”
Yet, documents recently received by The Cloud Foundation from biologist Katie Fite of Western Watersheds and researcher Cindy MacDonald (publisher of the American Herds blog) today expose what may be the real reasons behind the massive, dead of winter wild horse roundups—and they have nothing to do with horse or rangeland health—but may have everything to do with the Ruby Pipeline. Read More
Last month, the Utah House voted 68-6 to prohibit state officials from complying with REAL ID. A couple dozen states have passed resolutions protesting the federal Act, but the Utah law would have more teeth. If more states join, we might see a real confrontation with national policy.
The PPJ Gazette 