As we slip from January to February, allowing a few more New Year's resolutions to fall by the wayside, we're rallying our strength as spectators: both for the Superbowl this Sunday, and the drawn out GOP presidential drama. Amid the hustle, bustle and bluster of the week, a few headlines caught our eye.

PUBLIC LANDS
On Thursday, Feb. 2, the Obama administration set new management guidelines for national forests, grasslands and prairie. The nearly 200 million acres covered by the new blueprint supply a fifth of the nation's drinking water, according to the U.S. Forest Service. This is the first major forest rules update in three decades. Several scientists and environmental groups praised the new rule, which in addition to emphasizing science-driven management, gives local supervisors flexibility in writing plans for their areas.  

Moving from the forest and into the field, grass on public lands will continue to be a bargain buffet. Grazing fees per head will remain at $1.35 per month in 2012, U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management officials announced Wednesday. As we've reported before, grazing fees have jumped all of 12 cents since the initial fee was set in 1966. Under a presidential executive order dating from 1986, $1.35 is the lowest allowable price.

POLITICS
Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate who cares about the poor, somewhat, seems the favorite to win Nevada's caucuses on Saturday. During the last presidential race, Romney won the swing state easily. In 2008, however, Nevada was a very different place. Its unemployment rate is now 13 percent, the highest in the nation, and a spirit of government distrust pervades the state as strongly as ever. The state might be the Tea Party's last chance to block Romney's nomination, according to the New York Times.

Let’s say you don’t want an oil and gas drill operating 250 feet away from your kitchen window. The 1000-megawatt lights keep your Yorkie in an extraordinary state of duress, and your kids won’t stay off the dang fence. What can you do?

El Paso and Arapaho counties, on the Front Range of Colorado, have felt the weight of this question lately. They both drew plans for more intensive regulations for oil and gas. But the governor, state legislators and energy companies pushed back on those efforts to increase local control.

Colorado Attorney General John Suthers responded by saying that, “responsible government requires uniform regulation,” and local control disturbs that uniformity.  Governor John Hickenlooper added that, “The state can’t have 64 or even more sets of rules,” for drilling. And Tischa Schuller, president and CEO of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association kindly offered to host meetings with local governments, “so they understand the limits of what their authority is.”

Arapaho county commissioners caved under all that pressure by withdrawing their proposed ordinances. El Paso County scaled back their regulations.

As with other areas around the West caught up in this 21st century energy bonanza, power to permit or regulate energy depends on what’s been written in state law and jurisprudence within the courts.

The opening act of yesterday's hearing led by the House subcommittee on Energy and the Environment was uncommonly action-packed: Josh Fox, documentary filmmaker and director of "Gasland," was lead from the room in handcuffs, on the grounds he did not have the right credentials. Earlier, a camera crew claiming to be from ABC news was turned away for the same reason. For Capitol Police, the rest of the hearing was comparatively dull. For witnesses and questioners, the early tension set the tone. The back-and-forth between industry and pro-drilling conservatives and EPA supporters seen at the hearing -- at times antagonistic, at times bewildering -- implies that disagreements will rage on, regardless of disinterested scientific consensus. 

The hearing, led by Andy Harris, subcommittee chairman and Maryland Republican, questioned the scientific integrity of a draft report on fracking-caused groundwater contamination released by the Environmental Protection Agency Dec. 8. Since its release, the State of Wyoming and industry representatives have attacked the draft report.  They don’t like its conclusions: that fracking in the area around Pavillion, Wyo. was likely the cause of ground water pollution in the area. 

Testimony from the study's opponents attacked those results.

"The EPA's own data contained within [the report] doesn't support the conclusions presented up front," said Kathleen Sgamma, an industry representative from the Western Energy Alliance, sitting on the witness panel. "We are left wondering why the EPA would jump to conclusions, proceeding without State input or peer review." 

Pity the antitrust regulator. As the Obama administration pacifies its way toward the 2012 elections, those bureaucrats charged with protecting small businessmen from monopolies are dropping like flies.

Take J. Dudley Butler, the head of the soporific-sounding Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration. Butler, a lawyer who built a career fighting powerful, giant poultry companies who unjustly squeezed money from the farmers they contracted with, jogged into his position fists up, vowing to enforce the Packers and Stockyards Act. The  underenforced law is a potentially potent piece of 1921 legislation passed on the heels of the Sherman and Clayton Acts and aimed at protecting smaller cattle producers, feedlot owners, and poultry growers from the market manipulations that occur when just a few buyers control the marketplace. (This is called a monopsony; a situation when many sellers only have one buyer and thus can be forced to take the one buyer's offered price, as opposed to a monopoly, when there is only one seller and the buyers are forced to take the seller's price.  As reported in Harpers magazine, Walmart has power similar to a monopsony, too.)

Butler resigned last week after his efforts to enforce the Packers and Stockyards Act were drop-kicked into the "politically inexpedient" ether. (The National Public Radio headline about the resignation ran: "Antitrust official gets stampeded by Big Beef.")

Butler's departure was punctuated by that of Sharis Pozen, who was heading up the Department of Justice's antitrust division. Pozen was acting chief for just six months, filling the role vacated by former antitrust head Christine Varney, who, like Pozen, left to return to private practice.
Although the New York Times' Dealbook blog post on Pozen's resignation cites legal insiders saying DOJ's antitrust activities are still going strong, the "reinvigorated enforcement of antitrust laws" referenced in that coverage seems to be a fickle pursuit, limited to telephone companies and internet titans rather than beef monopolies and giant seed corporations.

(updated 1/30/2011)

I recently read that the energy industry hates fracking. Of course, they actually love fracking -- as in hydraulic fracturing to crack rock and release all those juicy hydrocarbons. What they hate is the word itself: “fracking.”

I hate it, too, though I suspect for very different reasons.

Energy flacks abhor “fracking,” according to the AP, because it sounds like a certain naughty word that refers to a sexual act. I’m not sure why that’s such a problem. After all, industry’s favorite slogan, “Drill, baby, drill,” isn’t exactly risque-free. And plain old “drilling?” Uh, yeah, try searching around for that on the Intertubes and you’ll see. Call me crazy, but sex sounds a lot more appealing than blasting chemicals into the earth.

The real reason industry hates “fracking,” and the activists like it, is even simpler: It’s short and catchy and has more of a bite than “drilling” or “energy development.” "It's Madison Avenue hell," Dave McMurdy, CEO of the American Gas Association, told the AP. There’s also something about the act itself -- shooting high pressured water and chemicals and sand into the earth to break the gas and oil free -- that triggers the gag reflex for those who aren’t making tons of cash off of it.

And so it is that a word that was relegated to the cable series Battlestar Galactica just a few years ago has become a regular part of our vocabulary, and “fracktivism” the latest cause celebré. And that’s given the whole debate over oil and gas development a strange linguistic twist. These days, you wouldn’t know we were in the midst of an energy boom. Rather, you’d think we were experiencing a fracking boom.

Updated 1/27/2012

Breaking: Presidential candidate Marvin E. Quasniki, from the Henson Company, kicked off his Nevada tour this week. He’s a puppet from Nevada, a turquoise farmer from Tonopah and a crude entrenchment of old ideas whom you don’t completely trust speaking around your children.

We led with Quasniki's declaration because it's obviously very important, but here are a few other notable items in this week's Western news.

ENERGY

Water's a key element of the nuclear energy equation. And the first nuclear power facility in the West since 1987 just got theirs to add up nicely. Utah state engineer Kent Jones approved the water permit for a new plant on the Green River this week, giving Blue Castle Holdings 53,600 acre-feet per year. "We have listened to and very much appreciate the concerns raised by those in the local community and others," Jones said. "Those concerns helped us look carefully and critically at the proposal as we considered the appropriate action on these applications." Read former HCN intern Rachel Waldholz's story for more history of the deal ("Water fallout", 3/1/10 HCN)

Tensions between local and state authorities in Colorado flared when Arapaho and El Paso counties passed new regulations on drill rig siting from oil and gas companies drilling near their communities. The rules would have extended setback requirements, ensuring rigs could not be too close to houses or other structures, like schools. The state house and industry are united in helping the locals understand the limits of their authority, and in response to the state's outcry, Arapaho County commissioners have already voted down the proposed buffer regs. A lobbying group for the counties argued that locals have "specific authority…to regulate the lands within our jurisdictions."

ECONOMICS

Many Oregon counties face near-impossible budget fixes for the short term. Federal funds to replace lost timber revenue that many Pacific Northwest rural schools and communities count on have expired because the feds haven't renewed the bill dispersing those monies. Some counties have predicted going broke by next year, and others are trying anything they can to raise some capital.

A tussle over water rights has broken out between the ski industry and the U.S. Forest Service. And, like the conditions this winter, things are a bit nasty.

The dispute is over a new clause in ski area permits that prohibits ski companies from selling or transferring some water rights to cities, farms or other resorts. The Forest Service maintains that in order to ensure future ski operators will be able to continue to make snow and flush resort toilets, water rights originating on federal lands must remain connected to those lands. If water rights were to, say, become more valuable than a skiing business and a company sold them off, potential future operators would be left high and dry, and the public would be left with one less place to ski.

The clause, the agency says, applies only to water rights jointly held by ski companies and the federal government, not private rights solely held by the companies.

But according to the National Ski Areas Association, the language of the clause is broad enough to cover both types of water rights, and is therefore tantamount to theft. "The ski industry has no choice but to defend itself against this outright taking of private property by the U.S. Government," said NSAA president Michael Berry, in a Jan. 9 statement announcing a lawsuit against the USFS. Losing control of these rights, says the NSAA, lessens the value of an operator's business, making it harder for them to borrow money, pay their loans or expand operations in the future.

1: number of times President Obama said the word "environment" in his 2012 State of the Union address

23: number of times he said "energy"

8: number of times he preceded it with "clean"

1: number of times he preceded it with "renewable"

1: number of times he mentioned "climate change"

A word cloud of Obama's 2012 State of the Union.

This rhetorical scorecard from last night's State of the Union address says quite a bit about how environmental issues figure into our current political landscape, and could be a preview of how Obama will try to play them in this year's campaign. Environmental regulation and protection are politically thorny territories for Obama. It would be unfair to say he's abandoned the cause of the environmental protection (the EPA, after all, has been quite busy lately), but it's clear that cheerleading it before a primetime audience isn't something he sees as politically expedient. 

Where he did give attention to green causes, he chose his words carefully. He talked about "clean energy" not "renewable energy." There's a big difference between the two: natural gas and coal can't, by any stretch of the imagination, be classified as renewable resources. "Clean" is a much squishier category, though. And according to a brief on the priorities Obama outlined that was released by the White House after the speech, it includes: "wind, solar, biomass, hydropower, nuclear power, efficient natural gas, and clean coal." It's the kind of catch-all Obama so favors -- the kind that allows him to throw almost everyone a bone.

Many struggling Western counties will find themselves in even worse financial shape if an expiring federal law isn't renewed soon. Since 2000, local governments in 41 states have received billions of dollars from the feds to compensate them for reduced revenue from timber sales. Especially in logging-dependent states like Oregon and Washington, which saw federal timber production drop dramatically in the 90s, the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act has helped counties pay for schools, public safety and road projects.

The Act expired last fall, and the final payments went out this month. Oregon got the biggest chunk of funding, with $108 million, while California received $48 million, and Washington and Idaho $31 million each. But it's not a bucket o' cash that can be used anywhere it's needed – the funds are earmarked for specific uses. For example, Oregon's Curry County has $33 million of federal money squirreled away in its road fund, which it can't dip into to plug budget gaps in other areas.

While presidential opponents dropped like flies, news affecting lands west of the 100th meridian continued to spit and sputter out onto the interwebs, mimicking the sleet-snow we got here in Paonia this weekend. Here's a roundup of the important news of the week:

ENERGY
President Obama announced his rejection of the Keystone XL project on Wednesday, citing an unrealistic deadline. Congress had imposed an artificial deadline, he said, in a move to force the project through. The pipeline would carry Alberta crude south, through Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska on its way to Gulf Coast refineries. Reactions were predictable - environmentalists cheered, Republicans booed. (Rick Perry, somewhat incomprehensibly, blamed Obama of focusing more on the next election than on the next generation.) But while the project has been halted, it's not over yet. TransCanada can, if it chooses, resubmit their application for the pipeline.

This in from the "dubious-but-awesome idea" department: Geothermal engineers plan to pump water into a dormant volcano, hoping for a cheap, safe, near-endless source of hot water to generate electricity. The project will get underway this summer at Newberry Volcano, near Bend, Ore. Several geothermal power plants exist in Europe -- one of which was shut over earthquake concerns -- but, so far, the technology has been tricky and difficult to scale up.

The Department of Defense, whose energy bills stack up to about $4 billion annually, is cozying up to the sun, both at home and abroad. In its foreign operations the use of green technology saves money and lives (oil convoys, attractive insurgent targets, are extraordinarily dangerous). A new report commissioned by the DoD says greater adoption of solar technology on its domestic military bases could save the government as much as $100 million annually.