Personal tools
You are here: home   Issues   Timberlands up for grabs   After dollars are spent, destruction remains
 

After dollars are spent, destruction remains

Letter to the Editor - From the January 23, 2006 issue of High Country News by Bob Laybourn
Regarding Paul Larmer’s editorial "Storing fat from the feeding frenzy" (HCN, 11/28/05: Storing fat from the feeding frenzy): Wyoming may be doing a better job of managing oil and gas revenues; however, that revenue hardly compensates for the destruction of frenzied and uncontrolled development. Qwest, EnCana and coalbed methane drillers have the Bureau of Logging and Mining assisting them and state regulators on the run. Severance and royalty payments remind me of the minuscule payments made to Native Americans for their lands.

Like them, what do we do after selling our birthright for a bowl of porridge? Ten-acre spacing of infill drilling leaves no surface values behind. So we may be better at managing this pittance; we are more dependent on it and will be left with destruction long after the dollars disappear.

Bob Laybourn
Cheyenne, Wyoming

Special coverage
  1. Charles Bowden on The War Next Door | On the U.S.-Mexico border, the corrupt and futile ...
  2. It's the population, stupid? | Some Westerners want to blame our environmental wo...
  3. No ESA for sage grouse | Feds say iconic bird needs protection, but won't g...
  4. Three cheers | Here's to an anonymous donor, Target and 11 scient...
  5. Shooting bullets, not blanks | A tremendous posterity, and firearms in National P...
  1. Charles Bowden on The War Next Door | On the U.S.-Mexico border, the corrupt and futile ...
  2. Thank you, Utah, for leading the way | Utah's Legislature has brilliant plans to cut educ...
  3. Skeletons in the closet | When the media reported that Everett Ruess' bones ...
  4. Mobile Nation | Every winter in Quartzsite, Ariz., tens of thousan...
  5. Water fallout | A nuclear power plant proposed for Green River, Ut...

JOIN THE High CountryEmail Commons

Award-winning content delivered weekly.

RSS FEEDS

Keep in touch! Find us on Facebook & Twitter
 
© 2010 High Country News, all rights reserved. | privacy policy | powered by Plone | site by Groundwire and Web Collective | design by our very own Ryan Foster