Is there any more fitting
reminder that May 2 marked the 25th anniversary of “Black
Sunday” than recent word that ExxonMobil wants to get back
into the oil shale business?
For all of you newcomers to
the West — and to those of us who’ve spent 25 years trying
to forget it — May 2, 1982, was the day Exxon announced that it
was pulling the plug on the largest boom in modern western Colorado
history.
After a courtesy call in the morning to
then-Gov. Dick Lamm, Exxon managers locked the gates to the
company’s appropriately named Colony Project, signaling the
end for thousands of workers. It also signaled the beginning of a
decade or more of struggling recovery for Western Slope communities
that had overbuilt in anticipation of Exxon’s boastful
predictions.
Lest anyone think that’s all behind
us, all you have to do is take a look around. Mesa County’s
unemployment rate is so low, wages for everything from fast-food
workers to house cleaners are going up. And just try to find a
place to rent or a house that’s affordable. Those of us
speeding down I-70 on a regular basis know that the long lines at
some exits aren’t caused by workers heading off to the resort
towns of Glenwood Springs, Snowmass or Aspen; they’re heading
for Parachute, Rulison and Rifle, where the landscape has been
transformed into an industrial zone.
I was reminded of
the similarities last summer when I ran into the rancher and
restaurateur Doug King, at Chuck’s Marine Service.
We’re both Grand Junction natives, but I was away during the
oil shale boom that transformed the area. King lived in the city
and experienced what happened first-hand when government subsidies
fueled the oil shale boom.
“Isn’t it
eerie,” Doug said, “how much this feels like last
time?”
I knew exactly what he meant. I’d been
part of the area’s “Vision 2020” process a few
years ago, which included face-to-face interviews with more than a
thousand people. Whether they lived here in 1982 or not,
they’d learned that the defining moment in Grand
Junction’s history was “Black Sunday” and the
social and economic havoc that followed. Jobs vanished, banks
failed, homes and business were foreclosed on. It seemed the end of
the world.
Today, the undeniable reality is that all the
resources that fuel the current extractive boom, including coal,
natural gas, coalbed methane, oil shale and the supporting
pipelines, power plants and transmission corridors, are going great
guns.
The current boom is happening not only because this
country needs energy independence and security, but also because of
the boosterism of many of us and the hopes of politicians eager to
look like problem-solvers. Too many of them (and us) are grasping
at conventional straws and giving short shrift to the long-term
reality that we can’t drill or mine our way out of this
energy-box forever.
The trick will be to heed the lessons
we should have learned a quarter-century ago. One lesson is not
building a house of cards on the shaky foundation of government
subsidies. The second lesson is that we need to set aside some of
those taxes, royalties and fees in preparation for a softer landing
instead of a sudden and brutal crash.
Despite the pap
about not “killing the goose that laid the golden egg,”
we need to ensure that the institutions our rural communities
depend on have adequate resources to deal with present and future
cumulative impacts. Whether it’s Exxon or Shell or Chevron,
Williams, EnCana or Genesis, none of those companies laid those
golden eggs. They’re just cracking them where they found them
and expect to profit mightily from selling pretty pricey omelets.
Framed on a wall in my office is one of those infamous
red-and-white bumper stickers that surfaced right after Black
Sunday. “Please give me another oil shale boom,” its
irreverent message proclaims, “and I promise not to p__s it
away this time.” But if we’re not smart enough to heed
the lessons we had to learn the hard way 25 years ago, maybe a
better message is: “Be careful what you dream.”
Jim Spehar is a contributor to Writers on the
Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). He lives in Grand
Junction, Colorado, where he works for the Sonoran Institute and
serves on the city council.
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