The First Hundred Hours and the New Congress: Let’s not Forget Energy!

Nancy Pelosi will be our Speaker of the House in just a few days and has already promised 100 hours of legislative initiatives. Let us, while keeping our big picutre firmly in mind — peace, a healthy working America, real democracy, a just wage and fair trade, as well as environmental stewardship — but not ignore our message of energy independence and the promotion of research of alternatives to nuclear, coal and other fossil feuls. A campaign of a very diverse group of governmentalal watchdog agencies, the Dept. of Energy itself, along with environmental educational and activist organizations, as well as alternative energy technology industries are urging a change in our current budgeted energy policies.

Right now much more public money is being spent to “improve” coal standards, develop deepwater drilling technology and a new generation of nuclear reactors and a highly suspect nuclear-hydrogen program’s development to the detriment of increasing conservation, creating an advanced solar, geothermal, wind turbine, and tidal energy non-polluting energy policy.

One agency, the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, issued the following letter urging immediate action in the new Congress regarding our federal energy policy:

Dear Friends:

We are working to build new coalitions of renewable energy groups and trade associations, safe energy and environmental groups, businesses and others to redirect our nation’s energy priorities away from nuclear power and fossil fuels and towards the renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies that can cleanly and sustainably power our future and at the same time address the global climate crisis….

…Our first effort is below: a letter to Congress seeking a budget shift from nuclear and fossil fuel programs to renewable and efficiency programs in the Fiscal Year 2007 federal budgetrces for renewable and efficiency programs for FY 2008.
Because the new Congress intends to act on FY 07 budget issues very quickly, we intend to get this letter to Congressional leaders next week!
We encourage all national, regional and local organizations to sign on. Please let us know by 5:00 p.m., Tuesday, December 26. Please reply to this e-mail with your name, organization, city and state.
Thanks for your help and support!
Michael Mariotte, Executive Director
Nuclear Information and Resource Service
nirsnet@nirs.org 301-270-6477

Indeed, as Mr. Mariotee notes, time is fleeting for FY 2007 budget changes and to begin addressing the 2008!

A remarkable coalition of researchers, advocates and policy experts have joined together to address the budgetary concerns for the First Hundred Hours. These are: Cascade Associates, Environmental and Energy Study Group, Geothermal Energy Assoc., Nuclear Information and Resource Service, Public Citizen, SUN DAY Campaign, and the US Combined Heat and Power Association. In a letter due to be released on 27 December to every member of Congress, they urge the following:

In general, we support what we understand to be Congress’ intent to fund programs in FY’07 at the FY’06 level as being a good starting point for the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) sustainable energy programs.
We believe that it is essential to sustain funding at or above historic levels (i.e., FY’06 and earlier) for the core renewable energy and energy efficiency programs in DOE as well as in other federal agencies.
We also note that as work progressed during this past year on the FY’07 appropriations bills, consensus was reached between the Congress and the White House to expand a number of sustainable energy programs as well as launch several new energy efficiency and/or renewable energy initiatives. We believe these programs and funding levels should be a part of the final FY’07 appropriations bill.
However, we recognize – and fully support – Congress’ desire to not increase overall spending limits and, in fact, to move towards significantly reducing the size of the federal budget deficit.
Therefore, we recommend that any increases in the funding levels for the federal energy efficiency and renewable energy programs be offset by commensurate, or greater, reductions in selected fossil fuel and commercial nuclear power program accounts.
We believe that a shift in federal funding from mature and/or polluting technologies to cleaner, safer, and sustainable energy sources offers the best option for curbing greenhouse gas emissions, reducing oil imports, and addressing the nation’s other pressing energy and deficit-reduction needs within the constraints of a very tight federal budget.

PDA certainly endorses these moves. Not only are many of the present DOE endorsed projects are just continuations of existing technology that are potential polluters and greenhouse gas emitters, but due to their nature, set to further enlarge the tremendous commercial energy corporations’ coffers at the public’s expense.

PDA urges all to contact their representatives and their staff along with the senators and their staff to support a green conservative DOE budget aimed at alternative fuels and saving energy, not continuation of the same failed policy that is geared towards commercial fossil and nuclear corporations.

Whistling Dixie in Congress and on the Golf Links

Dixie is the colloquial term for southernmost Utah, so called from its warm climate — palm trees grow there — and a failed 19th Mormon Church experiment in cotton planting. St. George in Washington County is the heart of this Dixie, not Alabama. Like its close neighbor, Las Vegas, the area has been booming. One never really knows why an area booms. Is it word of mouth alone? Boosterism, a desire to be in on the ground floor, or a lemming-like advance? Now, Washington County, Utah is a gem. Only 110 miles of Las Vegas, it has two colleges, a major medical facility and more scenic beauty than anyone not familiar with the area can imagine. It is home to the Red Rocks area of Utah — a pristine desert landscape that borders the world famous Zion National Park and the Mojave Desert. An odd place for a city of mega-mansions and golf courses, certainly, this driest county in the second driest state in the Union, but so was Las Vegas.

Some in the local county and city government was the Las Vegasification to continue, minus the casinos and bars — this is Utah, after all, and the polygamist Fundamentalist Latter Day Saint sects run out of Hildale (and its neighbor, Colorado City, Arizona) is in Washington County. Washington County has been a very popular place for financially secure people in the Salt Lake area to retire: lots of sun, palms, little snow or ice, golf galore, and as always, location, location, location. This is an area of unfathomable beauty: red sandstone formations, and a safe, secure, family friendly place.

But boosterism has come at a price, socially, environmentally and politically. The local three man county commission has been boosting more growth at public expense masked in “environmentalism” in the disingenuously named S. 3636/HR 5769, the “Washington County Growth and Conservation Act” sponsored by Senator Bob Bennett and Rep. Jim Matheson. This bill was thankfully dead with Hastert’s recent last gavel bang, but it has a chance of rearing its head again in the new Congress.

This bill seeks to redefine pubic lands, the majority of which are already under the protection of the Zion National Park, while failingto protect over 70% of the land that is of “wilderness quality” and to give away land to the highest bidders and carve out water, utility, transportation and off road vehicle track corridors. Yes, corridors, not corridor. The bill sought to sell off 40 miles square of public land — with no methodology of determining where as well as to give away land to the County outright!

Just coincidentally, one of the county commissioners, Alan
Gardner happens to have a large interest in “The Ledges” an “upscale” housing and golf development on the edge of the Zion National Park in St. George, along with his St. George city councilman brother Larry. Both also own grazing contracts with the Bureau of Land Management in the wilderness area outside the city for their cattle business. Equally coincidentally, another county commissioner, Jay Ence, who is pushing these bills happens to be the former head of a development company whose three nephews now own the company following his retirement. The Salt Lake Tribune, notes that just for starters,

Environmentalists, some local officials and residents oppose the plan, which also outlines a route for a new highway through tortoise habitat in the Red Cliffs Desert Preserve that potentially could link a development in which the Gardner brothers havea financial interest and land they own to Interstate 15.

but adds that

To their credit, Ence and the Gardners seem to have scrupulously followed Utah law concerning conflicts of interest while in public service. They’ve certainly done some good as public servants and undoubtedly feel that election to office is a mandate for their pro-growth agenda.

 

One might term the SL Tribune‘s corrolary to be “damning with faint praise,” at best. The local St. George newspaper, TheSpectrum, has also exposed the connections between the developers and city/county “fathers” of Dixie with less word mincing.

Seldom has such legislation been met by such outrage by the press, environmental and citizens groups and even business as this fiasco. The SierraClub; Peter Metcalf, the head of Black Diamond Equipment, Ltd., and a board member of the Outdoor Industry Association; the Zion-Mojave Wilderness Organization , the Southern Utah Wilderness Association (SUWA), and thousands of individual Utahans and lovers of nature and proponents of intelligent growth/conservation strategies have joined in opposing these bills. Even the Bush Administration’s own Department of the Interior, in the person of Chad Calvert , Principal Deputy Asst. Secretary of the Interior, Land and Minerals Management opposed these bills!

The proposed public highway through the desert (near The Ledges luxury housing development partially owned by the Brothers Gardner) happens to be a sanctuary for the desert tortoise. The “water developlment corridor” aspect is a proposed 90 mile cross country pipeline from Lake Powell to St. George, to feed the thirst of the golf links and 200,000 new homes that the local developers want to see. Over 25 Million people downstream of Lake Powell on the Colorado River would be affected by these bills if the water development was allowed! ATV trails! High lines! Squashed tortoises! Land giveaway! Corporate welfare! How about a pony and a Mercedes for the each member of the Washington County Commission and St. George city council while we’re at it?

The people of Washington County don’t want unbridled growth.
They want wise oversight. They want to see the Red Rocks and hike the canyons unimpeded, not a New Las Vegas. As a matter of fact, had these two bills not died in the House and Senate committees where they sat ready for action on the floor, this may have been a new low in corporate welfare and disingenuity. Luckily they died, but they may return…

And if you think that is bad enough, wait until you learn about the gas development proposed in Dixie…..