Posted on 07/03/2017 4:46:08 PM PDT by Twotone
The House Natural Resource Committee passed the Resilient Federal Forests Act of 2017 today, mostly along party lines. The bill’s supporters claim it will help mitigate or prevent the spread of wildfire-prone areas by easing restrictions on forest-thinning.
Environmentalists, however, note the bill goes too far. They claim it opens the door for the timber industry to move into protected wildlands. They also point to the bill’s delisting of the Cascade-Siskiyou forests as a national monument, potentially marking the first monument rescinded per Trump’s executive order.
The bill will go before the full House for a vote, expected by August 20th.
(Excerpt) Read more at gearjunkie.com ...
Everything Trump opens will be litigated. Might as well open up all the monuments to logging and drilling.
I sure hope so! Our public lands have been SO mismanaged for way too long!
And the results? Well, of course, the, ‘Erf Firsters’ blame it on GW, but it is truly a government-made problem in the first place!
We’ve got sh*tty roads, crumbling infrastructure and bad land management.
Gee! I wonder who can start to change that? ;)
The Utah Coal Lockup: A trillion dollar Lippo payoff?
By: Sarah Foster
When the President signed the Executive Order designating 1.7 million acres of land in southwest Utah as the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, his action placed the area off limits to mineral extraction and development.
The New York Times reported that the monument encloses the largest coal field in the nation, the Kaiparowitz Plateau, which contains at least 7 billion tons of coal worth over $1 TRILLION.
Kentucky-based company Andalux Resources, which holds leases on 3,400 acres in the area, was planning to open a huge operation (underground, not strip mining) that would have generated 1,000 jobs, $1 million in annual revenue for Kane County, and at least $10 million a year in state and federal taxes, according to the New York Times. Folks living in the area wore black arm bands the day o the signing - but Clinton didn't see them. He chose to make his announcement in a neighboring state. WHY?
Why did he do it? Why lock up $1 trillion worth of coal?
An obvious explanation is he was hoping to secure the environmentalist vote. Though that was no doubt part of his reasoning, he had surely achieved such an objective earlier this summer when he declared the huge area outside Yellowstone National Park a World Heritage Area. Let'' look further
Moreover, the coal at Kaiporowitz Plateau is a kind of coal that is not found "everywhere." It is very low sulfur, low ash - hence, low polluting - coal, the kind in high demand for power plants
Besides the Kaiparowitz Plateau, there are only two other known locations in the world where comparable coal is found in sufficient quantities to make mining it worthwhile.
Colombia in South America is one, but it'll be years before the necessary mining and shipping infrastructure is built.
The other? You got it. Indonesia.
Thanks for posting. We’ll be watching.
This is a good step in the right direction. Maybe we will even see some sound wildland fire policy soon.
I love to see legislation like this but our worthless Rino House members will never vote it into law.
In AZ now, lots of fires as a result of not trying to prevent them by logging.
Sad thing is, there is no market. The dam place is wide open for a big outfit to come in and take it on, except, they wont take the chance.
Build a multi million dollar mill and then the feds turn off the supply because of some eco freaks. That is what my contacts with the big outfits tell me. L-P. GP etc.
Then, the GD power company is so stupid that they try bio mass to mix with their coal except, they dont do it right and it fails. NOT ONE of them will get on a effn plane and fly up to the north central USA and see how it is done. Bunch of arrogant assholes that think they know everything.
If these dumb assholes would ever try to figure it out, they could have a supply of wood residue that will last them for ages.
I remember driving through Yellowstone and Zion and Yosemite after forest fires. So sad!
Yes, I TOTALLY understand how Nature works, and fire can be A Good Thing, but really? So much of that unneeded devastation CAN be prevented!
We have a measly 30 acres of woodland, and we take care of it as if our lives depended upon it - because they do! :)
Well, they won’t if they don’t hear from us. I was interested by the very uninformed comments at this site. One person said we needed to preserve these lands for the spotted owl. Those of us following the news know the spotted owl does not need old growth. It can live anywhere - as long as another owl doesn’t attack it. And the other was how these lands were never state-owned. Well, they were held in TRUST by the Fed Gov’t until the territories were turned into states. At which point the land should’ve been turned over to them. Too many people are still so clueless. It’s going to take a lot of time & effort to re-educate. Starting with our politicians!
Good. Too many western lands in fed hands now
One of the most insane things done by President Jeemy Carter was the ceasing of cutting fire lanes to impede forest fires. Anyone who has ever fought on a forest fire knows how foolish this was. Let timber companies cut fire lanes and take the timber where they cut. Restore sanity and save the spreading of fires.
In my younger years I worked for the Forest Service in the Cascades. I remember measuring the diameter of a Douglas Fir that was 9 ft. in diameter. We graded it as a cull because it was diseased, its surface bark was riddled with fungi clean to its 200 ft. top. There was no marketable lumber in it.
Yeaaaa!
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