Energy Boom in West Threatens Indian Artifacts

The New York Slimes ^ | August 2, 2008 | Kirk Johnson

[SunkenCiv]

Less than a fifth of the park has been surveyed for artifacts because of limited federal money.

Much more definite is that a giant new project to drill for carbon dioxide is gathering steam on the park's eastern flank. Miles of green pipe snake along the roadways, as trucks ply the dirt roads from a big gas compressor station. About 80 percent of the monument's 164,000 acres is leased for energy development.

The consequences of energy exploration for wildlife and air quality have long been contentious in unspoiled corners of the West. But now with the urgent push for even more energy, there are new worries that history and prehistory -- much of it still unexplored or unknown -- could be lost.

At Nine Mile Canyon in central Utah, truck exhaust on a road to the gas fields is posing a threat, environmentalists and Indian tribes say, to 2,000 years of rock art and imagery. In Montana, a coal-fired power plant has been proposed near Great Falls on one of the last wild sections of the Lewis and Clark trail. In New Mexico, a mining company has proposed reopening a uranium mine on Mount Taylor, a national forest site sacred to numerous Indian tribes.

[SunkenCiv]

[mgc1122]

Bravo sierra ...

[SunkenCiv]

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	Gods Graves Glyphs	Luckily for the artifacts and sites, the oil companies have thousands of leases that they're not even using -- otherwise the damage would be far worse. /sarc I noticed that one of the projects mentioned was geothermal, which is considered "renewable" and "non-polluting" and "alternative". To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach
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[Smokin' Joe]

Absolute Bravo Sierra. On Federal land an archaeological survey of any planned rig road, drill site, or pipeline route is mandatory, as are Raptor surveys, rare plants, endangered species, and whatever else they can think of, even on reclaimed rig/production road routes.

[SunkenCiv]

Bravo Item Nuts George Orange.

[Flycatcher]

Wanted to read this story. Really did. But I couldn't get past this:

At Nine Mile Canyon in central Utah, truck exhaust on a road to the gas fields is posing a threat...

[Foolsgold]

drill for carbon dioxide

Drill for what??????

[dalereed]

What a load, they were nomadic and scattered their crap all over the country.

Once they moved on it was abandon, plow it under.

[3AngelaD]

Forcing the private sector to underwrite their excavaton and documentation is the only way 90 percent of these sites will EVER be excavated.

[maryz]

drill for carbon dioxide>br> Drill for what??????

LOL! That caught my eye too! I guess with people driving less, now there's a shortage? ;-)

[popdonnelly]

“a giant new project to drill for carbon dioxide”

This author is getting hysterical. I wonder which environmental group(s) he gets his information from?

[Clemenza]

Yeah, the culprit is old man Bush disturbing the Indian burial ground for oil. He would’ve gotten aways with it if it wasn’t for us gosh darn kids, er, journalists.

[VeniVidiVici]

Obviously the New York Times is against all forms of energy generation.

Which is ok. Soon enough they’ll be turning out the lights which will save us a ton.

[Publius6961]

is posing a threat, environmentalists and Indian tribes say, to 2,000 years of rock art and imagery. In Montana, a coal-fired power plant has been proposed near Great Falls on one of the last wild sections of the Lewis and Clark trail.

First of all I would like to repeat my position about unnamed "environmentalists and indian tribes."

My experience ahs been these are always a few obscure, ignorant and bitter individuals, whose sole goal in life is to feel important, by bringing the rest of the world to a halt.

Even toxic waste dumps can be charaterized as "unique." Doesn't mean that they must be preserved in their "pristine" state.

Indian rock drawings? Assuming (big if) that they are worth saving what is the rationalization? We can admire them them while we are freezing in the dark?

What's that defintion of insanity again?

[Publius6961]

This author is getting hysterical. I wonder which environmental group(s) he gets his information from?,p>I don't know and I don't want to know.

But I would like to really **** him off by reiterating that as far as I'm concerned, there is not a single thing that indians have contributed that I feel I couldn't live without. Nothing.

Now, if they had had the brains to invent the wheel, or even writing, I might reconsider...

[A. Patriot]

drill for carbon dioxide

Drill for what??????

See explanation here:
http://www.unconventionalfuels.org/publications/factsheets/CO2_EOR_Fact_Sheet.pdf

[Smokin' Joe]

It is currently the cost of doing business in the oil patch, another hidden tax, but one the industry embraces. At least where I work, and in most areas, the people who work there live there for the most part. No one wants to mess up their own back yard.

Yet even our local paper carried an AP piece about how energy issues allegedly put sensitive areas in peril, which read like a Wilderness Society press release and included the Little Missouri Grasslands, an area of go-back land (former, failed homesteads) they tried to make into a Wilderness area about 20 years ago.

Sorry no link, the paper did not put the story on their website.

[SunkenCiv]

Yeah, ya gotta love that one. I hear it was Bush who cut off that federal program which provided dehydrated water to the reservations in arid states.

[Vlaxo]

No problem.. All they have to do is remove the pipe when the resources run out.

[HighlyOpinionated]

Being part Native American, I don't like to see the Native Culture plowed under any more than I entertain the thought of someone plowing under the Smithsonian Institution buildings, the Capitol or the White House. There has to be a way to save the artifacts and to use the resources under the artifacts without obliterating or destroying the land.

If we can put a man on the Moon and build a Space Station, we have the ability to save the artifacts and make use of the resources under the artifacts.

These Native American artifacts are family heirlooms and are just as important as the items your family has passed down from generation to generation. Maybe these artifact/heirlooms got "misplaced" or "lost" or "left" by our ancestors, but they are still very important to us and should be important to anyone who lives in the USofA.