Oil well within sight of Arches N.P.

[Michael Davis]

Check this article on yahoo news. It seems the Bush administration wants to grant drilling within sight of Arches Nat. Park in Utah as well as other landmarks in southern Utah. Here's the link…

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081116/ap_on_bi_ge/national_parks_drilling

[Joe Clement]

What's the big deal?

[Mark Roberts]

"What's the big deal?"

Most people who backpack, hike, and camp do so to enjoy nature, not oil wells. If Bush had his way, there would be no protections for national parks and wilderness areas. He seems only interested in using our public land to help his friends in the oil, logging, and minning business.

[Jay Wilkerson]

Watch out Big Brother will stop this thread. I talked about the Bush Adm. and the threads were deleted.

[Tom Caldwell]

They could mount wind turbines on the arches.

[Joe Clement]

Still silly. Don't go to the edge of the park and look out. After it's drilled, you won't be able to tell. We're going to have to expand the NIMBY acronym.

I wouldn't worry about it; the Obamessiah will make domestic drilling illegal soon anyway.

[Michael Davis]

When I started this thread, I didn't intend for it to be a political commentary, although I sited the "Bush admin." maybe I should have written, "current admin."

The article did arouse my interest as a backpacker and not having much knowledge of how this would actually play out, it caused me some concern. As Joe mentioned, perhaps this isn't as invasive as I pictured. Maybe some of you can enlighten me further.

Tom, as to the idea of wind turbines, perhaps they would be more efficient mounted inside the arches, to take advantage of the venturri effect! ;-)

[Misfit Mystic]

"After it's drilled you won't be able to tell." This statement is inaccurate Joe. A more accurate statement would be "After it's drilled you won't be able to see it." Visual impacts are the most obvious negatives to oil extraction, but also the least damaging from a longevity standpoint. As you said, after they've drilled, the visual impact goes away, but chances are, you will certainly be able to tell. Most of the impacts are far more permanent and far less obvious.

[Scott S]

Scott got it exactly right on the less obvious impacts. Oil drilling drives off deer, antelope, sage grouse, and all sorts of other native wildlife. If you do that over a large enough area, even after you take away the rigs, you're left with a landscape devoid of wildlife (not to mention riddled with roads and poisoned with the chemicals they use to get out the oil).

And for what? A few more years of feeding our fossil fuel dependency and helping to cook the planet? No thanks.

[Sarah Kirkconnell]

Look through the arch. Now add a drilling operation. That is the view from Delicate Arch, the symbol of Utah.

[Joe Clement]

That is a more accurate re-statement of what I said. And it's probably a gas well, being Utah. Guess I'm just bitter, I can't drive down a highway with seeing thousands of big, ugly wind turbines screwing up all our mesas, just so NIMBY out-of-staters can ease their conscious by buying "green". But try to put one of those wind turbines up in most states, especially the ones that clamor the most for green power, and you have a fight on your hands.

"Oil drilling drives off deer and antelope"? Where did you read that. Did the drilling in New England run off all the antelope and deer? I have to honk to get them off location several times a week. Please. Sure have a lot of experts here, for people who have never lived within a thousand miles of an oilfield. Anyway, I'm getting (possible profanity detected), and I hate that. I apologize, and you can continue this thread without me.

[Sarah Kirkconnell]

We have plenty of wind turbines in Washington and many more are visible as you drive I-90 and I-82 in other states.
In comparison to other forms of energy gathering they would be one the least noticeable. I rarely notice them when driving – I actually find them pretty in an odd way. If I had land in an area where they could be used, I would have them up.

I have lived near both oil and gas. I also grew up right across the Columbia River from a nuclear power plant.

Some of the ugliest sites are nuclear power plants, oil wells, digging operations and mining.

[Scott S]

"Oil drilling drives off deer and antelope"? Where did you read that.

Um, in a bunch of scientific papers and at talks at scientific meetings. And, actually, I grew up in Texas and lived in the West for several years, so I've seen up close what drilling looks like and what it does to the landscape. It ain't pretty.

But if you have some better scientific evidence about drilling, I'd be happy to look at it–I'm a scientist myself, and I am always open to new evidence.

[Tom Caldwell]

"'Oil drilling drives off deer and antelope'? Where did you read that."

Well, I don't know about the antelope, but in my area they are having to get bowhunters to hunt the deer out of the suburbs because they are so thick. I'm not defending oil rigs though.

[Misfit Mystic]

It's true, I do live in an area where mining and oil/gas extraction don't exist. My previous home was in Magna, Utah, home of the Kennecott(sp?) copper mine. You know, one of mankind's only creations visible from space. Go ask former residents what Bingham canyon was like before the mine. We also had the Tooele Army Depot (home of the nation's chemical weapons stockpile) and Dugway Proving Ground (where the military has tested a number of it's weapons). This in a state where we also had the former Atlas uranium mine (if you'd like, I could show you some lovely mine tailings that lead straight down into a waterway) and the Goshute Indian reservation (possible home to the nation's nuclear waste at the Skull Valley site). Compared with my former "neighbors" I'll gladly take a wind farm. At least I know the impact will ONLY be visual, and I don't have to worry about heavy metal contamination of groundwater, an incinerator malfunction creating a poison gas cloud 15 miles away, etc. Never heard of long-term site contamination from a windmill, and I don't think anyone has ever been evacuated due to malfunction of a wind farm. I know these sites aren't oil fields; they are however more examples of using the land in a way which destroys their future use for anything else.

[Michael Davis]

Hey! Don't forget that windmills always have tulips planted around them!? Or am I reading too much Don Quixote? :-)

[Rick Dreher]

To see why unfettered drilling, especially near national parks, monuments and wilderness areas should, no, must be stopped, have a look:

http://skytruth.mediatools.org/taxonomy/term/270

QED

[Roger Caffin]

Blimey. Unreal.

> Oblique aerial shot of experimental drilling in Jonah Field at 5 to 10-acre spacing, which will occur over much of the 30,000 acre field if BLM approves the addition of up to 3100 new wells. For this experiment,portable mats are being placed on the ground in hopes that this will reduce the surface disturbance.

Bit hard to claim no surface disturbance after reading this comment.

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