RSS feed for the OCA Colorado forum http://organicconsumers.org/forum/index.php Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:55:02 -0800 5 http://organicconsumers.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=3470 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/30/business...kMibw8b67yaRrvA

RIFLE, Colo. — Standing in a canyon in hilly terrain, Ken Neubecker cast his fly into a cold stream. Minutes later he had a bite. Thrashing at the end of his line was a speckled green fish, a scarce Colorado cutthroat trout.
Sean Patrick Farrell/The New York Times

Mr. Neubecker was fishing on the Roan Plateau, a high stretch of terrain beloved by hunters, anglers and hikers for its clear streams, herds of deer and elk, and rugged beauty.

“There just aren’t many places like this in the West,” Mr. Neubecker said. “It’s a real gem.”

Energy companies are looking at the Roan Plateau, too — through entirely different eyes. Vast deposits of natural gas are believed to lie beneath the stretch on which Mr. Neubecker was fishing, and the companies want to drill.

“What is really special about the Roan Plateau, these lands in particular, is the incredible energy density beneath it,” said Duane Zavadil, vice president of the Bill Barrett Corporation, a Denver energy company that holds drilling rights to the Roan.

The company’s plans are at the center of a battle over the future of the plateau, one that could influence the fate of thousands of acres in the high country known as the intermountain West.

A last-minute leasing push by the Bush administration put extensive federal lands in Utah and Colorado into the hands of oil and gas companies, including 36,000 acres of the Roan Plateau. The Obama administration has inherited the touchy question of what to do with those leases.

As one of his first decisions, Ken Salazar, the Coloradan who is President Obama’s interior secretary, scrapped a series of disputed leases in Utah. Last week, he announced that he would seek an investigation into other leases that granted favorable terms and low royalty rates for experimental projects to extract oil from shale.

But so far, Mr. Salazar has decided against canceling leases on the Roan, saying that he must uphold the buyers’ rights.

Sporting and environmental groups are suing the government in federal court, demanding that the leases be thrown out, and a preliminary ruling is expected this fall.

Lands like those of the Roan Plateau are not the pristine sort of wilderness found in places like Yellowstone or in Rocky Mountain National Park. They are generally cut by roads and have been used as rangeland for cattle for decades.

“The Roan Plateau is a microcosm of the West that up until now would not have received attention,” said Chuck Davis, a professor of environmental politics at Colorado State University. He said groups from across the political spectrum — including city dwellers with second homes, hunters, hikers and ranchers — are increasingly questioning the need for oil and gas development in places like the Roan, concluding that “second or third echelon is still pretty special.”

As Mr. Neubecker acknowledged on his fishing trip, “This isn’t classic Colorado ‘majestic mountain peaks’ country.”

But as the number of truly wild places in the United States dwindles, people like Mr. Neubecker, who is president of the Colorado chapter of a conservation group called Trout Unlimited, are arguing that the nation ought to recalibrate its view of what is worth saving.

This desire to preserve more land is running up against a powerful economic incentive to develop new supplies of oil and gas. In particular, the nation is undergoing a boom in natural gas drilling. New production techniques have expanded the country’s potential reserves of gas by 40 percent in the last few years.

Expanded gas output offers environmental benefits. Burning natural gas emits less carbon dioxide than burning other fossil fuels, and many experts argue that substitution of gas for dirtier fuels should be a major strategy to reduce the nation’s contribution to global warming.

But some of the methods of getting at the gas — fragmentation, for instance, which breaks up the shale to get to gas pockets — can also pollute water supplies, critics say.

This week, one of the largest gas companies said it would not drill in upstate New York after encountering opposition from local residents.

As it lays plans to exploit the Roan Plateau, the Bill Barrett Corporation is promising sensitivity to the area’s wild character.

The company acquired its drilling rights last year after buying a 90 percent stake in the leases from Vantage Energy, which won them at a federal auction last August. (That auction netted nearly $114 million, a record for a lower-48 onshore lease.)

The company has told investors that if it is allowed to develop the plateau, it may drill as many as 3,200 wells. But Mr. Zavadil said the company would diligently avoid trout streams and minimize other disruptions by using advanced techniques to pack dozens of wells together.

The company has also pledged to develop only portions of the plateau at a time, and to put up money to improve wildlife habitats.

“We can have our cake and eat it, too,” Mr. Zavadil said. “The Roan Plateau will be preserved with oil and gas development. There will be a short while when there are wells being drilled and trucks driving by, but the benefits far outweigh those minimal costs.”
From atop the Roan’s cliffs, it is easy to see signs of encroaching oil and gas development. Service roads, well pads and gas rigs spread out across the valley floor. Such intensive energy development is remaking big parts of the landscape stretching the length of the Rocky Mountains.
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Sean Patrick Farrell/The New York Times

The Roan Plateau is not pristine like Yellowstone, but it remains wild. Its defenders say it would be polluted by drilling.

Opponents fear that development on top of the Roan Plateau will despoil it, leading to air and water pollution and disruption of wildlife.

In the Bush administration’s leasing program, those potential impacts were not taken fully into consideration, contends Michael Freeman, a lawyer with Earthjustice, which filed the suit calling for the cancellation of the Roan leases.

Mediation in the case is scheduled for Nov. 6. The groups suing the government are asking a judge to revoke the leases. That would not necessarily put the Roan off limits to future development, but it might require a fresh assessment of the environmental risks.

For his part, Mr. Neubecker said he did not oppose drilling for natural gas, but was concerned that it happen in the right places. “I cook with natural gas, and I love the stuff,” he said. But on a tour of the plateau, he pointed out aspects of the landscape that in his view were worth preserving.

The rugged hills are dotted with sage and aspen groves. Some creeks are watering holes for cattle, but most appear untouched, rushing through the deep shale canyons that define the plateau’s topography. Vegetation hangs from some escarpments, and smooth shale slabs hold back pools of trout.

The cutthroat trout that Mr. Neubecker comes to fish from the Roan’s streams have been isolated since the last ice age by the steep canyons and waterfalls.

He asserted that a spill of drilling chemicals could “wipe out this population forever.” In fact, similar trout populations exist elsewhere in the West, but the Roan’s cutthroats are genetically pure, and preserving the fish is a major conservation goal in Colorado.

“There are some places where there are other values that have to considered, above and beyond the strict natural gas value,” Mr. Neubecker said. “And this is one of them.”]]> Fri, 30 Oct 2009 07:09:10 -0700 http://organicconsumers.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=3470 http://organicconsumers.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=3092 http://www.cornucopia.org/2009/09/proposed...roduce-growers/

USDA Schedules Public Hearings to Obtain Citizens’ Concerns and Suggestions

The “Leafy Green Marketing Agreement,” which requires producers to follow a set of rules (metrics) in the name of food safety, has already shown to be injurious for the environment, biodiversity, and organic growers in California. The USDA is now considering a similar “Leafy Green Marketing Agreement” that would extend beyond California and Arizona to cover the entire United States—let’s help make this rule work for growers of all sizes!

The USDA has scheduled a series of hearing sessions, around the country, inviting you to this perfect opportunity to share your concerns and suggestions.

Click here to view the USDA announcement in the Federal Register.

Make your voice heard!—if you are able to attend, we urge you to speak on behalf of the organic and family-scale farming community. (See below for locations and dates.)

High Quality and Organic Growers Competitively Disadvantaged

Producers’ experiences in California, where these metrics have been in place for several years, reveal what is at stake. While food safety is a legitimate national concern, organic and small-scale farmers bear a disproportionate economic burden of these metrics. Consider this:
# An estimate from leafy green growers in California indicates an average expenditure of $18,000/ year per farm for food safety efforts.
# Metrics require the expense of regular laboratory testing of irrigation water, soil amendments, fertilizers and sometimes seeds and transplants.
# Growers must have someone regularly monitor fields for wildlife and domestic animal incursions and documentation of all their efforts and testing is required.
# Farms with more acreage generally spend more to comply with the metrics but can experience some economies of scale due to larger field sizes and existing staff—these burdens could force the safest farms out of business.
# Smaller farms often have smaller field sizes, grow more diverse crops and raise livestock as well. These farms don’t usually have staff available to help them comply with complicated record-keeping requirements nor can they afford to hire extra help. They incur higher expenses per acre due to their smaller field sizes and greater complexity and disproportionately high testing/inspection costs.
# The requirement to have traceability of the produce grown also poses significant financial and record keeping challenges for many growers—organic farmers are already required to do much of this—it is redundant for organic growers—and local direct marketers have a special relationship with customers facilitating trace back.

Biodiversity Threatened

The environmental impacts of the Leafy Green metrics have also been alarming. Since wildlife, non-crop vegetation (wild habitat), and water bodies could be viewed as food safety risks, many environmentally positive, conservation and habitat-oriented practices that growers have implemented in California have been forced to be destroyed or abandoned by growers threatened with the rejection of their crops.

If these metrics are adopted nationally, organic farmers across the nation could face difficulties balancing organic requirements, to promote biodiversity, with metrics seeking elimination of wildlife and non-crop vegetation.

Voluntary Regulations?

Although the USDA has defined this regulation as “voluntary,” it is important to realize that in California, this has not been the case. Large grocery chains and distributors have refused to purchase produce from growers unless they are a signatory to the “leafy greens” program, making this a defacto rule. Don’t let the voluntary nature of this program dissuade you from recognizing the impact this proposal could have on small, local and organic growers.

Make Your Voice Heard!

The USDA organized public hearings to glean citizens’ concerns and suggestions. The USDA invites you to present evidence at the hearing on the possible economic impacts of the proposal on small businesses.

When and Where:
# Monterey, California
September 22-24
# Jacksonville, Florida
September 30-October 1
# Columbus, Ohio
October 6
# Denver, Colorado
October 8
# Yuma, Arizona
October 14-15
# Syracuse, New York
October 20
# Charlotte, North Carolina
October 22

All hearing sessions are scheduled for 8:30 a.m. – 5 p.m.

Stay tuned! The Cornucopia Institute, in partnership with other public interest groups, will shortly issue a more comprehensive action alert including talking points, information to submit written comments, sample letters and detailed instructions and help regarding appearing at the public hearings (including the precise location of each hearing).

We encourage other NGOs that would like to collaborate on this project to contact us. A number of other groups have also invested in developing an excellent knowledgebase and networking together will leverage our work on behalf of family farmers and consumers.

http://www.cornucopia.org/ProposedLeafyGre...ngAgreement.pdf]]> Fri, 04 Sep 2009 06:32:39 -0700 http://organicconsumers.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=3092 http://organicconsumers.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=3042 http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/08/26-6

Published on Wednesday, August 26, 2009 by Longmont Times-Call (Colorado)
Decision on Genetically Modified Beets Likely to Be Delayed

by John Fryar

BOULDER - Boulder County commissioners appeared late Tuesday night to be headed toward at least a one- or two-year delay in deciding whether genetically modified sugar beets can ever be grown on county-owned farm land.

[People pack an overflow room at the Boulder County Courthouse on Tuesday night as the Boulder County Commissioners take up the issue of six farmers who petitioned to grow genetically modified sugar beets on county-owned land. (Joshua Buck/Times-Call)]People pack an overflow room at the Boulder County Courthouse on Tuesday night as the Boulder County Commissioners take up the issue of six farmers who petitioned to grow genetically modified sugar beets on county-owned land. (Joshua Buck/Times-Call)
The six farmers who last December requested permission to plant genetically engineered sugar beets on land they lease from Boulder County more recently have asked that the commissioners postpone action on that application - a delay now supported by the county staff, which originally had recommended approval of the farmers' modified-beet proposal.

And while the commissioners' Tuesday night meeting on the issue was still under way at press time, county board chairman Ben Pearlman noted the farmers' request for a delayed decision, which Pearlman said would "allow us to do a deeper discussion" on the future management of county-owned agricultural land, including whether tenant farmers should be allowed to raise any genetically modified crops on that land.

Meanwhile, Pearlman told the dozens of people who'd signed up for Tuesday's public hearing that the commissioners would like those Boulder County residents' views about what those further county studies and planning "should look like."

Last Thursday, the six farmers who had originally asked for permission to grow genetically modified sugar beets on county-owned land wrote the commissioners that they'd still "like to have the opportunity to grow Roundup Ready sugar beets, like other sugar beet growers in the United States and Canada."

The farmers noted, however, that their 8-month-old application "has turned into a broader emotional debate that has deeply divided our community." They wrote county commissioners that "we respectfully ask that you delay any decision on the petition, to allow the community time to find ways for our farming operations to coexist as they have for many years before."

Jules Van Thuyne Jr., one of the farmers who's applied for county permission to grow the sugar beets engineered to resist the herbicide Roundup, noted during Tuesday's hearing that he'd been a member of a previous advisory county panel that earlier this decade recommended Boulder County's current 6-year-old protocols and conditions for growing genetically modified corn on county land.

But the debates that have erupted over the proposal to plant genetically engineered sugar beets have wound up pitting organic farming enthusiasts against conventional farmers who want to plant some modified crops, Van Thuyne said, and "this was never our intent."

A number of speakers at Tuesday's hearing expressed support for granting the farmers' original sugar beets proposal. But Van Thuyne said the debates have become so emotionally charged that "delay is appropriate."

Also among the more than 100 people who showed up for the commissioners' courthouse hearing were numerous opponents of allowing any modified crops on county open space.

"Please understand, we are not here to condemn the advancement of science," said Longmont-area resident Steve Demos. But he warned that genetically modified crops aren't as heavily regulated as the biomedicine that's been shown to benefit humans, and he said it's "totally inappropriate" to put genetically modified organisms into the food chain.

Demos questioned the economic benefits and environmental-safety claims advanced by genetically modified organism advocates. And he questioned whether allowing such crops to be grown in Boulder County is "consistent with our community values."

Adam Gorove of Boulder cautioned that food from genetically modified plants "could provide significant health risks" to humans, including the presence of allergens and toxins.

But Amber Clay of Erie, speaking on behalf of the Boulder County Farm Bureau, said genetically modified organisms "have gotten a bad rap" and that crops such as Roundup Ready sugar beets are "highly regulated."

Clay expressed support for the local farmers applying for county permission to grow those sugar beets, saying they "are good people. They are hard-working people." Clay said several of those families had sold some of the land in question to the county with the understanding that they'd be allowed to continue to farm it.

Another speaker at the hearing, Aurora Organic Dairy co-founder Mark
Retzloff, said that company would be willing to help the six farmers who have proposed producing the modified sugar beets on about 900 or so acres of county-owned property north and southeast of Longmont, with a transition into producing organic crops on that land.

Once the land is certified as organic, a three-year process, Aurora Organic would then be willing to sign long-term contracts to buy organic alfalfa hay and silage from those farmers as feed for the company's dairy cattle, Retzloff said.

"We would like to see Boulder make a strong commitment toward organic agriculture," Retzloff said. He said that in the meantime, as far as genetically modified organisms, Boulder County taxpayers' and voters' open space shouldn't "be used as a Petrie dish for human experimentation."

One of the issues that could be considered during a management-policy study of the county's agricultural lands might be to work on ways to help large-scale farms move to organic farming, as well as to work on broader policies.

Boulder County's Parks and Open Space Department staff already was scheduled to develop such a management policy in 2011, but Tina Nielsen, the staffer who's been coordinating work on addressing the modified sugar-beet issues, suggested that timetable could be moved up if the county commissioners make it a priority.
© 2009 Longmont Times-Call
]]> Thu, 27 Aug 2009 05:47:55 -0700 http://organicconsumers.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=3042 http://organicconsumers.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=2596 What do you know about it?
Will this be the end of this world as we know it?
how are we going to do activist work for this one?
Will letting everyone know as clearly as possible help?
What can we do individually?
]]> Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:16:13 -0700 http://organicconsumers.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=2596 http://organicconsumers.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=2110 Is there anyone out there interested in discussing possibilities for economic development in Colorado Springs based on the use of renewable resources, such as building fuel cells for cars and homes, building solar and wind generators, building other alternative energy infrastructure products in the Colorado Springs area? Tue, 16 Sep 2008 15:21:13 -0700 http://organicconsumers.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=2110 http://organicconsumers.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=2032
Kate N]]> Thu, 04 Sep 2008 07:15:05 -0700 http://organicconsumers.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=2032 http://organicconsumers.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=1985
Find more information here:

Transition Boulder County
Boulder County Going Local]]> Tue, 26 Aug 2008 12:36:10 -0700 http://organicconsumers.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=1985