Take a Break for Some Montana Today
The current issue of Scale Magazine (fly and spin) has a nice photo essay from Montana’s Joe Cummings out of Missoula (page 210). The fact that it’s full on late winter / early spring in those parts of late makes the images all the more sweet.
Bristol Bay: So the Line in the Sand Tundra Has Been Drawn (Again)
Even Outside Magazine felt compelled to chime in on the news out of Bristol Bay last week, offering up a concise, fairly reasonable history of the tussle on the tundra thus far, as well as a not unexpected quote from Pebble Limited Partnership CEO Tim Collier –
“I don’t see it as particularly significant,” he said. Collier called it “the beginning of a process” that would eventually “drive a stake through the heart of any notion that the EPA ought to put any restrictions on Pebble Mine.” He claimed that the report on which McCarthy based her announcement was flawed. His group has requested an investigation by the EPA’s Inspector General into that report, called a watershed assessment, which Collier said had a “predetermined result.” He also said, “I don’t think they have the legal authority to do this. In 42 years of the Clean Water Act the EPA has never vetoed a significant project before it’s applied for a permit. They’re way out on a limb.”
Collier offered up the same line in a Bloomberg Businessweek piece here.
Glad everybody celebrated a bit last week; this issue is far from over.
Dammit Utah
When the email popped into my inbox Saturday before last She Who Must Be Obeyed were driving through Portland enroute to work on a project; I had her read the highlights for me thinking it was the announcement HB37 had passed.
It wasn’t. In fact just the opposite – the well crafted HB37 and HB233 died in committee for what was probably a number of reasons but at least in part due to pending litigation. Read the full details here on the USAC blog.
Kudos to the USAC and their supporters for a good run; the compromise legislation proposed in HB37 was the right thing to do and another run needs to be made at returning rationale access to Utah’s waterways.
Dammit Utah.
