Another ill advised State Land Office deal has been given a dagger in the heart by the Environment department. Thanks go to Secretary Ron Curry and the residents of Torrance County who objected to the harebrained idea. Hopefully, it will be fatal. State Land Commissioner Pat Lyons gave out a no bid lease to a company that wants to build an electrical generating plant near Estancia. The fuel for the plant would have been hundreds of square miles of Pinon-Juniper forests on State Land. This was done with no scientific review by the Land Office. No water studies, no wildlife studies, no ecosystem studies. The reason the land office did this deal was to increase the amount of grazing land for Lyon's ranching buddies. Ironically, the forests sprang up as thick as they did because of overgrazing in the first place.
I think there probably could be some thinning done in some of the areas, especially with the Juniper trees. But what was being planned was putting forest health in the closet and basing all decisions on how much fuel would be needed at the plant. It just doesn't make sense to me that we would put Pinon trees, which bear food, into an incinerator.
1 comment:
Hey, Jim; welcome home! It sounds like your vacation was terrific. I hope you are well-rested. :)
I saw this info on the news last night and was so glad to hear it's been killed. I can't believe they were going to do this without studies and considerations, either.
Fuel from the forests? Why not just burn the whole thing down and create a wasteland... oh, wait, that IS what they were proposing.
Tsk!
Thanks for continuing to stay on top of this kind of stuff. I, for one, am always interested in what you have to say about our land management.
:)
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