Regional
(2010-02-24)
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DENVER, CO
(KUNC) -
This week's news that Shell Oil plans to withdraw its proposal to take water from the Yampa River for oil shale development is being met with surprise and skepticism from many people in northwest Colorado. Water from the scenic river has long been eyed by industry and cities. For those who want to protect the river, this week's celebrations have been short lived.
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Last summer, as part of a series of reports on western water, we visited a popular river raft boat launch at the edge of the Dinosaur National Monument, in remote northwestern Colorado.
Twenty something raft guides were unloading boats for a Utah outfitter, as conservationist Pat Tierney looked on.
"There's very few wild rivers that you can find to go rafting on, and the canyon is considered one of the most beautiful," Tierney said. "It's the Grand Canyon and a few other places like the Yampa that are right up there in terms of just, outstanding beauty."
Tierney has guided trips for 33 years on the Yampa, ever since he was studying for his masters in recreation management from Colorado State. Now, eight months after our interview - and from his office at San Francisco State - he's ecstatic about the new developments concerning the river.
"I can see the river flowing by, high water, again for a number more years and hopefully well beyond that. It might give us some additional time to seek some additional protections for the river," Tierney said this week.
Environmentalists are still pushing for a wild and scenic designation for at least one stretch of the Yampa, which could block all sorts of development. Federal land managers are expected to announce a couple of proposals this spring. But those may considered just as controversial as Shell's proposal.
Routt County commissioner Doug Monger says local governments want to ensure that there's enough Yampa River water for future development needs locally. But for now, Monger is as happy as Pat Tierney that Shell has pulled its application.
"A lot of us here (in northwest Colorado), we're very concerned about the impacts with the current extraction technique that they were proposing," Monger said, "And the amount of resources that was going to be required to extract that."
Opponents of Shell's plan argued that there wasn't enough water in the river to sustain oil shale development, itself a still-evolving technology. That's led to speculation that Shell scrapped its plans because of PR concerns over the potential ecological impacts on the river.
It's hard to know for sure. The company isn't doing much talking. A Texas-based company spokesman only referred to a brief written statement in which Shell blamed the global economic downturn for slowing its oil shale plans considerably.
Last summer, Shell's Denver-based spokesperson Tracy Boyd was adamant that oil shale mining is still years away.
"And this is a long term commitment to prudently, and slowly and properly address all the technical questions and environmental and social questions about oil shale development," Boyd said. "So that it can be done at the right way at the right time."
Some industry analysts doubt that this week's news will have much of an overall impact on Shell's plans in northwest Colorado, and for that matter, the oil shale industry's long term presence there.
"I would be careful not to read too much into it," said Jason Hanson, an oil shale expert at the University of Colorado's Center of the American West.
Hanson noted that Shell has spent the past several decades buying up water rights across northwest Colorado. And he doesn't think pulling the proposed permit for the Yampa will have too great an impact long term.
"Depending on whose accounting you believe, Shell has probably the second most rights to water in shale country," Hanson said. "So this Yampa (issue), it is not insignificant by any means, but I don't know that it's going to be a deal breaker for Shell."
Environmentalists acknowledge as much. Pat Tierney likes to quote the first head of the Sierra Club when he talks about the Yampa.
"David Brower once said you never really win one of these conservation battles, you simply just delay the fight," he said.
The fight over the Yampa began in the 1950s when the federal government proposed to dam it. Instead they went with Glen Canyon, now Lake Powell. And today, the Yampa is often thought to be the only river left in the state with available water.
Along with Shell, cities as far away as the Front Range have been eying it for several years.
And no one expects this interest to die down, anytime soon.
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