"Drill, Drill, Drill"As we've noted a few times, the issue of "local control" to control business or agricultural issues is something that Iowa counties are struggling with. However, it's not just in Iowa.
Western states are also struggling to protect both their land and way of earning a living from encroaching business interests.
The battle cry is the same as in past movements: a call for local control over a distant federal landlord. But for the first time, it is the Republicans who find themselves the target of angry speeches about lost property rights and tone-deaf federal land managers. And people who have been on opposing sides of the major land battles in the West - mainly property owners and ranchers versus environmentalists - are now allies.
"The word from Washington is drill, drill, drill, and now they've basically destroyed our ranch," said Tweeti Blancett, a coordinator for George Bush's presidential campaign in San Juan County, N.M. "We've been in a firestorm down here. A lot of Republicans are upset."
The 32,000 acres of public land that Ms. Blancett and her husband, Linn, have long used for grazing cattle is now riddled with gas wells and pipelines. Petroleum byproducts have poisoned the water, she said, killing animals and causing the fertility rate to plummet.
These issues are disturbing enough - but it's also disturbing that issues like this are so starkly partisan that things like this are viewed as party politics - and an ideological turf war to be won or lost.
Now, I can understand how confusion is easily generated when discussing the sometimes esoteric issues of global warming and air pollution - particularly in states like Iowa. (We don't suffer the smog that costal cities do - and for many people, grasping the significance of 'average global temperature' is hard to do. After all - it's not hot outside every day!)
What should't be confusing is how deregulation has effected the simple issues - the folks that built farms in Iowa realized a long time ago that you should build your outhouse away from the cistern, and your water supply.
However, in 2005 we discuss topics like:
Wastewater Blending - determining just how much "solid waste" is acceptable to release into rivers and streams.
Fish Kills - how much hog feces does it take to kill off a stream?
Mountain Topping - is it a good thing to bury rivers and streams in rubble while polluting the water supply with arsenic?
... now we can discuss the destruction of hunting and ranching grounds by careless drilling and oil production efforts.
The environmental problems we're creating are becoming less esoteric and more concrete everyday.
Shouldn't the policy of "not building outhouses next to our cisterns" be common sense and not just partisan politics?
