Utah

In the waning days of the Bush presidency, Utah's Bureau of Land Management went on a tear.

In December, it auctioned off 77 leases -- to 100,000 acres of federal land -- to oil and gas companies intent on drilling Utah.  Some of the leases would have allowed drilling within view of the Arches and Canyonlands national parks.

Now, 60 of those leases have been deemed illegal and revoked by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, in response to a federal restraining order that halted the sale of the drilling rights. 

He based his decision on a report that "found that people in the Bureau of Land Management's Utah office, which oversaw the sales, believed that energy concerns should override environmental or recreational ones," according to the LA Times, which quoted Salazar as saying, "There is no such preference for the use of the land."

Environmentalists hailed Salazar's decision, which was decried by energy groups as antithetical to the Obama Administration's wish for energy independence.

There's a move underway in southern Utah to make the Cedar Breaks National Monument a national park. The idea has been around for a few years, but got officially aired for the first time this week, reports Mark Havnes of the Salt Lake Tribune. If successful, it would make the area, famous for its red rock amphitheater, the sixth national park for Utah, and the 54^th for the country. The news comes just as the National Parks Second Century Commission, chaired by former Senators Howard H. Baker, Jr. of Tennessee and J. Bennett Johnson, Jr. of Louisiana prepare to release their final report, "Advancing the National Park Idea" later this week.

The dialogue in Utah so far seems focused on the issues of how such a national park designation would affect private landowners in the area, and how much money it could bring in tourism. Maybe the report later this week will bring a renewed focus on the original purpose of such landmark parks and what they could mean for all our futures.

Dreams bring immigrants to the United States - under legal circumstances and otherwise. Sometimes the dreams are so powerful they make people do desperate things. And desperate people are easy prey for scams, like one unfolding now in Utah. Pamela Manson of the Salt Lake Tribune reports on a woman who has been accused by the Utah State Bar of posing as an attorney and taking money from scores of illegal immigrants - many of whom belonged to her same church --  in exchange for bogus promises to help them get legal papers. The woman has denied the allegations, and a federal investigation did not produce criminal charges, according to the Tribune report.

That such scams occur is not surprising. There have been others recently.

What is surprising, is that those immigrants who stepped forward to help immigration officers try to expose fraud, are now being deported. The immigrants say they were promised a chance to stay in the country legally, if they helped.

Immigration officials say they never promised. Some people would call that miscommunication. Some people would call that a scam.

Luis Maco is one of those waiting under threat of deportation. He agreed to wear a wire for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He's waiting now to hear whether he will be deported to Peru, and separated from his family.

"For a person coming from another country, the American dream is bigger than to an American," Maco said in the Tribune's story. "It's a dream becoming a nightmare."

A plan, hatched largely beyond the public eye, to divvy up water in an already arid Utah desert and send it to Las Vegas has drawn the ire of citizens, conservationists, and elected officials. The controversial Snake Valley water deal is now the subject of a series of citizen meetings as critics try to learn why details of the four-year negotiations that led to the water deal remain secret,  reports Patty Henetz of the Salt Lake Tribune.

 The plan would divide water in the aquifer that runs under Utah and Nevada, and use it to feed growth in Las Vegas. "We don't have any surplus water in Snake Valley. For goodness' sake, we're the epicenter of the drought," rancher Cecil Garland said during a citizens meeting this week.

 Critics warn that a drop in the water table could kick up giant toxic dust storms. The soils that would blow away could contain mercury, deadly fungal spores, and radioactive particles, yet another legacy of nuclear tests in Nevada.

 The current recession has already forced many to revisit their history texts for information about the Great Depression and how we got there. Maybe it's time to re-read the chapter on the Dust Bowl.

Don't let the facts get in your way when you're on 'fact-finding exploration.'

Utah lawmakers invited in a boatload of climate change critics who say Utah residents will pay through the nose in lost jobs and high energy costs for the Obama administration's climate change policies.  Besides, they said, the science itself is questionable. Who are these critics? A metals scientist, a lawyer, a politician and a businessman, the Salt Lake Tribune reports. No actual climate scientists, despite hours of testimony. The scientists say they're available.

"We're learning an awful lot very quickly," said one such scientist,  Rob Gillies, whose center tallies and interprets climate data that is used by agriculture, water managers and others whose livelihoods depend on climate information. Gilles' data increasingly suggests that Utah will become warmer and more likely to suffer deep droughts even if, as some climate models predict, more water falls.

I don't hear you, I don't hear you.