by Penelope Purdy, May 6, 2005
From the time I was a tot, many of my fondest memories were formed in Wyoming’s upper Green River Basin and the magnificent mountains that flank it – herding cattle on my uncle’s ranch, cantering with my cousins on horseback through the sagebrush, or pretending to fly fish in some of the best trout streams in the West. Pinedale. Big Piney. Cora. La Barge.
The names on my home state’s map are cocooned deep in my heart. Wyoming used to have air so clean it purified your soul. But these days, there’s a warning writ in haze on the horizon. I remember, too, the frequent companionship of pronghorn antelope – sometimes one or two across the ridge from the ranch house, sometimes by the hundreds as they raced, unimpeded, across vast open spaces just before sunset. But these days, the antelope face enemies they cannot outrun.
I have watched the once-pristine upper Green River Basin mutate into an industrialized sacrifice zone for the Bush administration’s ill-conceived oil and gas development rush. Some 3,000 wells, mostly for natural gas, already have been drilled in the basin, but another 10,000 more are on the drawing board. With the wells have come hundreds of miles of roads, pipelines and impenetrable fences slicing in crazy directions across both public and private lands.
There is a way that oil and gas development can occur without causing enormous, long-lasting damage – “doing it right” is how folks in Wyoming describe it. But doing it right isn’t what’s happening in this formerly fantastic corner of the Equality State.
What I have noticed most, the last few times I’ve been in southwestern Wyoming, is how the vistas are shrinking. Not so long ago, it was possible from certain vantage points to see nearly the whole sweep of the mighty Wind River Mountains, a giant chain of stone and snow that extends more than 100 miles from about Jackson to past Lander.
But these days, there’s often a noticeable pall over the basin, transforming the breathtaking vision into a muted ghost of its former self. “Rapid energy development in western Wyoming is the biggest threat to pristine air quality in the larger Yellowstone area,” reported the April 20 Casper Star-Tribune.
On March 11, 2004, the Pinedale Roundup said, “Pinedale residents have complained to the (state) Department of Environmental Quality about the haze from a natural gas flare,” caused when a nearby drill rig vented and burned toxic chemicals in the open air. The black plume reportedly enveloped the town.
Nitrogen oxide (NOx) is a precursor to ozone pollution, more associated with L.A. than rural Wyoming. But in March 2004, the Pinedale paper reported “NOx emissions almost triple predictions” regarding a proposed natural-gas drilling project.
And under the Bush energy plan, the West no longer will be where the deer and antelope can play: The second largest mammal migration in North America occurs in Wyoming’s Upper Green River Basin. Thousands of pronghorn antelope move out of the high, cold ground in Grand Teton National Park and the wilderness areas in the Wind Rivers, through the rugged ridges north of Pinedale, to lower-altitude winter grazing near Rock Springs. But the extensive energy development in the area could close off the migration routes, devastating wildlife. Some experts even warn that antelope, numbering in the hundreds, could disappear from Grand Teton National Park.
From a headline in the Jackson Hole News and Guide Nov. 26, 2003: “Energy boom gives wildlife little room. Growth of all kinds in Sublette County threatens Jackson Hole mule deer, pronghorn antelope.” And from the Jackson paper’s Dec. 1, 2004, edition: “Wells displace deer, industry study says.” In December 2003, a guest opinion piece in the Casper paper said, “Migration route critical to future of Wyo. wildlife.”
What’s happening in Wyoming and in energy-rich zones across the West is akin to some cruel version of what occurred, in an earlier time, to the now-impoverished communities and ruined mountain landscapes of Appalachia. Although mining, not drilling, caused Appalachia’s destruction, the ugly legacy in Wyoming also could be polluted air, damaged streams, fouled soils and fertile hunting grounds turned to ecological wastelands. If that’s not the vision the West has of its own future, then we who live here need to make our voices known, from the headwaters of the Green River to the banks of the Potomac.