Western Residents Angry At Living In Bush Energy Plan "Ground Zero"

[hatrack]

RIFLE, Colo. - "For 10 years, Garland and Diana Anderson have lived on a western Colorado mesa and loved nearly everything — the mountain views, the sunsets, the antelope and elk. But the Andersons have seen fewer animals since gas drilling began in their subdivision south of Rifle. Then they learned that a company plans to build a well on their 80 acres and that there is little they can do about it, because they don’t own the rights to the minerals underneath.

“I wouldn’t buy there now and nobody else wants to, either,” Garland Anderson said over a recent breakfast in a small diner. Similar complaints are cropping up around the Rockies, which last fall were described by the head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission as “ground zero” in the Bush administration’s drive to increase domestic energy development.

Worries of another boom-bust

The plan has run into unusually broad opposition in western Colorado, from relatively new arrivals like the Andersons to veteran landowners who remember when the region’s oil shale industry went bust in 1982. Even commissioners in revenue-starved rural counties say energy companies are running roughshod over local rights.

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Dave Cesark, environmental specialist for the exploration and production division of Oklahoma-based Williams Cos., one of the biggest players in the Rockies, said his company works hard to keep landowners happy. But he concedes conflicts are becoming more common. “People are moving here, building froofy homes and there’s a lot of development in an area that hasn’t seen a lot of development,” Cesark said. “It’s almost a land battle.”

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http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4087725/

[liberalhistorian]

1. WTF??????

Oh, BOO-FUCKING-HOO! What the fuck did these moron wingnuts expect when they voted repuke anyway? And don't try to tell me that they didn't, because the Western states are EXTREMELY CONSERVATIVE AND REPUKE-HEAVY, have been for a very long time.

Much as I've always loved the West, particularly the Black Hills of South Dakota area (I spent part of my childhood in Aberdeen, South Dakota), that is the main thing that has ALWAYS kept me from actually wanting to live there, the lockstep repuke anti-government paranoid conservative mentality.

So, I ask again, what the fuck did these environmentalist-hating (I believe the term they like to use in the West is "tree-hugging granolas) wingnuts think would happen? Why in the hell does this come as such a surprise to them, when they were told repeatedly that it would happen if they continued to vote as they did and support the candidates that they supported? Maybe if they'd actually listened to, instead of demonizing and denigrating, those "tree-hugging granolas", they wouldn't have to be dealing with this. What a bunch of hypocritical whining idiots!

[el_gato]

2. they bitch and moan as they hop in their SUV