LETTER TO EDITOR
7-27-07
KILLING WESTERN SLOPE ECONOMY
     There has to be a balance.
     Mineral extraction has long been an important contributor to the economy of Rio Blanco, Moffat and Garfield counties in northwestern Colorado, yet here we have a team of powerful Democrats--Sen. Ken Salazar, U.S. Reps Mark Udall and John Salazar and Gov. Bill Ritter—trying to halt drilling on the Roan Plateau and now in the Vermillion Basin. Opened in 1902 and expanded in the late 1940's, if drilling in that region has seriously disrupted the environment or interfered with the hunting, angling and backpacking pastimes of the able-bodied, then the state ought to have tapped its severance-tax reserves to mitigate the “damage” insofar as possible. What’s happened to all the hundreds of millions in those funds collected from energy production?
      Abandoning these fields will force alternatives, all right, such as windmill generators whose towers and propellers--unlike oil rigs--will remain long afterward to blight the landscape and kill the birds.
      Sen. Salazar blocked the Administration’s nominee to head the Bureau of Land Management because BLM denied Ritter another 120 days to “study” (polite word for neuter) the Roan Plan. Udall and J. Salazar tried to cut off BLM funding related to oil leasing there, hoping to stop it that way, but failed.
     The global-warming religion has mesmerized three once-moderate Colorado Democrats. Boulder’s Udall reflects his leftist constituency, but it’s too bad K. Salazar, J. Salazar and Ritter did not reveal while campaigning that they really don’t give a diddly-squat about preserving Colorado’s diverse economy.
     If these Democrats do succeed in shutting down drilling in northwestern Colorado, and it looks like they will, I suppose the county commissioners there can just go out and put on a new tax to make up the revenue loss. The people, in desperation, would just about have to vote “yes.”

PC