THE COST OF DOING BUSINESS
While the DOI’s Minerals Management Services has been bilking the American people out of billions in royalties owed to the nation by the oil and gas industry for decades with a slew of scandals recently heightened by DOI employees in bed – literally – with industry executives, no amount of investigative reporting, scathing exposes, Congressional involvement or promises of reform from current Secretary of the Interior seems to be making a dent in the lucrative sales of our resources through backroom deals.
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While questions continue about what legally constitutes a bribe with respect to making deals with government employees and public resources, what The Ruby Pipeline’s parent company El Paso Gas is now doing to pave the way for their $3 billion dollar pipeline is not only considered totally legal – it is required.
Hailed as “mitigation measures” versus good old fashioned bribery, in order for Ruby to lay down its massive pipe, they have to provide compensation to the agencies overseeing state and public resources to ease the impact of the project in order to protect the public trust. At least, that’s how the story goes…
Though the general public gets to review two documents released by the U.S. Energy Regulatory Committee on what erecting the Ruby Pipeline will entail, behind the scenes agencies of all sorts have been involved with intimate “consultation” processes about what they want, what they need and how to negotiate the best deal they can out of El Paso’s war chest before they seal the deal.
As BLM was releasing the first environmental assessment to remove the wild horses in Calico in late October, at the exact same time another document was being submitted to Ruby in what can only be described as a gold plated Draft Wish List, which included hefty requests by none other than NDOW itself.
This document is titled, “
Draft Ruby Pipeline Migratory Bird Conservation Plan” and was recently obtained via extensive FOIA requests submitted by Western Watersheds Project (WWP) on the Ruby Pipeline. According to the FOIA records obtained by WWP, this Migratory Bird Conservation Plan was submitted to Ruby on October 26, 2009.
Though it is plain to see it was originally written to include open and transparent coordination with BLM, U.S. Forest Service and state fish and game departments, this Wish List is now being slid through exclusively under USFWS’s jurisdiction – though all agencies will continue to be consulted and will include “
joint ventures, project interests from private landowners, corporations, non-profit groups, and non-governmental organizations in making any decisions about what migratory bird habitat projects should be completed under this agreement.”
According to this document, in response to various agency demands for compensatory conservation measures, “
Ruby acknowledges its responsibilities and conservation measures that have been identified to provide additional conservation benefits that go beyond typical avoidance, minimization and compensatory measures” (emphasis added)
The Plan goes on to state that, “
In order to accomplish this, Ruby will deposit funds in an account (or accounts, if necessary) to be used for the protection of migratory bird habitat through the acquisition of lands, implementation of habitat restoration, and long-term management of the lands for the benefit of migratory birds. Habitat enhancement and improvement projects will also be considered as legitimate uses of these funds.”
THE WISH LIST
So what does the Wish List cover? Just about everything any and all agencies involved could wish for with a starting price tag of almost $17.1 million dollars when the sum of all the disclosed projects are added together.
There are also a mountain of other projects the agencies are asking Ruby to “mitigate”, many whose total costs were undisclosed, which include:
> $2,000 per acre for fencing in the Little Humboldt Allotment, Castle Ridge, Spanish Ranch Allotment, North Fork Group Allotment, Eagle Rock Allotment, Taylor Canyon, Tuscarora, Diry Peaks, Delano Mountains, Bluff Creek, Mill Creek and 25 additional unnamed allotments in order to protect aspen stands - as well as “other” identified aspen stands throughout the life of the project.
> Purchase property or water rights associated with the Brunea Wildlife Management Areas, which includes Stowell property match for NDOW funding and a seed storage facility that would be secured by NDOW and other agency partners with $1.5 million requested for initial construction of the facility and $375k for staffing it for the next 5 years – including benefits.
> Undisclosed cost of restoring native grasses on 10,400 acres.
> Removal of 92 miles of roads insides WSA’s at undisclosed costs.
> Purchasing the Soldier Meadows Ranch – home of the Soldier Meadows Allotment that overlaps three wild horse HMAs where the Calico Complex round up began. The Wish List reasons why buying the ranch outright is such a great idea by stating, “
With the proposed pipeline route traversing most of this allotment along the head of the hydrologic watershed for Warm Springs Canyon and the northern reaches of the High Rock drainage; a substantial list of projects have been proposed to mitigate or attempt to offset the construction and pipeline footprint. The sum of those related projects in conjunction with a 3 year payout to take non-use could approach the assessed value of the ranch. In so much as this ranch is the pivotal base property for much of the grazing issues within the Black Rock Wilderness area, the High Rock Wilderness and associated NCA (National Conservation Area), this purchase would have the support and possible buy in from a number of partner conservancies with Ruby. The inclusion of all private parcels scattered throughout the allotment such as the springs south of the ranch, Wall Canyon, Cottonwood Canyon, Stanley Camp, Summer Camp, Slumgullion, etc. would all be windfalls for the public and remove a number of current conflicts”. (
Editors Note: It would only be considered a windfall for those interested in seeing the circumvention of federal law regarding the protection of wild horses and burros and livestock grazing in what would then be private and/or state protected lands held partnership with Ruby, a.k.a., El Paso Natural Gas Corporation.)
> At least 20 miles of fencing was also included for lands adjacent to Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge in the Wall Canyon Allotment to separate allotments and “
would control trespass livestock and feral horse use on critical wildlife habitat between the Sheldon NWR and the Warm Springs and High Rock drainages.”
> And at least 42 springs, seeps and various water sources are identified in the document as being targeted for fencing with several references to “feral horses” being excluded from these areas including:
- The only two remaining springs left for wild horse use in the Massacre Lakes HMA (located in the Juniper Pasture on the Massacre Lakes Allotment), Post Springs and Indian Springs.
- Fencing of the 40 acres Miller and Lux Springs in the Nut Mountain Allotment that overlaps the Nut Mountain HMA.
- Fencing Idaho Canyon Springs that overlaps the Calico HMA.
- Rock Springs in the Wall Canyon HMA, where BLM Winnemucca photo files from 2008 obtained via FOIA cites Rock Springs as exclusively used by wild horses and is specifically marked as “No Livestock Use” by BLM. Meanwhile, the Draft Migratory Bird Conservation Plan states “
the replacement and/or repair of fencing around Rock Springs would control trespass livestock” and in another section titled
“Rock Springs Spring Enhancement”, the plan is to fence
"approximately 40 additional acres of the spring and meadows and pipe water to a trough outside for livestock, feral horses, and big game species”. So much for exclusive use by wild horses….
> Other springs found in the BLM Winnemucca photo files being used by wild horses and targeted for exclosures on the Wish List that can initially be identified include Clear Springs, Tin Trough Springs, Summit Spring and Santa Clause Spring in the Black Rock West HMA, and the Antelope Springs, Cherry Springs and Mustang Springs in the Warm Springs Canyon HMA,
However, in the spirit of fairness, some of the proposed exclosures are allowing for pipelines to carry water to troughs that would be located outside the fenced springs for continued wild horse and/or burro use.
Summit Springs, Empty Trough, BLM Winnemucca photo files. 7-29-08
Rock Springs, titled "Faucet found open, water loss, troughs dry".
BLM Winnemucca photo files. 7-10-08
Rock Springs titled, "Faucet open, water loss, troughs dry".
BLM Winnemucca photo files. 7-10-08
Rock Springs, titled, "Troughs after turning off faucet found open".
BLM Winnemucca photo files. 7-29-08
Rock Springs, titled, "Troughs full". BLM Winnemucca photo files. 10-23-08
And one year later? Rock Springs, merely titled,"Troughs Empty".
BLM Winnemucca photo files. 7-18-09
RUBY, EL PASO AND HALLIBURTON
As Colorado based El Paso Gas Corporation was backpedaling earlier this year about their involvement with wild horses and burros affected by the Ruby Pipeline by pointing out that everything they would do would be according to “BLM policy”, one of the issues the astute reader of Ruby’s Final EIS will note is that all Ruby’s proposed mitigation measures for access to water by wild horses and burros involves
hauling water, not the establishment of long-term water sources – those are being considered for fencing during the four year mitigation and reclamation process.
However, while El Paso’s public affairs specialists were recently citing their complete objectivity regarding the issue of wild horse management to calm any further public speculation about their potential prejudices, less than a year earlier, a letter sent by
Ruby Pipeline LLC to Nevada Associate BLM State Director Amy Lueders on March 31, 2009, belies Ruby’s true feelings about feral horses as they proceed to make a claim so bold and ludicrous, not even the strongest anti-wild horse opponent has had the audacity to try and fabricate as fact what Ruby does when they blame wild horses for habitat fragmentation in the letter, which states, “
Further, the introduction of non-native species, in this case wild horses, can have a fragmenting effect upon the landscape” (pg. 4)
BLM also fired back at the suggestion of Ruby’s behind the scenes involvement in the Calico Complex round ups by posting a
Press Release on January 22, 2010, which essentially poo-pooed the idea that Ruby and BLM were doing anything less than honorable with respect to the management of wild horses and burros affected by the pipeline.
However, a press release doesn’t hold water in the legal arena – just ask Judge Friedman – and the legally established BLM “policy” that Ruby will follow has lots and lots of loopholes managers from a variety of agencies can evoke at their discretion.
“
HMAs would be managed individually in four of the eight herd management areas; however, the Nut Mountain, Bitner, Massacre Lakes, and Wall Canyon HMAs would be managed as a complex. This would facilitate recovery of degraded or threatened ecosystem components by providing sufficient management flexibility to (temporarily) remove horses from an entire HMA (or portion thereof) in order to permit recovery following wildfire, resource improvement projects, or overgrazing by horses….”
As the Ruby Final EIS proposes to formalize a blanket agreement to “
erect fences to restrict animal movement out of the HMAs” for undisclosed miles at equally undisclosed locations and BLM’s Tuscarora and Winnemucca Field Offices are working hand in hand with Nevada Department of Wildlife and USFWS to feed Ruby a Wish List that will fence miles more of critical water sources, meadows and habitat away from wild horses and burros – as well as possibly just unloading public lands to be managed by corporate partnerships with anyone but BLM - we, the public can rest assured that BLM will be as open, honest and humane about what they are really doing behind the scenes as they have been with the handling of the Calico Complex wild horses over the last several months.
For a more detailed accounting of the daily death tolls, restriction on public access and BLMs transparent operations of the Wild Horse and Burro Program, visit the
Humane Observer by Elyse Gardner, who has chronicled the on-the-ground realities faced by the Calico Complex wild horses since their removals began.
As for El Paso Gas Corporation, they have lots of on-board experience with those who know how to pass the buck of responsibility to anyone but themselves as in early December,
Timothy J. Probert was named to their Board of Directors. Mr. Probert also is currently serving as the President of Halliburton, Global Business Lines, which includes both Drilling and Evaluation and Completion and Production divisions and their respective service lines.
Wonder if Mr. Probert’s division of Halliburton had anything to do with all the scandals involved in the Minerals Management Services or the currently unfolding tragedy now being played out in the Gulf Coast, thanks to all those “cozy relationships” between corporations, government employees and multi-billion dollar projects that allow the by-pass of environmental protection laws such as NEPA in favor of doing business at the national expense.
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