When the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument was designated
under President Clinton’s purview in 1996, it created real hardship for
regional ranchers. New management rules locked up more than one and a
half million acres, discontinuing grazing leases that were imperative to
sustain cattle growers who’d been using the land responsibly for more
than a century.
Part of the impetus for closing off natural resource development at the time was to halt access to one of the best sources of low sulfur coal, including from tribal populations, putting a stranglehold on arid land limited economies. Instituting the monument spelled financial disaster to Four Corners ranch industry as well as the Navajo that has tried to expand their coal industry. One of the reasons Clinton closed off the coal was a backroom deal made to bump up the price of the commodity being mined in Indonesia. It removed U.S. competition at the expense of Native America that, on the other hand, has been tagged to protest pro-growth projects like Dakota Access Pipeline and, now, truncating Bears Ears National Monument.
Related plans for state-of-the-art Desert Rock clean coal-fired power plant was later deep-sixed by environmental groups battling the Diné and partner, Sithe Global, invoking specious climate change arguments that the environmental impact statement finally rejected. Extreme environmentalists continue to use the Indians to further their agenda when convenient, but dump them if their goals diverge, such as improving the First People’s living standards. Fair weather friends at best. Enemies of self-determination at worst.
Undermining (pun intended) the coal industry had begun long before Obama took office, he only swore to finish it off by “bankrupting” it. The left has done such a good job that one of the most important employment opportunities on the Navajo reservation, generating power for the Southwest with coal-fired plants, is likely to be shutdown. The Navajo Generating Station that was lauded in the 1970s for building the Diné economy that has languished otherwise, is due to die because the new administration hasn’t moved fast enough to remove industry-killing regulations.
http://canadafreepress.com/article/reining-in-federal-land-ownership-a-drop-in-the-bucket
Part of the impetus for closing off natural resource development at the time was to halt access to one of the best sources of low sulfur coal, including from tribal populations, putting a stranglehold on arid land limited economies. Instituting the monument spelled financial disaster to Four Corners ranch industry as well as the Navajo that has tried to expand their coal industry. One of the reasons Clinton closed off the coal was a backroom deal made to bump up the price of the commodity being mined in Indonesia. It removed U.S. competition at the expense of Native America that, on the other hand, has been tagged to protest pro-growth projects like Dakota Access Pipeline and, now, truncating Bears Ears National Monument.
Related plans for state-of-the-art Desert Rock clean coal-fired power plant was later deep-sixed by environmental groups battling the Diné and partner, Sithe Global, invoking specious climate change arguments that the environmental impact statement finally rejected. Extreme environmentalists continue to use the Indians to further their agenda when convenient, but dump them if their goals diverge, such as improving the First People’s living standards. Fair weather friends at best. Enemies of self-determination at worst.
Undermining (pun intended) the coal industry had begun long before Obama took office, he only swore to finish it off by “bankrupting” it. The left has done such a good job that one of the most important employment opportunities on the Navajo reservation, generating power for the Southwest with coal-fired plants, is likely to be shutdown. The Navajo Generating Station that was lauded in the 1970s for building the Diné economy that has languished otherwise, is due to die because the new administration hasn’t moved fast enough to remove industry-killing regulations.
http://canadafreepress.com/article/reining-in-federal-land-ownership-a-drop-in-the-bucket
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