Monday Odds and Ends

Big thanks to El Paso Inc. reporter, Dave Crowder, for doing a story after reading an Elpasonaturally post. His Inc. story is: Is Topgolf construction threatening an I-10 embankment?

On Facebook find and join: Share El Paso - Plants and Animals. Great posts by William Hoover and images by Liz DeMoultrie and others. This tells us what we are trying to save here in the El Paso Southwest.

Download this free booklet online: CASTNER RANGE BOOKLET: SUMMARY AND UP TO DATE STATUS ON EFFORTS. Janaé Reneaud Field, Frontera Land Alliance Director, says:

"[It] tells you the story of El Paso’s Castner Range, the 7,081-acre closed firing range that still belongs to Fort Bliss. All of you have played a part on Castner Range in recent years, so you know the campaign we have waged to keep it conserved for all time. The booklet tells the history of the Range from pre-historic days through its years as an active artillery site (1926-1966), then into the early 1970s when parts of the Range were transferred to the City of El Paso for development, and onward to our recent, vigorous and increasingly-successful campaign on behalf of Castner’s conservation. The booklet makes it clear that El Pasoans stand united in their desire to conserve Castner Range, whether as a separate National Monument or as a part of the Franklin Mountains State Park."

Mahatma Gandhi said: “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” We can do all that we can to oppose Trump's environmental policies. What we immediately and most certainly have control over is our lifestyles. Read two stories posted in Grist: Just trading beef for beans could get the United States near its CO2 goal and Now you can plant a tree to offset Trump’s climate policies. Be sure to check out Grow the Forest.

Definitely of interest: How Green Energy Will Help Slow Nuclear Proliferation.
It's from Defense One.

Have a great week. 

What El Paso Missed and What It May Be Getting

What fracking has done to the land around Carlsbad, New Mexico.

Please read Robert Gray's excellent story posted online on July 27th by El Paso Inc.: New tax credit sparks activity across state: El Paso’s historic survey debate gets attention. It's about the benefits of having historic districts have been in Georgetown and Waxahahie, Texas. It's also about El Paso's City Council saying "no thanks" to do an historic survey which leads to having an historic district which is both a plus for building owners when they remodel and a huge plus for the city's economy with ecotourism and a revitalized downtown. 

Gray gives a balanced view and gives a building owner's point about low rents in El Paso. (That can change.) I've said it before and I'll keep saying it: City Council's rejection of this gift of an historic survey is not because they don't see that an historic district can help revitalize downtown and draw more revenue to the city; their main concern is having an arena downtown that will fill 12 square city blocks.

Also read Gray's equally excellent story posted online today: Shale Oil in Hudspeth County? Results show possible ‘oil field discovery’. Be sure that you check out the images for the story. (I'm betting an elpasonaturally post led Gray to get more information.)

One of the more telling lines in the story I am hoping came from Torchlight Energy Resources COO, Willard McAndrew and not from Gray: "The Orogrande Prospect stretches from the Hueco Mountains to the Cornudas Mountains, and on the surface, it looks like empty desert grassland."

Empty desert grassland? Tell that to the pronghorn sheep, the unique species of yucca, and all the other plants and wildlife. Soon our view as we drive from El Paso to the Guadalupe Mountains will be like the picture at the top of this post. 

Would City Council pass a resolution opposing fracking next to El Paso - the kind of operation that may compromise our drinking water once EPWU begins importing more water from Hudspeth County? Our County Commissioners passed such a resolution. Our City Council rejected it.

An arena and fracking. El Paso - it's all good.


Please support elpasonaturally©. Go HERE to donate and help turn El Paso "green".

Opposition to Fracking Grows

Click to enlarge. Map from NewsOK

Reno, Texas has taken steps to ban fracking by "limiting disposal well activity to operators who can prove the injections won't cause earthquakes," reports Emily Schmall of the Associated Press. The oil and gas industry pumps waste water from fracking deep underground supposedly to prevent contamination of the water table. 

Schmall's updated article was republished in various places online and in major newspapers such as the Washington Times and the Minneapolis Star Tribune. In its issue today (Monday, December 1, 2014) the El Paso Times buried the article on page 4 of Borderland. I have yet to find a link to it on the El Paso Times online. (On its front page, the El Paso Times major headline was "Fans Remember Icon 'Chespirito'". The front page had nothing about opposition to and dangers of fracking across the country now that the threat of fracking is just a few miles beyond Hueco Tanks.)

Reno, a town between Paris, Texas and Texarkana has experienced hundreds of earthquakes just in the past year. A Magnitude 4.2 earthquake rattled Medford, Oklahoma yesterday following on the heels of two other earthquakes in the region - some felt in neighboring Kansas. The cause? Fracking.  Read or listen to an NPR interview about Oklahoma quakes and fracking.

No wonder Reno and communities across the country are fighting fracking including conservative Denton, Texas.

And thanks to the El Paso, Times front page story by Diana Washington Valdez yesterday (Sunday, November 30, 2014) and Robbie Gray's El Paso Inc. story on the first page of the "Your Money" section, signers of our online petition jumped overnight from 138 supporters to 551 and during this morning to 658! (Sorry no EP Times link yet to Valdez's Sunday story but one to her Saturday story.) Both Valdez and Gray mentioned elpasonaturally's Change.org petition.

Growing opposition to fracking is certainly a silver lining as are falling oil prices worldwide. Just don't ever expect the Texas Railroad Commission, the Texas Land Office or the University of Texas to ever be enviromentally moral and responsible - at least while the current oligarchy rules the Lone Star State.

Times and Inc. Take PSB to Task

If you didn't see David Crowder's article in this weekend's Inc., you need to read it. PSB gag rule has everyone talking sums up the situation with the gag rule - the PSB Communications policy. There is no doubt that the policy was invoked by the current PSB Chair Richard Shoephoerster, abetted by Robert Andron, the legal counsel for PSB/EPWU, to get back at PSB member Bonart for bringing to light the deficiencies in the UTEP Centennial Water Plan.

Media Begins to Wake up to Jobe Quarry Threat

Jobe bulldozer cut through arroyo next to Franklin Mountains State Park

Last Thursday Hector Montes had Master Naturalist Sal Quintanilla and environmentalist Maria Trunk on his talk show on KHRO, 1150 AM. I had been invited to call in and inform the audience about the planned quarrying next to the State Park. It would seem from the follow-up calls that we got some good coverage.

Prior to the talk show, Robert Gray wrote an article for El Paso, Inc. Quarry next to the state park? No problem! Hector Castro authored an enlightening piece in El Diario de El Paso: Genera polémica cantera de gravilla.

Since Castro's article is in Spanish, Franklin Mountain Wilderness Coalition newsletter editor, Kathy McConaghie, with Castro's help translated it. Both she and Castro gave me permission to print the translation:

Gravel Quarry Generates Controversy

A deposit of gravel located on the western slope of the Franklin Mountains is the center of controversy. Several city environmental groups point out that Jobe Material’s company practice of extracting minerals from the soil can create serious environmental and health problems in addition to the deterioration of the local landscape.

The quarry operation, property of the magnate Stanley Jobe, has a 20 year lease contract on a 480 acre area that belongs to the Texas Permanent School Fund. The property is administered by the General Land Office (GLO). According to GLO press secretary Jim Suydam, the principal motive for leasing to Jobe is simply economic: the purpose of the lease was to collect funds for the School Fund.

Nevertheless, several non-governmental organizations of El Paso expressed their dissatisfaction with Jobe Materials, among them the Sierra Club, headed by Laurence Gibson, who states that the principal problem with this quarry is that Jobe Materials is working on land that is a cultural bastion of the city, besides the fact that there are no guarantees that the environment will not be affected by the excavation.

“The only one responsible is the GLO since this entity does not have any sense of belonging within our habitat and little worries about the local environment”, Gibson declared.

Other organizations such as the Franklin Mountains Wilderness Coalition are also opposed to the quarry and urge the local government and political leaders of the city to relocate Jobe Materials to an area where an important ecosystem will not be harmed.

“The GLO delivered an area that includes arroyo 41A, a treasure that links the Franklin Mountains to the Rio Grande which will logically be affected by the quarry. This property is part of the recreation and tourism plan of the city of El Paso, but now it is compromised for economic purposes,” said Jim Tolbert, a board member of the Franklin Mountains Wilderness Coalition, in a written statement.

El Diario of El Paso tried to obtain a statement from Stanley Jobe but received no response from his office up to the moment this edition closed.

Without Hope

Despite this disagreement with the location of the quarry, the possibility that it will be relocated are minimal at this time, and presently the only possible recourse is to exercise pressure on Jobe Materials to leave the area the way they found it after completing excavation.

“I am very disappointed by the location of the quarry, it is practically impossible that the area will remain intact, and little by little we are going to see pernicious consequences of this mistake. I believe that there is nothing which can be done and it is lamentable that our environment suffers because of the economic interests of a few”, stated Susie Byrd, District 2 representative of the city, in a telephone conversation.

Stanley Jobe met recently with some members of the Borderland Mountain Bike Association and offered to pay the costs to build new bike trails in the vicinity of the quarry, a move that generated disagreement among participants who think that moving the trail would turn into an ecological fault difficult to correct.

“The impact of this quarry to the environment and the landscape of El Paso is huge. Soon we will begin to see rock accumulation in the sector which will damage the image of our mountains. There is no benefit for the residents of the city. Jobe Materials is destroying the ecological system and nobody is doing anything to prevent it”, stated Dave Wilson, president of the cyclist’s association.