Thursday, 01 May 2003

Why-oming

In a much-anticipated decision, the Wyoming Bureau of Land Management announced yesterday that it would approve the development of as many as 51,000 coalbed methane wells in Wyoming and Montana's Powder River Basin. Although the BLM also called for a team of government representatives to monitor the air- and water-quality effects of the wells, environmentalists were disappointed by the decision, which paves the way for the largest-ever oil and gas development approved on federal lands. Under the decision, which lifted a 34-month moratorium on coalbed methane mining, companies can begin applying for drilling permits right away. However, some environmental organizations, including the Wyoming Outdoor Council, were considering suing to block the plan.

We've Got Mail

Some enviros were irked when Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens (R) recently pushed through a measure calling for permission to label wild seafood "organic." After all, there's no telling where salmon and other sea critters have been hanging out or what they've been eating. But today in our Letters section, a Grist reader argues that the Alaska wild seafood industry deserves the boost that organic certification would bring, noting that it's widely considered to be one of the more sustainable fisheries and is increasingly threatened by fish farming, which is far more environmentally destructive. Other readers tackle different topics: Should we raise our own chickens, or give up eggs altogether? Are economists -- even the ecological kind -- just mucking things up? Explore these tantalizing topics and more, only on the Grist Magazine website.

Golden Brown

California is home to six of the 10 most polluted metropolitan areas in the U.S., according to national smog rankings released today by the American Lung Association. In fact, the top four areas were all in the Golden(Brown) State: Los Angeles-Riverside-Orange County, Fresno, Bakersfield, and Visalia-Tulare-Porterfield. Those rankings mask the fact that California's air quality has actually improved on the whole, but the state faces "such a large hill to climb that it's hard for that [improvement] to show at this point," according to ALA National Policy Director Janice Nolen. Almost half of all U.S. residents live in counties with unhealthy smog levels, and 55 percent of all tested counties received a failing grade from the ALA. Conservative institutes decried the rankings, calling them exaggerated.