Western challenges

By Todd Hartman, Rocky Mountain News

Published December 16, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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Western challenges

Ken Salazar will face a mountain of environmental challenges - many centered in Colorado - should he take over as czar of Western lands, water and wildlife in his role as U.S. Interior secretary.

From overseeing dwindling water supplies in the Colorado River, to safely developing oil shale in the northwestern part of the state, to balancing the needs of rare species with energy drilling, Salazar will find himself buffeted by controversy from the get-go.

He'll also find himself immersed in the push-pull between industrial desires to make use of the landscape, and conservationists' wish to preserve it. And after a long list of controversial actions by the Bush administration, he'll be under great pressure to change course.

"There's a bunch of stuff on his plate," said Pete Kolbenschlag, a consultant who works with environmental groups and has long followed Western land-use debates. "There are both issues of neglect, and policies that need to be changed from the last eight years."

As a former director of the state's Natural Resources Agency, and in his most recent role as U.S. senator, Salazar will already be familiar with many of them. They include concerns over drilling on the Roan Plateau, finding enough water in the Colorado and Platte rivers for people and fish and protecting wildlife development.

Among many specific challenges Salazar will face both in the state and across the West:

* Dealing with the many controversial moves by the Bush administration, including a recent action that allows government to bypass federal biologists when considering a project's impact on endangered species.

* Protection of a rare bird called the sage grouse, which environmentalists complain is under siege from energy development. Giving the bird a federal safety net, however, could create major roadblocks for oil and gas work on federal lands.

* How to resolve increasing tensions over supplies in the Colorado River, as population growth and, studies suggest, climate change bite into its shrinking flows. The issue pits downstream states such as California and Arizona against upstream states such as Colorado and Utah.

* How much to open federal lands to renewable energy development. Federal lands could host large solar, wind and geothermal projects along with the energy drilling already occurring there.

* Conflicts over oil shale. The elusive energy source could produce staggering volumes of fossil fuels, but likely at the expense of huge stores of water and the need for massive electrical plants.

* Settling tensions over an expanding gray wolf population in Idaho, Wyoming and Montana. As wolves migrate outside their home region, ranchers fear the impact on their livestock.

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