Submitted by coldrum ---
Eastern Utah's Nine Mile Canyon holds more than 10,000 known American Indian rock-art images. But they may be no match for 800 gas wells. A Denver-based energy company's proposal to drill at least that many wells on the West Tavaputs Plateau threatens the thousand-year-old Anasazi ruins, where dust and chemicals are already corroding peerless rock art.
And the Bill Barrett Corp. wants to drill some of those wells in wilderness study areas and critical habitat for deer, elk and sage grouse, as well as operate year-round instead of laying off for the winter as has been the tradition to accommodate wildlife needs.
Conservationists say the company's full-field development of the Stone Cabin and Peters Point gas fields would guarantee the end of Nine Mile Canyon as it has been for millennia.
"This project, if approved, if implemented, will be the death blow for Nine Mile Canyon, for the cultural sites there and for the wilderness-quality areas there," said Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance attorney Steve Bloch. "You just can't have the intensive development Barrett is proposing and protect those resources."
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has issued a four-volume draft environmental impact study of Bill Barrett's development plan, and acknowledges the potential harm to wildlife, air quality and scenery.
But it was the ongoing and potential harm to archaeological treasures that prompted most public concern in the early days of environmental analyses. Responding to the outcry, the BLM crafted an alternative specifically addressing industrial traffic in the canyon.
Nine Mile Canyon, actually about 50 miles from Myton to Wellington, supposedly is protected under the federal Antiquities Act and already among fewer than 70 comparable wonders listed on the BLM's National Backcountry Byway System.
But Bill Barrett holds the leases, and those leases come with rights to explore and develop a minimum of one well for each parcel, BLM officials said.
The company estimates the project would yield about 1 trillion cubic feet of gas during more than three decades of drilling, when big rigs would make hundreds of trips every week for more than three decades up and down the narrow canyon road.
The gas yield would equal about 17 days of national natural gas supply at today's consumption level.
Before drilling can commence, each well location, pipeline and road will get a separate evaluation based on "ground truth" culled from on-site surveys involving biologists, archaeologists and other resource specialists, he said.
The agency already knows that one of the biggest problems is dust and the chemicals used to tamp it down. Road-maintenance crews have been spraying heavy quantities of magnesium chloride on the dirt road since development of West Tavaputs geared up about five years ago.
In 2002, there were just seven wells on West Tavaputs, which straddles Carbon and Duchesne counties near Desolation Canyon. Now there are about 100 wells on the plateau, where EnCana Corp. of Canada also is operating. The BLM also is expected to soon release an EIS on a proposal from Gasco Energy to drill 1,500 wells nearby.
Duane Zavadil, Bill Barrett's vice president for government and regulatory affairs, has long acknowledged the gravel road that winds through the canyon wasn't built to carry the kind of traffic it is seeing, and isn't properly maintained.
Magnesium chloride controls the dust, but also clings to adjacent rock and attracts moisture from the air. The chemical can eat concrete. A typical 30 percent concentration freezes at -1 degree Fahrenheit. When that happens, the rock and the art carved into it expands and crumbles.
That art is irreplaceable - and no one even knows exactly how many sites are jeopardized, because there has never been a full archaeological survey, said Nine Mile Coalition member Steve Tanner.
The coalition's members include hikers, off-highway vehicle users, landowners, government agencies, scientists, ranchers, industry, people who grew up there and people who live there now. They don't necessarily want to stop the drilling, Tanner said.
"We understand that natural gas is one of the finest things you can have in your household," he said. But full industrial development of the canyon would be "an ugly mess."
For more, including the debate to pave the road through the canyon, see the Salt Lake Tribune.
Something is not right. This message is just to keep things from messing up down the road