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Northern Arizona is turning into the next battleground over fracking, as companies drill for helium, not oil. The Arizona Republic reports that some of the highest concentrations of helium in North America exist on the Navajo Nation, where the tribal members struggle with the legacy of toxic uranium and coal mining over the last century.
Residents on and off the Nation are raising alarms over a lack of information as extraction companies begin to use hydraulic fracturing to extract helium trapped 2,000 feet or more underground. One fracking company out of Texas, Ranger Development, left trash and incomplete fencing on one well site, which local residents had to clean up in order to protect their cattle. Ranger told the Republic it's not required to communicate with permittees who have concerns over its fracking operations.
Also on the Navajo Nation, a company is attempting to build multiple dams on a canyon that feeds the Little Colorado River to store water for pumped hydro energy storage. Washington Post columnist David Von Drehle called it a "rapacious project" while noting the area is a "popular target for exploitation" because of its location just outside of Grand Canyon National Park.
Adopted wild horses sent to slaughter
A New York Times investigation found that a Trump administration program that paid people to adopt wild horses from the Bureau of Land Management has instead led to truckloads of horses being sold for slaughter. The program required adopters to promise not to resell the horses, but the agency now says it has no authority to enforce those agreements, and people who adopt then dump the mustangs are free to do it again—getting paid multiple times to temporarily house then slaughter horses.
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Part of the advantage of being a developer who puts forth proposals like these is that it’s possible to suffer multiple defeats, lick one’s wounds, replenish one’s war chest, and return to fight again in a cycle that can continue pretty much indefinitely. Conservationists, on the other hand, need only lose once, at which point whatever they’ve been fighting to protect is either irreparably harmed . . . or vanishes forever.”
