Seldom Seen Smith - The Monkey Wrench Gang - Jan. 12th, 7PM MST

Oh, in other Utah backcountry news, the folks who grabbed the obelisk out of that canyon (it's NOT a monolith) turned it over to the Moab BLM a couple of weeks ago.

And that helium project in Labyrinth Canyon folks here commented on, the judge stopped the dozers from going in the day they were to start tearing shit up and there's a hearing in the next day or so. 

https://suwa.org/court-blocks-drilling-set-to-begin-in-newly-designated-...

"Twin Bridges had planned to break ground on the project Wednesday, but today’s order (Dec 22nd) from U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras enjoins any further action on the plan until at least Jan. 6, pending resolution of the lawsuit. "

And the grifter-in-chief in DC pardoned the clown who led the ATV ride over and through Native American ruins in Recapture Canyon in 2014. Phil Lyman, now in our legislature! 

“Today is an important day for my family and me, and for rural Utah. To say the last 5 years were difficult would be an understatement,” Lyman wrote on Facebook Tuesday night. “I am deeply grateful to President Donald Trump. Today he righted a wrong.”

Lyman, R-Blanding, was serving as a San Juan County commissioner in 2014 when he led a protest of about 50 ATV riders in a southeastern Utah canyon home to Native American cliff dwellings that officials closed to motorized traffic. The ride occurred amid a movement in the West pushing back against federal control of large swaths of land and came in the wake of an armed confrontation Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy had with Bureau of Land Management over grazing fees.

“Our protest here in San Juan County was not about a road or about ATV rights. We protested a federal agency that wrongly and maliciously raided our community,” Lyman said. “Had the administration, at the time, done what they should have in 2009, it would have prevented a massive waste of taxpayer dollars and the devastation of the lives of the honest people who were targeted by dishonest people.”

After his 2015 conviction for misdemeanor trespassing, Lyman spent 10 days in jail and was ordered to pay nearly $96,000 in restitution, which he finished paying off this past October.

The Trump administration in 2017 lifted a ban on motorized vehicles in parts of the canyon but left restrictions in place through other areas where Lyman led his ride.

In a press release from the White House Tuesday, officials say Lyman “is known to be a man of integrity and character who was serving as a county commissioner in Utah when he was subjected to selective prosecution for protesting the Bureau of Land Management’s closure of the Recapture Canyon to ATV riders.”

Lyman’s pardon is supported by Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee, former Rep. Jason Chaffetz and “other notable members of the Utah community,” according to the statement.

Lyman gave his “most sincere thanks” to Lee, Chaffetz, state Sen. Daniel McCay, R-Riverton, former GOP lawmaker Mike Noel and others on Tuesday “for always being on my side.”

“The prosecution of Phil Lyman — a devoted public servant — amounted to an abuse of prosecutorial discretion by the Obama Justice Department,” Lee wrote on Twitter Tuesday. “I thank President Trump for correcting the injustice stemming from this overreach of federal power.”

You're welcome, LCL. He's a real nice guy.  

Bump...coming up Tuesday. 

In today's SL Tribune  https://www.sltrib.com/news/2021/01/10/new-film-chronicles/  If you can access, there's pics. 

San Juan County • When river runner, wilderness guide and legendary environmental provocateur Ken Sleight tells his life story, he likes to start at the beginning.

“I’m a farm boy from Paris,” he often says. “Paris, Idaho.”

Sleight grew up in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but when he uses words like “temples,” “paradise” or “heaven” now, at the age of 91, it refers to an earthly fold of the Colorado Plateau, a place he first visited in 1955, named Glen Canyon.

As one of the few commercial outfitters to guide rafts through Glen Canyon prior to its submersion under Lake Powell in the 1960s, Sleight remains haunted by the lost beauty of a place that few non-native Americans experienced as a flowing river.

“I don’t understand human thinking — to destroy temples, cathedrals,” Sleight says in the opening sequence of a new film by Sageland Media, “The Unfinished Fight of Seldom Seen Sleight.”

“Would they flood the Sistine Chapel, flood the Mormon temple?” he continues. “Would the people accept that? Then you say, ‘What could I have done?’ We could have stopped it today. We couldn’t then.”

Sleight was immortalized in “The Monkey Wrench Gang,” Edward Abbey’s 1975 classic novel of environmental sabotage, as the polygamist “Jack Mormon” character named Seldom Seen Smith. It’s an association that Sleight, who remained friends with Abbey until his death in 1989, has never been able to fully shake, and one that often becomes the focus of interviews, including in the new 45-minute documentary that premiered at the Wild and Scenic Film Festival last year and is being screened online Tuesday by the Utah Film Center.

“It helped me become an environmentalist for sure,” Sleight said of his friendship with Abbey and the construction of Glen Canyon Dam in a recent interview with The Salt Lake Tribune. True to form, Sleight interrupted the phone call to share the admiration for the wild turkeys standing on his porch in northern San Juan County.

“Three of them flew up on the railing,” he laughed with obvious joy in his voice. “Beautiful birds.”

Chris Simon, the Utah-based filmmaker who directed the documentary, said Sleight’s love of the natural world also shaped Abbey’s views. “There was a lot of mutual influence” between the two friends, she said.

But Sleight’s career and activism have taken him far beyond dreams of God supplying “one little pre-cision earthquake” at the Glen Canyon Dam site, as Abbey’s Smith asks for in a famous scene in the novel.

“He’s one of the classic Utah characters,” Simon said. “He’s touched so many lives. … To me, the number one thing that Ken Sleight has done is inspire people to stand up for whatever land they personally love.”

Standing up has taken on different forms for Sleight over the decades, including after he moved with his wife, Jane, in 1986 to Pack Creek south of Moab, where they ran a backcountry outfitting and guide service.

He fought in the successful campaign to block a nuclear waste dump from being established near Canyonlands National Park in the 1980s, and around that same time protested the construction of the White Mesa uranium mill, which continues to operate and remains a focus of environmental debate in southeast Utah.

Sleight later served as chair of the San Juan County Democrats where he worked with Navajo and Ute Mountain Ute colleagues to expand Native American voting rights, including through a campaign to run a Native American candidate for every open county position one year.

“We were trying to show the county that Native Americans had never had complete representation,” Sleight said. “Mark Maryboy was the only one able to get [into office], but that was the start of a lot of good stuff.”

Sleight said he was happy to see those efforts finally come to fruition with the election of the county’s first majority-Native American Commission in 2018 following a long voting rights lawsuit brought by the Navajo Nation. “[The new commission] has done a great job,” he said.

Perhaps Sleight’s most famous action from that time period came when he rode his horse in front of a bulldozer that was chaining old-growth pinyon-juniper forest on Bureau of Land Management land to clear pasture land near his home in the early ’90s.

“He’s one of the last of … a Western outlaw breed of environmental hero,” Sand Sheff, former wrangler for Ken Sleight Expeditions, says in the film.

The documentary features numerous interviews, including with John Weisheit, a river guide who was inspired by Sleight to found the advocacy organization Living Rivers; Ken Sanders of Ken Sanders Rare Books; and Tim DeChristopher, who, as a University of Utah student in 2008, protested an oil and gas lease sale in southeast Utah by bidding on parcels of Bureau of Land Management land. He spent two years in prison for the action.

“DeChristopher was a very welcome person on the scene,” Sleight said. “I really like him.”

But despite his wide-ranging interests, Glen Canyon is never far from Sleight’s mind. “The Unfinished Fight of Seldom Seen Sleight” and the similarly named 2018 short documentary by Taylor Graham, “Seldom Seen Sleight,” both repeat the story that has been told many times before about the drowning of Glen Canyon: the submersion of elaborate petroglyphs and cliff dwellings as well as the loss of dozens of gorgeous side canyons, amphitheaters and hanging gardens.

Neither film, as is the case with many Glen Canyon requiems, touches on the loss of Navajo Nation land by the flooding of the canyon and the relocation of families to the Aneth extension of the Navajo Nation in southeastern San Juan County. (A 1958 agreement between the Navajo Nation and the National Park Service is currently being renegotiated, and some tribal members are pushing to do away with a buffer zone between the reservation and the reservoir that limits the tribe’s jurisdiction.)

Simon’s film, however, does cover the latest push to restore Glen Canyon — not through a precision earthquake — but as part of the One-Dam Solution and Fill Mead First campaigns. Proponents of the idea, which include environmentalists and some water managers, argue that the storage capacity of both Lake Mead and Lake Powell far exceeds the amount of water in the Colorado River basin. In order to save water lost through seepage and evaporation, Glen Canyon Dam could be decommissioned and water stored in Lake Mead and underground aquifers instead.

Over the past year, the level of Lake Powell dropped by 27 feet, and Lake Powell and Lake Mead — the two biggest reservoirs in the United States — are both less than 40% full. The possibility that Lake Powell could reach “dead pool,” with the water level falling below the turbine intakes, is increasingly likely in the face of climate change, and some analysts fear it could happen with just two back-to-back years of drought.

When asked if there’s anything people should know about his life or work that doesn’t get discussed often enough in interviews, Sleight returned to a familiar refrain.

“I’d still like to see the water from the reservoir — what I call Lake Foul — I think it all ought to be drained and the water be flushed downstream to be stored in Lake Mead,” Sleight said. “One thing is for sure: We’re still trying to resurrect Glen Canyon.”

“The Unfinished Fight of Seldom Seen Sleight’' will be screened for free at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 12, by the Utah Film Center. Doug Fabrizio of KUER’s Radio West will moderate a question-and-answer session after the screening featuring filmmakers and others. The film will only be available for viewers who tune in during the livestream event. Visit utahfilmcenter.org for more information and to pre-order the livestream.

Zak Podmore is a Report for America corps member and writes about conflict and change in San Juan County for The Salt Lake Tribune. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by clicking here.

Just a reminder - this is tonight.

Also in Utah wilderness news, it looks like the judge released a decision this morning and is going to allow the road "improvements" to begin on the two-track trail for the helium drilling near Labyrinth Canyon. 

. 

And the BLM has issued a decision to triple the amount of visitors allowed at "The Wave". Was only 20 a day before in order to protect the resource. I think Biden's BLM can change this.  

Doing pretty good, thanks.

Yeah, seeing that old time footage and pics is always  a treat. Real glad you folks watched. He's such a GREAT man. 

I got Ken to autograph my copy of the 10th Anniversary edition of the MWG at a benefit for the Glen Canyon Institute a while back. It's signed by Ed Abbey also. What a nice guy.  

You saw Cathedral in the Desert in the film. Here's the framed picture taken by James Kay I bought at the fundraiser. Check out his work.  https://www.jameskay.com/

Lake Powell is 120.04 feet below Full Pool (Elevation 3,700)    By content, Lake Powell is 40.85% of Full Pool (24,322,000 af)

Total inflows for water year 2021: 823,452 acre feet    This is 44.27% of the January 12th average of 1,860,098 acre feet 

Last Reading: 3579.96 on Jan 12, 2021

Lake Powell is down -27.46 feet from one year ago.    Lake Powell is at low for water year and down 15.87 feet from the high.

For January 13th, 2021   Snowpack is 70% of avg    TotalPrecip is 60.00% of avg

And this shot shows you how the canyon is recovering as the level drops.  

Like they say, not "If", but "When?" 

And here's 2 Katie Lee posters the GCI sells on their website. Check out their site! https://www.glencanyon.org/      https://www.glencanyon.org/product-category/poster/

And here's the website for Living Rivers.  http://www.livingrivers.org/index.cfm

No Ned, he temporarily halted it right before Christmas and set  a hearing for Jan 6th.

I was told a few days ago (Tuesday?), he announced his decision to let the company go ahead with "road improvements" to get to their site on the school trust lands. So a former two-track path through the desert may become a graded road. Not sure if they get the standard 66 foot right-of-way. I just checked and SUWA hasn't commented on their website just yet. 

The fuckers.    

I enlarged this small photo off the Glen Canyon Institute website so you can see the numbers better. Must've been taken after some releases, maybe in summer. Level yesterday was 3580. 

Top line 3605, bottom line 3557

Here ya go, Ned. On the SL Tribune website this morning. https://www.sltrib.com/news/environment/2021/01/13/judge-rejects-last-di...

To put this photo in context, look at the photo I posted above on Jan 12th. On the river's edge???

(Courtesy photo by Ray Bloxham, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance) An energy company plans to drill for helium on this site in the newly designated Labyrinth Canyon Wilderness. A federal judge has rejected environmentalists' bid to block the Bureau of Land Management from approving the Bowknot helium project, proposed by Twin Bridges Resources.

Judge rejects last-ditch move to block helium drilling in Utah wilderness

Opponents say they will continue legal fight over the project.

By Brian Maffly     | Jan. 13, 2021, 3:50 p.m.     | Updated: 7:53 p.m.

Helium producers say they will begin drilling soon inside newly designated Utah wilderness after a federal judge turned down environmental groups’ request for an emergency injunction that would have blocked the project.

In a ruling Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras concluded the project might not result in “irreparable harm” to the Labyrinth Canyon Wilderness given the safeguards the Bureau of Land Management [BLM] and Twin Bridges Resources have put in place to minimize the so-called Bowknot helium project’s footprint and lasting impacts.

The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) and other groups will continue to challenge the legality of the federal lease the BLM issued to Twin Bridges and the expedited environmental review that resulted in a final decision Dec. 23 approving the project’s exploratory phase.

“They [the BLM] acknowledged the damage at the drill site and the expanded road is permanent. They are going to screw up the landscape where the drill pad is and you will see, hear and be impacted by the operations at the surface,” said SUWA’s legal director Steve Bloch. “We know this operation is going to harm the Labyrinth Canyon Wilderness and we are not done fighting it.”

The judge did voice sympathy with the groups’ objections to bulldozers and a noisy 150-foot drill rig appearing on scenic lands near the Green River — set aside by Congress as wilderness less than two years ago just as the BLM was issuing its lease.

“But the Court is not completely convinced that any harm resulting from the approved work will be entirely beyond remediation,” Contreras wrote in his ruling. “The Court expects strict compliance with the mitigation and reclamation measures outlined in the [BLM’s decision] to ensure that damage is minimized to the extent possible and that the area is repaired as required after project completion.”

An inert gas whose value in global markets has been rising like an untethered party balloon, helium is used as a super-coolant in equipment used for scientific research and medical imaging. The United States has the world’s largest reserves of the gas, typically found in highly diluted concentrations associated with oil and gas deposits.

In weighing the nation’s need for helium against the project’s impacts to a protected landscape, the judge found “the balance of equities tips slightly” in favor of the BLM’s decision to authorize the project. Yet Bowknot could be just the beginning of a helium rush in the neighboring San Rafael Desert, located south of Interstate 70 between the Green River and State Road 24.

State and federal leases on undeveloped oil and gas deposits in this area have been bought up in the last couple years by various helium companies looking to cash in on the gas’ surging value. These firms appear to be waiting to see how the Twin Bridges project plays out before developing their leases covering more than 100,000 acres.

In partnership with a company called Pure Helium, Twin Bridges has already begun preparing the drill pad and improve an existing access road, according to Kirby Carroll, an environmental health manager with Pure Helium’s parent company based in Denver.

Twin Bridges’ principal, Tom Wallace, welcomed Tuesday’s ruling.

“The Bowknot Project, which uses 5.5 acres of previously disturbed land, all of which is outside any designated wilderness boundary, has the potential to generate up to $150 million in royalties for the Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration [SITLA],” Wallace said in a statement issued in response to Tuesday’s ruling. “These royalties will directly benefit Utah schools and educational initiatives, in addition to hundreds of millions of dollars of other state and federal royalties and taxes.”

Wallace and Carroll have declined to be interviewed but Wallace did provide responses to questions submitted in writing. The answers he provided were not entirely responsive.

The drill site occupies an existing clearing that was specifically carved out of the Labyrinth Canyon Wilderness in a practice known as “cherry-stemming.” Twin Bridges holds two state and one federal leases, acquired before the wilderness was designated, which it will reach through directional drilling. The BLM’s authorization allows Twin Bridges to drill wells to each of the two state leases; the company won’t decide whether to drill the federal lease until it sees results from the first, according to court filings.

The drill site could eventually accommodate up to seven wells. The gases they produce would be piped to a processing plant on state land outside the wilderness area.

To avoid disturbing Mexican spotted owls, a protected bird species that nests near the drill site, all construction and drilling must cease during a seasonal closure that runs from March through August. Prior to March 1, according to Wallace’s responses to written questions, Twin Bridges and its partner intend ”to drill an exploratory well in order to test the commercial viability of the subsurface reservoir for helium, which is designated as a critical mineral to produce domestically due to its importance to the United States’ national security and the country’s current reliance on foreign sources, such as Russia and Qatar.”

During the six-month closure, the company hopes, the well will produce gas than can be analyzed for its helium potential ahead of the drilling season that starts Sept. 1.

The company has repeatedly stressed that it would be drilling from “outside” the wilderness area, but critics argue that is a dishonest characterization since the drill pad is on a cherry-stemmed road that runs a few miles into the wilderness. Wallace dismissed that criticism.

“All of the proposed surface activities will take place outside of the wilderness and in full compliance with the provisions of the Dingell Act” — the 2019 legislation that designated 663,000 acres of wilderness in Emery County — ”and statutory intent of Congress when it created the wilderness area, but ensured that the designation did not create a wilderness buffer,” he wrote.

To win their proposed injunction, the environmental groups would have had to demonstrate “a substantial likelihood” they would prevail on the merits of their claims against the BLM. Again, Contreras was not convinced following arguments Jan. 6 he fielded in his Washington, D.C., court. Working against SUWA’s case was the two state trust leases issued two years before the wilderness was designated.

“If the federal lease never existed, BLM would likely still have to provide access rights to the SITLA lease under the Wilderness,” he wrote. “As such, [SUWA’s] arguments regarding the legality of the federal leasing decision are not squarely at issue because no work has been approved on the federal lease.”

According to Bloch, SUWA intends to seek an expedited schedule on its lawsuit so it can be resolved by September, the month Twin Bridges would be allowed to resume drilling.