The Union of BC Municipalities today passed a resolution at its convention in Penticton urging Gordon Campbell to suspend Shell¹s coalbed methane drilling plans in the Sacred Headwaters, the source of BC¹s Skeena, Nass and Stikine Rivers. The City of Prince Rupert sponsored the resolution.

³We hope Gordon Campbell will hear the thousands of BC residents who have voiced strong opposition to Shell¹s activities,² said Doug Donaldson, a Hazelton, BC council who voted for the resolution. ³Northwest residents do not want Shell conducting a risky experiment at the headwaters of our wild salmon rivers.²

Southern Albertans who treasure the unspoiled qualities of Waterton Lakes National Park may believe the park’s World Heritage Site status serves to protect it from environmental plunder.

But that may not be true if a strip mine and a coalbed methane project both eyed for the Flathead Valley in southeastern B.C. — spitting distance from Lethbridge — are allowed by the B.C. government.

The United Nations has begun an investigation in the wake of outcries from area environmentalists (the matter has even been raised in the U.S. presidential race, with Barack Obama weighing in earlier this month) and could end up listing Waterton-Glacier as a World Heritage Site In Danger.

Oil and gas development in Wyoming has been planned in a "piecemeal" fashion thus far, sometimes on a well-by-well basis, biologists and conservationists argued Friday.

Future, more responsible development calls for a much broader, science-based approach, they said.

Day two of the Responsible Energy Development Symposium, spearheaded by Trout Unlimited, featured presentations and discussions on reducing harm to wildlife and other natural resources, and reclaiming wild habitat during and after drilling and extraction is through.

The three-day gathering at Jackson Lake Lodge has drawn more than 180 participants so far. It concludes today with an all-day field trip to the Jonah and Pinedale Anticline natural gas fields in the Upper Green River Valley.

May 25, 2008 - 4:17PM
By R. SCOTT RAPPOLD
THE GAZETTE
WALSENBURG - Kent Smith hasn't drawn a drop of water from his well in a year.

But the well has produced plenty of methane, an explosive and poisonous gas that, at one point, blasted from his well head with the roar of a car engine.

"When you have water taken away, it changes everything," said Smith, 64, a retired teacher who moved here from Castle Rock to be a self-described "cowboy" and keep horses amid the splendor of the Sangre de Cristo mountains.

On the plus side, the methane alarms installed in the past year in and outside of his house - a red light warns him not to go inside - haven't gone off.

Bill Bennett Speaks about Coalbed Methane. He makes some blatantly untruthful statements about the BP Open House.

If you were at the open house you should write to him and ask him why he chose to lie about what happened at the open house that he didn't attend.