More on the fracking front:
Two years ago, the photographer Tony Bynum, whose images of Big Sky country have graced the covers of magazines like Field and Stream, embarked on a different type of photodocumentary project. His goal was to create an interactive map to illustrate the oil and gas boom in his own backyard on the eastern edge of Glacier National Park in Montana.
Mr. Bynum hired a pilot and conducted aerial flights to map the drill pads, oil wells, pumps and power lines that snake along the Rocky Mountain Front there. He said he was seeking to ?get the word out that one of America?s most pristine ecosystems is on the cusp of becoming industrialized.?
The Anschutz Exploration Corporation has been drilling exploratory wells for hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, immediately east of Glacier National Park, for over two years. Now a subsidiary of the company, Xanterra Parks and Resorts, is bidding on a contract to operate all concessions in Glacier National Park for 16 years.
That Anschutz could gain another foothold in Glacier has rattled environmentalists and concerned tribal groups and citizens, who already worry that the drilling next door could permanently alter the landscape. Glacier is home to three of the nation?s largest watersheds and endangered species including grizzly bears.
Xanterra is the nation?s largest park concessionaire and manages lodges and retail operations in several national parks, including Yellowstone. Its parent company is owned by the billionaire Philip Frederick Anschutz, one of the wealthiest men in America and possibly one of the few able to afford the massive initial investment of $33 million required to take on Glacier?s crumbling infrastructure and run the park?s retail operations.
Those operations include an aging fleet of tourist buses, historic lodges and roads that are routinely battered by winter storms. Glacier is accepting bids until April 2.
Michael Jamison of the National Parks Conservation Association, an environmental group, said that his organization had appealed to Anschutz to conduct such a study on the cumulative environmental impacts of future drilling on the reservation.
Currently, a consulting company hired by Anschutz is conducting environmental impact assessments on each individual well under a process regulated by the Bureau of Land Management and the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
?Right now, all the studies have been done well by well,? Mr. Jamison said. ?There?s never been a discussion about what would happen if you string together wells, power lines, water treatment facilities, pipelines and roads. We would like to see an study that analyzes the effects of this level of infrastructure.?
A spokeswoman for Glacier National Park, Denise Germann, said that the park?s previous superintendent, Chas Cartwright, who retired in December, had requested a federal environmental review of current and future drilling in the area. ?We want them to look at the entire operation,? she said, adding that park officials were concerned about impacts on night skies, migration corridors, air quality and water quality.
A spokesman for Anschutz, Jim Monaghan, was reached briefly by phone this week but did not return phone calls posing more specific questions.
Jack Gladstone, a Blackfeet singer and member of the advocacy group the Blackfeet Headwaters Alliance, said that if Anschutz did not conduct such a study, his organization could ?persuade them to do so in court.? Mr. Gladstone, who has performed tribal songs at Glacier Park, says he is not opposed to fracking but that he wants the Blackfeet to know what they?re getting into. ?Right now, we?re driving in a fog bank with our foot on the accelerator,? he said.
Mr. Gladstone said there was a dire need need for jobs on the Blackfeet reservation, where unemployment hovers around 70 percent. But Mr. Bynum argues that while fracking promises revenue, it could threaten the park, the lifeblood of the region.
?On the one hand, Montana has this huge tourism budget to bring people here, but on the other, you have all this development going on,? he said. ?Who wants to go hang out in oil fields??
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