Just Another Oil Leak IN A NATIONAL MONUMENT

Ho-hum. That's all. Just another oil leak. Er, actually two. So, TWO oil leaks ... One in a National Monument, another 3 miles away in a -- oh, don't worry, it's only a National Forest. They're meant to be raped, pillaged, then burned -- right? I'm not making the burning part up, either.

Photo courtesy of Leah Hogston
of the Salt Lake Tribune. Dark
sandy areas are oil/tar.

That's the way Utah -- or at least the US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) -- seems to be responding to disastrous news that two leaks were recently discovered in the Dixie National Forest and the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (GSENM). The first leak was found by hikers on Saturday, March 22nd in Little Valley Wash and reported to the BLM, which oversees the Grand Staircase, on Monday the 24th. Little Valley Wash is part of the headwater system of the Escalante River, a stream responsible (along with its tributaries) for carving many of the region's spectacular canyons. The hikers initially identified between three and four miles of affected streambed. The story first appeared in the press in an article for the Salt Like Tribune by reporter Brian Maffly on March 26th, and fortunately the paper appears to be keeping close track of the disaster.

The second leak was discovered by the US Forest Service on March 24th in the Upper Valley Oil Field, which supplies the pipeline responsible for the first leak. The second leak was featured on April 2nd in a Salt Lake Tribune article by Christopher Smart. This oil field is part of the Dixie National Forest, with the second leak straddling the border of the two parks; both sites are leased and operated by Citation Oil Company of Houston, Texas.

Photo courtesy of Leah Hogston of the Salt Lake
Tribune. Scorched areas around pond show where
floating crude oil was burned off the water. 

It is appalling that this has not made any national news. GSENM is supposedly the "crown jewel" of the BLM's National Landscape Conservation System, yet the agency was basically trying to give the oil company a free pass within three days of the story breaking, claiming the spill occurred 40 years ago and was only recently mobilized by flash flooding. The BLM's special informational site regarding the spill, while talking a good talk about environmental experts and remediation plans, provides few details and only four utterly useless photographs. The two Salt Lake Tribune articles mentioned above have much higher-quality photo galleries live, here and here.

Yours truly in Dixie National Forest, moments before
a hummingbird landed on my right knee. 

The Dixie National Forest is both beautiful in its own right, and adjacent to three national parks and two national monuments. The area is famous as part of "The Grand Circle" of national parks and monuments that millions of people visit annually, literally among the United States' most stunning landscapes, including the immediately adjacent Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks, and other iconic Utah locales like Canyonlands and Arches National Parks.

I personally cut my teeth as a geologist in this area, so I know firsthand how almost preposterously fragile these desert ecosystems are without deadly oil pipeline leaks. Many parks in the area have signs reading "Don't Bust the Crust!," explaining that even stepping off-trail just a few feet can cause years' worth of damage to these delicate soil habitats. Many of the lovely photos you see on this blog were taken very near these leaks.

Those specks of white are my campsite amid the Paunsagunt Cliffs
of Dixie National Forest.

Local residents of Escalante, Utah, touring the Little Valley Wash spill with reporter Brian Maffly called the gruesome scene their "Little Valdez."

One perspective not discussed in any detail so far, though, is water. (For the geo-nerds, "the hydrogeologic ramifications of the mobilized contaminants.") See, the sand and sandstones that so indelibly define this region in the public consciousness are basically enormous sponges. Sandstone makes an excellent aquifer because the spaces between the sand grains, called pore spaces, can make up to 30% of the rock's volume. Unfortunately sandstones don't merely slurp up any water that happens along; they guzzle nearly any fluid that happens by -- including oil. The fact that oil was found along four miles of a stream bed, and is acknowledged by BLM to have a significant underground component at the second leak site (and leaked into a pond there to boot) means that these oil spills have already contaminated local aquifers. Every creature downstream of these leaks that drinks from a stream or pond, or pumps water from their well to their kitchen sink is now in danger of poisoning. While crude alone may not move very quickly through such materials, lighter fractions of the petroleum mixture will constantly dissolve, bit by tiny bit, ensuring a slow, excruciating poisoning of the area.

Lower Calf Creek Falls, one of my favorite spots on the planet,
is only a few  miles from these leaks.

The Forest Service and BLM are talking about removing standing water and some of the soils near the contamination sites on the ground surface, but sadly many contaminants will certainly have already infiltrated the ground and aquifers below. In order to understand how far the contamination has spread, many, many monitoring wells will have to be drilled. Water well drill rigs will have to be driven all over this delicate, parched landscape to figure out the true spatial extent of the damage. While the generally dry conditions will have slowed the capillary seepage of these petrochemicals down, out, and away, the fact that the leaks occurred an indeterminate-yet-not-short time ago means that these two agencies, already chronically underfunded, will be struggling to play catch-up, and may never truly be able to clean up all the oil spilled in this rugged, difficult terrain. Yes, Citation theoretically should be on the hook for the cleanup ... but as the last oil pipeline spill managed to glean a whopping $53,000 out of the behemoth Chevron, only a fool would expect Citation Oil will be held to the many, many millions of dollars this sort of cleanup will cost.

The BLM was quick to point out that with nearly two million acres to watch over in the Grand Staircase (and another two million in Dixie National Forest under the care of the Forest Service), they "can't be on every acre all the time." That may be true, but only a few of those acres have active oil fields -- and as these are not even Citation's first ... er, citations ... it would seem to behoove these agencies to keep vigilant eyes upon these specific locales. This oil field turns fifty this year, and with apparently no major renovations, these incidents are likely to not only continue, but increase in frequency. Local environmental group Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance stated "If BLM and the Forest Service don’t have the resources to protect our public lands, they shouldn’t be leasing them,"and I fully agree. (Quote courtesy of Christopher Smart's Tribune article.)

As profoundly as these lands have affected me, it is not only for the usual "future generations" that Utahns and all of us that love the Southwest must shout and work and cajole these agencies to do what's right -- it is for me, and for you, and your better half, and mine.

The view up the canyons of the Escalante River in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

For the full, very well-reported stories, I highly recommend you read the two pieces by Brian Maffly, and the third by Christopher Smart. Watch the Salt Lake Tribune (@SLTrib) and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance's Facebook page and Twitter feed (@SouthernUTWild) for updates on the situation.

Very cool! Want a more meaningful Spring Break experience in Tijuana?

If so, head to TRNERR.org. The San Diego Refuges (@SanDiegoRefuges) say that you can learn about available

Photo: TRNERR.

volunteer opportunities on the Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve website. When you find your bliss, sign up right there on the spot!

Alternative Break!

I say horse ... you say carriage.

I say spring ... you say break!

Some of my favorite Spring Break memories weren't from beach keggers, though -- they were from field trips and volunteer trips.

 University of Colorado Boulder has one such program officially instituted: Alternative Break. Spring Break on San Diego's beaches, helping their wildlife refuges? Sign me up!

Think your worst ecological sin is the carbon footprint from your RAV4's poor gas mileage? Unfortunately, it's probably not.

Do you think your worst ecological sin is the ugly carbon footprint resulting from your RAV4's rather mediocre gas mileage? Unfortunately, it's probably not.

This video gives a great explanation why. Pardon me while I go give my RAV4 a ... sand bath.

Despite what the oft-ignorant commenters on YouTube may think, the point of the video isn't that we all should stop using dishwashers, showers, and washing machines. It's to raise awareness so that when we hear water conservation measures come up in political discourse -- such as efficiency standards for appliances, or charging for water based on what it's actually worth, rather than how much it costs to extract and distribute -- people will better understand why the discussion is occurring at all.

One of the better comments (by Linnel Gifford-Mahany) said, "Jeez, makes one wonder how many gallons of fresh water there are in the world." Eureka! Just the sort of question that water resource scientists hope to hear asked. The answer is that of all the water on Earth -- including oceans, ice caps, rivers, and subsurface aquifers (groundwater), etc. -- only 0.7672% is usable fresh water (h/t US Geologic Survey). Yes, that's about one quarter of one percent. And keep in mind, the vast majority of even that still has to be treated to make it safe to drink! There is other water available, of course, but it comes at much greater cost; either it must be desalinated from brackish/salty sources, or melted from snow & ice. You've probably heard our glaciers and ice caps are already dramatically endangered, and that the cost of desalination is atrocious -- even the Saudis think it's expensive!

Digging a little deeper, you'll note this isn't solely the individual citizen-consumer's fault. We only account for about 8.5% of use with our Maytags, Whirlpools, and Klean Kanteens of agua. Power plants use 41.5%, and farming accounts for 37%, so they're by far the worst offenders. The good news is that there are real-life, current fixes that could help this problem notably -- they just cost money. Most modern farms are ginormous industrial agriculture operations which irrigate using open, unlined ditches that lose nearly as much water to seepage as they actually deliver to crops. Lining those ditches would make a huge difference. Much of the water lost to thermoelectric power generation could be reclaimed and re-injected into nearby aquifers rather than discharged as as loss downstream to the ocean.

So, take home message: pay attention to water conservation measures -- they matter. Whether it's more water-efficient appliances, more electrically efficient appliances (remember the 41.5%!), or government conservation efforts -- they matter! Ignoring the issue will guarantee a future where the price of water for drinking, cooking, and washing will be so high that all but the wealthy will struggle to pay, just as many of us do now to make our car and house payments.

Welcome -- and Happy Groundwater Awareness Week!

Welcome to The Naughty Environmentalist! After 15 years as a geoscientist, a few years reading Phil Plait's excellent Bad Astronomy blog, and a several more years of my better half accusing me of being a "bad environmentalist" for forgetting to recycle the cat food can lids, here I am, finally ready to write about it. As the blog's description says, while I'm passionate about our planet (and others!) and have been known to actually hug a tree or two, I'm as fallibly mortal as anyone else. I know how overwhelming it can be to keep track of which sustainably obtained fish is okay to eat this week, or to remember which new-fangled light bulbs do/don't contain Soylent Green ... so in this space, I hope to help myself and all of us negotiate that ever-winding green path.

I care deeply about our neighborhoods, our planet's neighborhood, our star's neighborhood -- and how Homo sapiens defines its place in those 'hoods through a technological society. So it won't be all-enviro all the time -- expect to see interesting trends in science and technology too. I'm also an avid outdoorsman, so it's likely that you'll see some commentary about hiking, camping, biking, and other outdoor fun.

First off: Happy Groundwater Awareness Week, coming up March 9th - 15th! Given the occasion and the drought situation in California, expect to see a few posts about water resources coming soon. I've retweeted several interesting stories on the subject over on my Twitter account, EcoKade. People are so often blasé about water supply, so I like that ThinkProgress has a piece up that hits so many of us where it hurts -- "California's drought is coming for your beer." Grist also has a slightly more serious take on California's agricultural water use by Alex Park and Julia Lurie, both fellows at the excellent Mother Jones. Take a gander, and feel free to discuss in the comments!

Secondly: if you didn't watch Cosmos last night, you should try to catch it tonight on NatGeo, or stream it from the Fox site. The show was lovely, but even if it hadn't been, I'd still give the shout out; just like Neil deGrasse Tyson, Carl Sagan's ability to communicate the wonder and majesty of science changed my life and set me on the path to becoming an earth and planetary scientist (with a little help from Gene Roddenberry). In many ways, I'm here with you blogging because of Carl. So in that spirit: "Come with me!"