"Most likely the only way you're going to generate that much electricity (to run oil shale projects) is from coal," he added. To add enough capacity, coal-fired plants would put a great deal of pollution into the air. "You're going to considerably diminish the air quality of the entire western United States."

Reducing air quality so much would have profound health effects, Moench said.

A typical 1,000 megawatt power plant produces enough pollution to cause 20 to 50 premature deaths per year, he added. Using those figures, if such a power plant continues putting out pollution for 50 years, it could cause 1,000 to 2,500 deaths over the plant's lifetime.

Oil shale development would be "an enormous public health sacrifice for a technology which is almost purely speculative," Moench said.

"It absolutely makes no sense whatsoever."

Speaking of potential development in Colorado near the Utah border, Kay said, "If it went commercial with this these sites, they would have to build 10 coal-fired (power) plants to supply the electricity to get 2 million barrels a day."

With commercial oil shale development in the arid West, she asked, "where would the water come from? Because you need two to five barrels of water per barrel of oil."

The White River's flow could decrease 8.2 percent because of Colorado developments, and the same sort of impacts could be expected in Utah, she said.

If open pit mining or retort mining is used for oil shale production, football-field-size areas would be needed to store the material. These could leach material, causing salinization of waterways, she added.

With the impact on air pollution, oil shale could affect global warming, according to Kay.

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E-mail: bau@desnews.com