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Groups threaten to sue over oil-shale projects

Save the spotted owl!

Protect the cactus flower! (or whatever plant you want to save....)

Help the jackelope!

What about protecting your neighbors by providing JOBS and a decent income? What about buying a comfortable home and sending their kids to college?

What about becoming independent of foreign oil? What about not GIVING money to countries who hate YOU only because you're an American and will use YOUR money to create the weapon of destruction that lands in YOUR neighborhood?

In my job at a non-Utah military base we had to abide by extreme environmental laws (read "enormously expensive") for a base construction project because the land the site was on was deemed a "Military Munitions Reclamation Project". Military Munitions? Are we talking about 500 lb bombs? Unexploded missiles? Live ammunition? Nope.

Lead shotgun pellets.

I kid you not.

Make that, 30+ year old shotgun pellets.

The land had previously been used as a skeet range many decades ago. The lead, likely looooong since disintegrated, freaked them out.

Environmental whackos control everything and it's rapidly getting worse with the whole global warming scare.

Take care of the earth, but don't lose your common sense.

I'm a liberal. First, let me say that I'd bet that the lead from the pellets 30+ years old deposited in the amount a skeet range might have is dangerous. Lead poisoning is real, 30 years won't disintegrate it, and it ain't just environmental nuts who make this claim. Anyway, drill baby, drill. I don't care how much of the west they tear up for gigantic mines, tailing ponds, overburden mountains, power plants, power lines, oil and gas lines, roads, process plants, or whatever. But, you're going to see it. It's going to affect you. It's going to displace ranchers and farmers; they don't pay the bills anyway. It's drill here, drill now, and if it is in your backyard, displaces the stuff you hunt, wrecks your view or favourite off road place or no matter how much it damages your environment or way of life...I don't care. I want cheap energy, and I'm willing to die young for it. SO bring it on.

The american people own this land and what oil companies do to it should concern everybody, not just enviornmentalist. Long term destruction does not benefit the greedy oil companies who are only interested in obtaining control and the rights to public land. It is yet not profitable to process oil shale and americas need for oil is declining and this should please everyone that thinks we need to drill and destroy. What makes people thing oil companies want to take over americas wild country to benefit america? Oil companies profit much better by taking our resources and putting it on the oil market then force american oil companies to buy it back at inflated profit and cost. America loses either way. All our resources, lumber, oil, coal, and metals are sold to speculators and not supplied to the american people. Do the american people think that selling off our resources to foreign countries and haveing to buy it back is beneficial? It is for a few but not the american people. Has anyone heard these exporters, even oil companies, jump up and say they are doing it for america? Not I.

Once gas goes back up to $4 and beyond the resistance to oil shale projects will soon fade.

per gallon, oil shale is never going to be a viable fuel. Let them do their test projects so they can prove just how costly and uneconomical it is to produce oil from rocks. Maybe when gas is $20 per gallon and oil $300 per barrel. Until them it's just giant waste of resources, and it will always be hugely destructive to the land.

Good for those advocating the lawsuit. I agree we need alternative fuel sources, but oil shale development will permanently destroy land and require an over-abundance of an even more precious natural resource, water, to extract tiny amounts of usable fuel. I've read that over 1,500 gallons of water will be required to remove only one barrel of usable fuel. That doesn't make sense. Better use of the land and financial resources would be to build solar panels or wind turbines. They can easily be removed if their technology becomes obsolete and will require no additional resources beyond transmision lines.