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Friday, May 9, 2008
819 - States talking about Wyoming
Montana has more coal than Wyoming. They produce 400 million tons a year south of us. And we only produce just 40 million tons. Why? – Montana gubernatorial candidate Roy Brown.
During my zigzag trip last week to Montana, Colorado and Texas, it seemed like every newspaper I picked up had major stories featuring Wyoming.
Although my flight destinations were Kalispell, MT and Dallas, TX, as usual, we flew to Denver first from Riverton. As the old saying goes, even when a Wyomingite dies and goes to heaven, they first have to go through Denver. And typically, to fly north by air, you first have to fly south.
My copy of the Denver Post featured an article decrying how Wyoming’s average salary had surpassed Colorado’s. Wyoming families were now ranked sixth in the country at about $40,000 per year. This was ahead of Colorado for the first time in memory. Colorado was at $39,000, which ranked tenth.
Teton County ranked second in the country for highest average family salary behind a New York county while Aspen’s Pitkin County ranked third among all counties in the USA.
After that Denver stop, my trip took me to the beautiful Flathead Valley in northwest Montana. Just 60 miles from Canada, it was just as pretty as my Wind River Basin but the grass was much greener.
A local newspaper called the Flathead Beacon had a lead article about the two men running for Montana governor and Wyoming was mentioned repeatedly.
Challenger Roy Brown continually slammed Gov. Brian Schweitzer for how their state is lagging behind Wyoming in many ways.
Besides the coal production issue, where he claimed his state produces one-tenth what Wyoming produces, the state senator was critical of what that lag means to Montana schools.
“And their schools are some of the best in the nation. Any time they have a school over 20 years old, they tear it down and build a new state-of-the-art school. Their teachers are paid twice as much as ours are,” State Sen. Brown said of Wyoming. “We could be doing very similar but instead we are just talking about developing coal and not doing anything about it.”
After leaving Kalispell, it was back to Denver and I picked up some more newspapers.
The Denver Post editorial on this day was an earnest plea to Colorado legislators to raise their mineral severance taxes “like Wyoming.”
They pointed out that Wyoming’s “effective levy” on minerals is 11.7 percent compared to 5.7 percent currently for Colorado. It was pointed out that New Mexico has a tax of 9.4 percent and Oklahoma has 7 percent. Only Utah with 4.5 percent has a lower rate than Colorado’s, the editorial implores.
Meanwhile full page, four-color ads in both the Post and the Rocky Mountain News proclaimed “wind is clean energy” for a Danish company called Vestas, which touts itself as Number 1 in Modern Energy.
Wind energy, of course, is huge in Wyoming and work is being completed right now on creating a power line that will stretch from SE Wyoming to Colorado to provide that state with clean energy.
It was also in the news about how Tri State Energy saw its plans for two coal-fired plants in Kansas go down the drain with a veto of the projects by that state’s governor.
It was big news in Colorado since 85 percent of the power produced in these Kansas coal plants (powered by Wyoming coal) was destined for Colorado.
Tri-State, which has a huge plant in Wheatland, has now indicated it will be looking at nuclear when it comes to future power plants in Colorado.
Folks in Holly, Colo., have mixed emotions about the announcement that it might be the site for the nuke plant.
Tri-State is also looking into adding 100 megawatts of renewable energy from wind power and solar projects. Tri-State serves folks in Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska and Kansas.
And finally, here I was in Texas reading about the struggles of the new Dallas mayor Tom Leppart. The previous mayor had led the charge to stop construction of nine coal-power plants, which would have used Wyoming coal.
Now they are talking about nuclear power – which will take a long, long time to develop.
“What, me worry?” seems to be the theme of the Dallas administration, as they do not seem to be worrying about the impending brownouts and power shortages.
I would not like to be in Dallas in August, 2009, when the electricity runs out, that is for sure. That is the date cited by national experts when Texas utilities will no longer be able to keep up with demand.
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