I reported in my April American Prospect feature on oil drilling in the Great Salt Lake near Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty that the viewing experience at the site ("viewshed") dominated the list of concerns in letters, e-mail, and phone calls receive by the state of Utah. Complaints about the impact on Smithson's earth artwork outpaced by far parallel concerns about the impact on the local environment—the unique native brine shrimp population and pelican hatchery being the main features—as well as the greater impact on the Great Salt Lake. Tyler Green confirms as much in his Spiral Jetty week feature.
But the status of the Pearl Montana drilling application today has nothing to do with Jetty or art. It has much more to do with environmental impact than concerns about viewshed. While the state has heard a lot from people who are concerned about art—enough so that they pushed back the deadline for community feedback on the application—the application itself has yet to even reach the stage where those concerns might come into play.
Green writes:
Mostly as a result of a blogs-driven, international 'Save the Jetty!' outcry that resulted in Utah officials receiving over 3,000 emails, Pearl Montana's application was delayed. On August 7 state officials rejected it. Thanks substantially to blog readers, art won.It would be more accurate to say that Pearl Montana defeated themselves. According to Jim Springer, spokesman for the Division of Oil, Gas, and Mining for the state of Utah, the Division returned application paperwork to Pearl Montana two weeks ago. Several times prior to September, the Division had asked Pearl Montana for clarification and further information about the transportation of materials to and from the drilling site. (I've spoken several times with Springer since April, and every time, he's said that the Division is waiting for Pearl Montana to provide more information.)
About the application, Green has more:
Eight months later it's clear that Pearl Montana's initial application to explore and drill for oil just west of Spiral Jetty won't be industry's last attempt to treat the Jetty's neighborhood as a commercial resource. It's also clear that drilling is just one of many threats to the Great Salt Lake and to the Jetty. Conservationists are confident that Pearl Montana will be back with a revised application soon, that the company is waiting for the initial 'save the Jetty' fervor to die down.Now, I believe Green that conservationists (Friends of the Great Salt Lake) are pressing this argument—but there's not much to it by my reporting. Pearl Montana is required to file a detailed planning document; what they instead gave Utah was general, even vague. So the Division asked for more information, and Pearl Montana never responded. Then the Division returned the application. At any point until January 2009, Pearl Montana could simply fill in the gaps and restart the application process. Then the public outcry over the Jetty might come into play—or it might not. And if Pearl Montana waits until after January 2009, it still owns the lease. So if it chooses, it can just apply again. Of course, it may be harder to apply and win by that point, since the Great Salt Lake is experiencing a record decline in water levels and rising mercury levels, and new regulation may account for these changes and provide protections for the Lake.
The time is now, in other words, for Pearl Montana—and Pearl Montana isn't interested. I asked Springer how often the Division waits, after requesting further clarification, before they return the application. "Normally we don't have to," he said.
And neither has any other company submitted an application to exercise a lease in West Rozel. The thing that's worth remembering is that Salt Lake crude is in many respects like Canadian shale. It costs a great deal to extract, transport, and refine. Salt Lake's oil has a high sulfur content that renders it most useful as a road base; moreover, Utah refineries aren't set up to refine Salt Lake crude into conventional gasoline. As with Canadian shale, there is a global oil price point at which it becomes worthwhile to get involved in high-cost extraction. The lack of interest in GSL oil—industry has never successfully extracted GSL oil—would suggest that we're not there yet.
If and when Pearl Montana or a similar company does come knocking, the state of Utah is going to continue to pay attention to things like environmental impact. I haven't yet seen at what point viewshed enters into the state's viewfinder—whatever impact the art world has had hasn't come into play yet. Fortunately, we may not have to test that out.
UPDATE: Added image. Also, more chatter here.
Posted by Kriston at September 23, 2008 12:19 PMKriston, I'm a little confused. My posts aren't about Pearl Montana, nor are they about oil drilling. Just because that's a recent issue doesn't mean that all GSL/Jetty ecological topics involve drilling -- which is the whole point of my posts this week. Today on MAN I'm discussing several other threats to the GSL and potentially to the Jetty and I'm suggesting that we ought be paying attention to them. (All of which renders me a little confused about your post.)
Just west of Rozel Point, Great Salt Lake Mining is well along in process toward installing massive evaporation ponds. That's detailed in today's post and I'll have more tomorrow.
I also think your knocking down of "art won" is cheap and narrow. The reason for the posts this week is my concern that art people -- especially Dia, the art people that matter most here -- may think that the one threat to Spiral Jetty is done and dealt with, that the fire was put out. That's not the case, especially when GSL mercury levels are where they are.
As the rest of my posts will discuss, one reason art won is because the Pearl Montana issue changed the state of Utah's awareness about what the GSL as a whole. The Jetty was the protagonist in getting the Utah government to think about managing the lake, not just extracting from it.
(Blog posts don't work at 4,000 words, so doing this over the course of a week is the only way to do it, I think.)
Posted by: Tyler Green at September 23, 2008 2:59 PMOops sorry - obviously I screwed up the preview/post thing. Hence the verbosity.
Posted by: Tyler at September 23, 2008 3:10 PMOh, sure, I understand—I'm responding to one post, and further posts will develop your argument in sequence. Maybe it was hasty to respond right away, but I did have an immediate response to the one notion.
On that, I think we're talking about the same coin from two sides. The response from the art world was phenomenal, drawing attention to an objection that the Utah governor's office had never considered: viewshed around the Jetty. Pearl Montana's drilling plans didn't wind up going anywhere. But if they had, it's unclear what role those objections would have played.
I agree with you that for Dia and the rest to play rearguard—responding to crises as they arise—isn't a longterm plan. For art to win, I think that Dia needs to have a seat at the table when the GSL master plan is revised, and Jetty should for all state intents and purposes be considered a unique and protected resource on the Lake. That isn't the way I prefer to talk about it, but I think it's the way to win.
Posted by: Kriston Capps at September 24, 2008 9:03 AMMy argument -- to the extent I have one -- is that treating the Jetty as a unique and protected resource is failure.
Treating the Jetty as an 'object in the ecosystem' and preserving the entire ecosystem -- which should include the involvement of the Jetty's custodian in a much more thorough way than the custodian has thus far been involved -- is what it's going to take to ensure the future of the Jetty. And the GSL.
Posted by: Tyler Green at September 24, 2008 9:26 AMI agree! I think I undercut myself by "unique and protected"; I mean, unique and protected as are so many other features of the Lake. As opposed to distinct, with its own unique "viewshed" needs, something that belongs to New York but exists on the Lake.
My feeling is that many people in Utah understand it this way, as a quality of the GSL, almost. But not in Dia/New York.
Posted by: Kriston Capps at September 24, 2008 10:33 AMActually, almost none of the lake itself is protected. For now, it's pretty much entirely available to industry/related interests.
Posted by: Tyler Green at September 24, 2008 12:45 PMOn the north arm of the lake, less of the lake is accessible to industry. There are 55,000 acres that were exempted from protections (Pearl Montana's lease falls within that area). That much acreage is pretty large: more than twice the size of Antelope Island, and something like one third to one half of Gunnison Bay. (The way I eyeball it, two of those would take up about a third of the north arm.)
There is a map ("exhibit A") that goes with the 2006 conservation/Division OGM agreement that established the 55,000 acre exemption, but I do not think I have it.
I believe the rest of the GSL is governed by a variety of protections laid out by the 1996 Comprehensive Management Plan.
Posted by: Kriston at September 24, 2008 1:28 PM