Casper Star-Tribune from Casper, Wyoming • 11

Casper Star Tribune Friday, February 28, 1997 Legislature Inaction may spur initiative effortB6 Wyoming OBITUARIES B3 COMICS B4 BLM releases rangeland reform plan Agency guidelines more specific than RAC's Sweetwater County Commissioners push for OCI impact funds Say project creates social service demand tee authorized to advise the fed eral Interior Department on the implementation of public land grazing reforms instigated by the Clinton administration. Geringer acted after he and Interior Department Secretary Bruce Babbitt reached an impasse on the question of rotating several members whose one year terms on the panel had expired BLM rangeland officials keyed off the RAC standards in de signing their own package in fact, the first three standards of both versions are identical. But beyond that, the remaining five RAC standards, and the remain Ing three BLM standards differ in content and specificity, The guidelines the tools for achiev ing the standards are far more Specific in the BLM version. The BLM version will now he released to the public for emu ment, but the RAC version will be transmitted to the Interior Department as the official state position on the refoi ms thai BLM is attempting to implement RAC members at the conclu sion of their meeting on Wednes day briefly debated holding pub lie meetings in order to lay the two versions out side by side Please see BLM, B5 The BLM stripped out two RAC standards, or goals, that called for consideration of economic and cultural impact in range management decisionmaking. The federal agency version also calls for factoring threatened and endangered species into rangeland manage ment, while the RAC version makes no mention of the feder al Endangered species Act.

The emergence of two documents on rangeland reform occurred after Gov. Jim Geringer last October asserted full state control over the original RAC, a state-federal advisory commit By KATHARINE COLLINS Southwest Wyo. bureau ROCK SPRINGS The feder al Bureau of Land Management today will mail out its draft version of "Standards for Healthy Rangelands and Guidelines for Grazing Management for the Bureau of Land Management Lands in the State of Wyoming." The eight page document differs in several significant aspects from a similar document completed Wednesday by the Wyoming Resource Advisory Council at the conclusion of its two-day meeting in Cheyenne. Bill watcher ernments, a staff review of the project says. The ISC will meet in Green River April 8 to consider per mitting the OCI project, which company officials say will increase soda ash production at the plant by 800,000 tons per year from its current capacity of 2.3 million tons per year.

Maldonaldo said the health and social services provided by the county will be impacted the most by the influx of an estimated 300 workers expected during the peak production period in late 1997. "When we do have that kind of influx that comes with these projects, the impacts fall first on the health and social services that the county funds," he said. The OCI project is just one of several large, multimillion dollar projects planned or currently underway in the county. Solvay Minerals, another of the region's soda ash producers, is embarking on a $170 million expansion project this spring and American Methanol plans to build a new $75 million processing plant. At a December hearing on the Solvay project, the ISC awarded most of the expected impact assistance payments for that project to the city of Green River.

Please see ISC, B5 By JEFF GEARINO Star-Tribune state reporter GREEN RIVER Sweetwater County should receive the lion's share of impact assistance payments resulting from a $137 million expansion project by OCI Chemical Company because the majority of impacts from the influx of construction workers will fall on the county's health and social services, a county commissioner says. But county officials could live with a draft impact assistance payments ratio that would give equal, 30 percent shares to Green River, Rock Springs and Sweetwater County, Commissioner Carl Maldonaldo said at a meeting with state Industrial Siting Division officials. Industrial Siting Council (ISC) staff members met with area residents Wednesday in Green River to gather public comment on the OCI project scheduled to begin later this spring. OCI is one of the five multi national soda ash corporations currently operating in the Green River Basin in southwest Wyoming. As planned, the project at the company's trona mine and soda ash plant west of Green River could generate over $500,000 in impact payments to local gov Geringer nixes AML money for high school in Green River District officials may seek program audit FRED YATES Star Tribune correspondent Legislative Service Office Director Rick Miller reviews bills in the Senate balcony recently.

The LSO drafts bills and conducts research for legislators. 'I think the governor was at the least very unfair and I don't understand his rationale for making the decision that he SUPERINTENDENT GENE ARMODY Young, Cubin target World Heritage designations a greater voice in deciding whether to designate a park or historic site as a World Heritage Site subject to the international World Heritage Convention. Brought to the floor of the House lb the final days of the session last year, the bill received 246 votes but fell shy of the two-thirds majority of House members necessary to pass under expedited suspension of the rules. Young not only predicted that the bill will pass both the House and Senate this time, but that it will pass with enough votes to override a certain veto by President Clinton. "I am amazed that a single member of Congress would oppose mv legislation.

What is directly approving international land reserves?" he asked, arguing that the bill does not violate any existing treaty obligations by requiring a retroactive approval of the 20 World Her itage Sites and 47 biosphere reserves in the country. The administration has called the bill unnecessary and an unwarranted interference in what it maintains is a voluntary designation that conveys no substantive changes in a site's management responsibilities. But Young stated explicitly that the designation does violate private property rights by restricting development and re quiring the designation of a "buffer zone" around the site. Cubin cited the decision by By CHRIS TOLLEFSON Washington, C. bureau WASHINGTON Less than six months after a similar bill went out with the 104th Congress, House Resources Committee Chairman Don Young, R-Alaska, introduced legislation Thursday that would force the Clinton administration to submit to Congressional scrutiny every U.S.

landmark designated a World Heritage site. at a press conference by his cosponsor, U.S. Rep. Bar bara Cubin, and former Wyoming Sen. Malcolm Wallop, Young characterized his bill, as he did last year, as an attempt to restore United States sovereignty and give local communities By JEFF GEARINO Star-Tribune state reporter GREEN RIVER Sweetwater County School District No.

2 officials say they are very displeased with Gov. Jim Geringer's decision not to sign off on $5 million in state Abandoned Mine Lands program money that would have helped pay for construction of a new high school in Green River. "I think the governor was at the least very unfair and I don't understand his rationale for making the decision that he did," district Superintendent Gene Carmody said. He said he will ask Geringer to meet with district officials next week to discuss the decision. And if Geringer doesn't change his mind, the district will consider asking the Interior Department which oversees the federal AML program for the states to conduct a "process audit" of the state's AML program, Carmody said.

Taxpayers in Green River last October thought they were getting a break on their taxes after the state's Abandoned Mine Lands Advisory Board voted to set aside $5 million for construction of the new $30 million high school. The board's recommendation, however, was rejected by Geringer, who said he will not recommend the project for fund ing when he submits the state's AML requests to the U.S. Inte rior Department for final approval. AML funds come from taxes levied by the federal government on each ton of coal mined. Carmody took exception to Geringer's arguments that the district should not get the funds because county voters had ap proved a $29 3 million bond issue in 1994 to pay for the new school.

Construction on the new school has been underway for 18 months and the project is expected to be completed some time during the 1997 98 school vear unreasonable about Congress Border to Border Lummis served in the Legislature from 1979 to 1994 and served as chairman of the Cheyenne death a suicide the World Heritage Committee in 1995 to designate Yellowstone National Park as a World Heritage Site in danger due in large part to the potential development of the New World gold mine on the park's northeast border. The World Heritage Committee's visit to Yellowstone in August 1995 was part of a concerted strategy by the National Park Service and environmental groups to sabotage the integrity of the environmental impact statement, Cubin charged, as she has in the past. But she also acknowledged that the effect of the designa tion was a public relations victory for the mine's opponents, rather than an actual restric tion on development. Correction: Midway Clinic not closed BASIN Health care services have been available to Basin and south Big Horn Basin area residents for the past three years at the Midway Medical Clinic incorrectly reported closed in a story on Thursday "Obviously we're not closed." said Jackie Claudson. adminis trator of the Bonnie Blue Jacket Nursing Home Midway Clinic in Big Horn County The facility opened in September of 1994 and is run by the South Big Horn County Hospital Board, she said The clinic is located exactly halfway between GreyHull and Basin.

"This community has actuallv never been completely without health care because the hospital district has always provided health care in one form or an other, she said. The StarTribune regrets the error. FROM THK MMKUTO PRESS Nor does Carmody buy the governor's contention that Sweetwater County has already received its fair share of the state's AML program money, some $84 million, or 27 percent of the state's total. "I find both of those arguments very, very weak," he said. "The bottom line is that they fund projects that communities say are not necessary and then turn around and don't fund a project that our community says is most definitely necessary and has safety issues involved, too," Carmody said.

In order to be considered for the AML funding in its applica tion to the state, the district had to document health and safety needs at the old high school and district officials pointed to the overcrowding at the current high school. The high school has st ruggled with overcrowding in the past and board members have initiated three daily school sessions on a staggered basis to handle the overcrowding. "We have written a letter to the governor requesting a rev is it with him about his decision," Carmody said. "After that, I may ask the In terior Department to do an audit of how the AML funds are decided in Wyoming and an audit about where the dollars are spent," he said. "I hate to do that last one be cause it may tie up any future AML monies for the state and could really cause a problem, but I guess if that's what we need to do.

then I need to do it" Carmodv said Joint Interim Revenue Committee in 1991 and 1992. An attorney, Lummis was formerly in law practice with her husband, former legislator Alvin Wiederspahn, but sold her practice last fall Lummis said she will not resume the practice of law but instead intends to pursue ranching and other business interests. Aging director fired CASPER Deborah Fleming, director of the state Division on Aging, says she was fired Thursday morning by newly appointed Health Department director Don Rolston. Contacted late Thursday. Rolston would neither confirm nor deny Fleming's termination.

Fleming, who has headed the Division of Ag ing since Sept. of 1995. says with Gov. Jim Ger inger's blessing, the agency's office was moved to Casper last October. But Fleming says in a Feb.

19 memo. Rolston told her the office would be moved back to Cheyenne, and that she had a week to decide if she was willing to move with it CHEYENNE The shooting death of a Cheyenne man whose body was found in his pickup truck in a Kmart parking lot has been ruled a suicide. A three member panel, appointed for a coro ner's inquest, on Wednesday issued its decision on the death of William Capps, 4(i The panel said there was no evidence that Capps was murdered. Police Lt. Marty Luna said investigators found a .38 caliber handgun, a bullet and one spent cartridge in Capps' truck.

Capps' wife testified that her husband had been "desperately depressed" for at least two years. She told police that he had talked about suicide Lummis leaves governor's staff CHEYENNE Cynthia Lummis. Gov. Jim Ger inger's general counsel, is leaving the governor's staff today Lummis. 42.

joined Geringer's transition staff after he was elected in November 1994 State Editor Charles Brown. For information, questioas and comments about this page, call (:7) 2660582 or (800) 442-6916: email sUtetnh.com; fax (3071 2664568.