Hardrock Mining on Federal Lands

10.17226/9682 ◽  
1999 ◽  
1985 ◽  
Vol 93 (1) ◽  
pp. 216-221
Author(s):  
Robert H. Nelson
Keyword(s):  

Author(s):  
Stephen T. Muench ◽  
Amit Armstrong ◽  
Brian Allen

The Federal Lands Highway (FLH) Program is a $1 billion annual program administered by FHWA. The program provides financial resources and technical assistance for public roads that give access to a variety of federal and Indian lands, including those administered by the National Park Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Bureau of Indian Affairs. Much of this work is dedicated to the design and construction of roadway projects, which must incorporate the strategic sustainability values of these agencies and FHWA. This paper identifies key FLH sustainability values and uses the Greenroads rating system taxonomy and Greenroads scores on seven case study projects to draw conclusions about FLH project-level sustainability practices. Findings are that (a) projects scored in the 21- to 26-point range and none achieved certification, (b) 14 identifiable sustainability practices are well integrated into project delivery, (c) 12 practices can be considered potential areas of improvement for little additional effort, and (d) 15 practices could be considered priorities based on FHWA and partner agency values.


2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (S1) ◽  
pp. S11-S22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Charnley ◽  
Hannah Gosnell ◽  
Kendra L Wendel ◽  
Mary M Rowland ◽  
Michael J Wisdom

2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Jenkins

The American West has seen a resurgence of capital investment in extractive mineral development on federal lands, emanating from the recent global financial crisis. For these extractive projects, as in energy development more broadly, struggles over knowledge persist in the pre-operational phases of exploratory access and environmental review when political-legal rights and scientific facts are coordinated, codified, and contested. Contested knowledge about extractive mineral development beyond the 100th meridian, once more narrowly limited to proximate environmental impacts like water quality, now more broadly encompasses themes of scalar governance, landscape-level conservation, and local resource access. The case studies covered here demonstrate that a regional scale approach to political ecology provides utility as a heuristic to conceptually frame the concepts of governance, resource access, and ecological degradation between larger processes of economic restructuring and more localized micro politics. A case study approach is used to empirically support the claim that region provides a meso-scale of analysis in terms of: scalar resource control – state versus federal (southeast Utah); biocentric values – preserving nature for nature's sake (southern Arizona); and anthropocentric values – newly touted, but grounded in age-old utilitarianism (northeast Wyoming).Keywords: extractive industries, American West, federal lands, biocentric, anthropocentric


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