Sacred-Sites International Blog » nine mile canyon

Nine Mile Canyon Oil & Gas Leases Blocked

Nancy — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 19:53:00 +0000

A court order has blocked the Federal Bureau of Land Management’s bid to cash in on huge profits from oil and gas leaks at Nine Mile Canyon. The Canyon walls are graced with hundreds of fragile petroglyphs that stand to be ruined by the corrosive effects of industrial truck traffic going back and forth between proposed oil and gas wells.The legal ruling was a temporary restraining order issues by Judge Ricardo Urbina of the US District Court in Washington D.C. The ruling stated that the Interior Department had not done adequate environmental analysis, especially regarding degradation of air quality.This ruling was especially welcome at the end of George W. Bush’s presidency when the oil industry was trying to push through more leases for oil and gas development. We can thank The National Trust for Historic Preservation, along with the Colorado Plateau Archaeological Alliance, Nine Mile Canyon Coalition and the Utah Rock Art Research Association, for filing the lawsuit. They were joined by Actor Robert Redford who called the lease sale as “morally criminal.”

Urgent Action at SSIF

Nancy — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 15:45:24 +0000

We have spent the last 2 days writing Urgent Action Letters on behalf of two endangered sacred sites: Nine Mile Canyon, Utah and Thornborough, England.There is still time to write for the protection of Nine Mile Canyon; by-pass roads must be used for industrial traffic in order to save the petroglyphs and pictographs. Send comment letters to the Bureau of Land Management: UT_Pr_Comments@blm.gov and copy the National Trust for Historic Preservation: crc@nthp.org. More information on this site: ninemilecanyoncoalition.orgThe comment period has closed for Thornborough (a henge not unlike Stonehenge) which is threatened by quarrying. More news on this when we receive it.

Nine Mile Canyon Letter Writing

Yifei — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 00:44:27 +0000

The site remains extremely endangered in 2008 and we are launching an Urgent-Action Letter-Writing Campaign against the current plan for full-field development with at least 800 new gas wells, called the West Tavaputs Gas Project. If this goes through, it would signal the end of the canyon’s cultural sacred petroglyphs.

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