I don’t know very much about Presidential Memorandums but I’d like to learn more about them. I don’t believe that they are something new and I’m fairly certain that past Presidents have issued them, as well.
Apparently these Presidential Memorandums have also been referred to as Presidential Letters. They seem to be very similar to Executive Orders (which have been around before Barack Obama was even born).
It appears that Obama’s recent Presidential Memorandum keeps future oil and gas drilling out of more than 50,000 square miles in Alaska.
Evidently in the year 1953 our US Congress passed the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act which states (section 1341(a)), The President of the United States may, from time to time, withdraw from disposition any of the unleased lands of the outer Continental Shelf.
What are your thoughts on Presidential Memorandums?
Myself, I’m still not sure yet what to think (I need to investigate) regarding Presidential Memorandums. However, I am VERY PLEASED that Obama has decided, at least for the time being, to keep future oil and gas drilling out of Bristol Bay and approximately 50,000 square miles in Alaska. It appears that US Congress legislated the matter in 1953 so I don’t, at least for the moment, find too much wrong with Obama keeping oil and gas drilling out of certain parts of Alaska for a while.
Speaking of oil…I’m very grateful that the State of Iowa (my home State) does not permit gas and oil fracking (although we do supply the sand, from sand mines in northeast Iowa, for fracking use in North Dakota). I don’t want Iowa to end up like the State of Wyoming where that water tastes like oil (and people die from it).
Rick Perry, stay out of Iowa and save your pro-fracking speeches for the gumps in Texas.
Please exercise your free speech in the comments section below. There are no stipulations of political correctness on this blog. Speak your mind, give us your thoughts, both objective and subjective. Share your ideas, hunches, inklings or your expertise. Please provide recommendation and corrections if you spot errors in fact within the blog report. Lastly, remember that posting a comment is much like casting a vote, so please do so.
Business leader Nancy Blakey explains Bristol Bay’s economic power
About The Bay
SaveBristolBay.org
Excerpt:
The Bristol Bay region in southwest Alaska is pristine wild country stretching from the rugged snow-capped peaks of the Alaska Range, accross tundra and wetlands laced with rivers that flow into the Bay, providing the best wild salmon habitat on Earth. The hour and a-half flight from Anchorage to Bristol Bay takes visitors on a breath-taking journey across two national parks (Katmai and Lake Clark), Alaska’s largest state park (Wood-Tikchick), three active volcanoes (Augustine, Iliamna and Redoubt), Lake Iliamna (Alaska’s largest lake) and countless winding rivers and tundra lakes. Bristol Bay and its watershed are truly inspiring for their beauty and bounty of fish and wildlife.
Bristol Bay
As wild salmon disappear around the globe, Bristol Bay continues to produce the world’s largest sockeye salmon fisheries and one of the largest king salmon runs. The reason for this is clear; the Bay’s freshwater salmon habitat is largely untouched by development. However, the bay is under threat from foreign mining corporations that want to turn the watershed into an industrial mining district. North America’s largest open-pit mine is proposed for an area that straddles two of the bay’s most important salmon streams. If plans for the Pebble Mine are allowed to proceed, they risk destroying a $360 million commercial and sport salmon fishery that celebrates its 125th year in 2009.
The Importance of Salmon
Healthy salmon runs underpin the Bristol Bay region’s economic, social, cultural and ecological well-being. Local communities, jobs, and the health of the entire region, from grizzlies on down the food chain, depend on these fish. The salmon sustain both thriving commercial and sport fishing industries as well as traditional subsistence ways of life. If the Pebble mine is developed, hundreds of sports fishing lodges are under threat as well as the world’s largest wild commercial sockeye salmon fishery and the subsistence culture of thousands of Alaska Natives and non-Natives who live in the Bristol Bay region.
Pebble Mine
The Pebble deposit is a massive storehouse of gold, copper and molybdemum, located in the headwaters of the Kvichak and Nushagak Rivers, two of the eight major rivers that feed Bristol Bay. If built, Pebble would be one of the largest mines of its type in the world. The Pebble Limited Partnership is comprised of the world’s second largest multinational mining corporation, London-based Anglo American, along with Northern Dynasty, a junior mining company headquartered in Canada. The Pebble Limited Partnership has not released its final mine plans but company executives have said that the Pebble Mine complex, which would cover some 15 square miles, would include the largest dam in the world (larger than Three Gorges Dam in China). Located in a seismically active area, the massive earthen dam would be designed to contain the toxic waste created in the mining process. But whether is could withstand a major earthquake is questionable. Over its lifetime, Pebble will produce 2.5 billion tons of waste that would have to be treated in perpetuity. Any release of this waste into the surface or groundwater has the potential to destroy Bristol Bays salmon runs forever.
Our Public Lands in the Bay
One million acres of prime wildlife and salmon habitat adjacent to the proposed pebble mine site could opened to new mining claims with the stroke of a pen. Closed to mining since 1971, these wild Alaska lands are integral to Bristol Bay’s salmon-supporting habitat that is anchored by miles of untamed rivers and wild country. A recommendation from the Bureau of Land Management to lift this mineral closure and create a modern day gold rush was issued in the last days of the Bush Administration. The cumulative impacts from increased development in the area overtime could devastate the fishery.
Protect Bristol Bay
With wild salmon runs disappearing from the planet, Bristol Bay is a place of international importance because of its prolific wild salmon runs and the economies they support. It faces imminent threat from the proposed Pebble mine as well as hard rock mining on adjacent state and federal land. The Bristol Bay watershed must be protected from Pebble and other large-scale mining projects.
View the complete article at:
http://www.savebristolbay.org/about-the-bay
Wikipedia – Pebble Mine
Excerpt:
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Political actions
Two bills designed to outlaw large scale mining in the Pebble area were introduced in the Alaska state legislature in 2007; both stalled in committee. A third attempted (by ballot measure) piece of legislation was the Alaska Clean Water Initiative, 2008. It was voted down after months of high profile public debate, heavy advertising, and a series of judgements by the Alaska State Supreme Court. The measure remained an active public issue; in June 2009 the state of Alaska’s Alaska Public Offices Commission reported violations of campaign funding laws during the contest.
Then-Governor Sarah Palin was a strong supporter of the project and faced criticism about her opposition to the initiative, the involvement of state government and the intended use of a $7 million federal earmark to facilitate it. Ethics questions were raised about her and her husband Todd’s participation.
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View the complete article at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_Mine
Pictures: Alaska’s Wondrous Bristol Bay, Now Off-Limits to Gas and Oil Drilling
National Geographic
Eve Conant
12/17/2014
President Barack Obama announced Tuesday that he is taking Bristol Bay “off the bidders block” to protect the pristine southwestern area of Alaska from oil and gas interests.
“It is a beautiful national wonder,” Obama said in a video address from the White House. “It’s something that’s too precious for us to just be putting out to the highest bidder.”
The presidential moratorium to protect Bristol Bay from oil and gas development follows actions taken earlier this year by the government to protect the area from other business interests.
In February the Environmental Protection Agency invoked the Clean Water Act to initiate a temporary halt on a proposed copper and gold mine, citing “the potentially destructive impacts of the proposed Pebble Mine” to the bay’s salmon resources.
But the bay’s watershed needs permanent federal protection from gold and copper mining, says photographer Michael Melford, who shot Bristol Bay in 2010 for a National Geographic feature about the conflict between protecting sockeye salmon and gold interests in the resource-rich region.
Nushagak Bay (…), an estuary that opens onto Bristol Bay, is just one part of a vast watershed system vital to salmon.
“The obvious next step is to protect where the salmon are born and spend the first year of their lives, and where they return to to spawn,” Melford says, “to make sure that those waters remain pristine and not polluted.”
View the complete article, including photos, at:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/12/pictures/141217-bristol-bay-alaska-science-conservation-environment/
Dear Lucas and Bruce,
I wish you both a very Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays season.
Thank you for your contributions on the web this past year and I look forward to your contributions in the new year!
@ Mark McDaniel:
Thank you for your participation here on the LDS Blog and also on the InspectorSmith Forum.
I wish you, and all our other readers as well, a very MERRY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY NEW YEAR!
@ Mark McDaniel:
Thank you very much! I also wish you, and all other readers, a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
We look forward to seeing you here at the Blog and the Forum in 2015!
08.15.2011: Rick Perry (Texas Governor) at a house party in Cedar Rapids, Iowa praising fracking and advocating fracking in Iowa (which, thankfully, hasn’t happened):
>>> SOMEONE PLEASE TELL HOW badrak ‘ insane’ obummer CAN MAKE DECISIONS AND CONTROL DRILLING FOR OIL SO THAT AMERICA CAN BE INDEPENDENT FROM THE ARAB SOURCES . THAT ASSHOLE STUPID SON OF A BITCH HAS DONE TOO MANY THINGS TO DESTROY AND INHIBIT THE RIGHTS OF AMERICAN CITIZENS . THE ONLY SOLUTION IS TO EXPOSE obozo AS A FOREIGN BORN ILLEGAL ALIEN , INDICT , ARREST AND REMOVE HIM FROM OUR CAPITOL AND SEND HIM AWAY IN SHAME AND DISGRACE .
>>> AS THEY SAY IN HAWAI ‘ I ~ ” MELE KALIKIMAKA ” . <<<