We Oppose Tar Sands in Utah

According to The Associated Press, Utah regulators have just approved what would be the first commercial tar sands project in the United States. An Alberta-based company Earth Energy Resource, Inc. wants to raise $35 million to mine crude bitumen in eastern Utah and truck it to Salt Lake City for refining, and even after plenty of protests and controversy, it appears the state's guardians are okay with it.

The mine would sit in the Colorado River watershed, where 30 million people live and which happens to be in a serious water crisis even without a new thristy and polluting land use. To produce one barrel of oil from tar sands (and its cousin, oil shale, also being considered in Utah) requires three whole barrels of water. One barrel of tar sands oil is associated with three times the greenhouse gas emissions of a conventional barrel of oil. In Alberta, residents are experiencing heightened and suspicious incidences of cancer and fish are being found pocked with lesions and tumors.