The Roan Plateau lies northwest of Rifle. We drove up on the Plateau last Saturday, driving in from Rifle on a very steep road which winds back and forth as it climbs the Roan Cliffs. After reaching the top, we looked across miles of beautiful countryside, cut with streams and canyons. We drove on to a spot above the west fork of Parachute Creek, and hiked down into the canyon. In the picture, Arleta is hiking down into Parachute Creek, which lies in the canyon to the left of the picture. It is fall here, a beautiful time of year, with leaves changing color.
The cliffs you see along the canyon are characteristic of this whole region. They are made of oil-bearing shale, and therein lies a problem. Many people would like to devise ways of extracting oil from the shale, but can you imagine what a destruction of this wonderful place, the removal of shale would cause? Also, a lot of natural gas lies beneath the area. Though there are many, many gas wells in the Colorado valley below, people would like to drill wells on the plateau as well. If this were to happen, there would be great disruption. I wish we could keep the area wild, perhaps saving a considerable portion of it as wilderness.
1 comment:
There seems to be no end of people who want to put down gas wells. I suppose in the long run, the envorioment will recover from uncontrolled drilling, but I would like to see a long-term plan for energy use, because, like it or not, we are using up two non-renewable resources: 1. the gas 2. atmosphere with low levels of green house gas (carbon dioxide).
Oil shale is another story. The technology is not there to use itdnaielhop@gmail.com yet, and it is not clear to me why oil shale is superior to coal.. I think there is a rush to get leases for mining shale, while Bush is still in charge of BLM. I hope things will change next year.
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