To the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Alamosa, Colorado
Please enter these comments into the record of the Environmental Assessment (EA) of Planned Gas and Oil Exploration, Baca National Wildlife Refuge. I am a resident home owner in the Baca Grande subdivision, and this is an original letter. Other residents, I am sure, will be sending original letters addressing questions of public health and safety, including groundwater pollution. They will raise questions involving protection of rare and endangered species such as lynx that live here, and of migratory birds and their habitat. These are crucial issues, but this letter is aimed at an issue I know a little more about from personal experience – namely, the burden that approval of the plan developed for Lexam Explorations Inc. will place upon the exercise of religion.
The locality. Missing from the EA, in my reading, is recognition of the uniquely religious nature of the local community (Crestone-Baca) adjoining the refuge – an issue raised in every meeting I have attended on the "Lexam" problem. Since the 1970's, when the Manitou Foundation land donations to religious groups began, Crestone-Baca has been recognized as a leading national center for religious retreats and spiritually based healing arts. Examination of the local newspaper, the monthly Crestone Eagle, reinforces this impression. The front section of the February edition, for example, carried more than 30 ads for healing or spiritual guidance and half as many articles or announcements in the same vein. There were a dozen ads for bed and breakfast accommodations, some targeting people on retreat. |
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Two national publications in recent months have portrayed Crestone-Baca as a global religious center. The U.S. News and World Report included Crestone-Baca in its Nov. 26 cover story on "The world's most spiritually important sites," quoting a Tibetan Buddhist scholar to the effect that this is the best place in the world to practice meditation (the Buddhist equivalent of prayer). The New York Times in a Jan. 11 travel feature headed "Sacred Ground" said, "Deserts, forests and mountains figure so prominently in humanity's quests for the divine that Crestone's geographic hat trick seems ideal for universal worship."
QUESTION 1: Since the process of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) leads to either an EIS or a Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI), and since a FONSI requires consideration of the human environment in a context which includes the nation, the region and "the locality," why is a discussion of impact on the nationally recognized religious activity of the Crestone-Baca community missing from the EA?
The exercise of religion. Here, from my own observation, are some of the more obvious and accessible religious exercises that take place within sight (and sound, if the drilling proceeds) of the silent expanse of the valley floor:
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