Known for ‘Saving White Rocks Canyon’ From Tar Sands Mining, Lewis Cooper Gives Encouraging Advice to Tavaputs Oil Sands Activists
(EnviroNews California) – White Rocks, Utah – After a 105 hour work week, and a whirlwind, 5 day, start-to-finish documentary production on America’s first approved commercial tar sands mine in Utah’s pristine Tavaputs Plateau, EnviroNews USA Editor-in-Chief Emerson Urry raced across the massive Uintah Basin oil turf in order to reach yet another amazing and hidden U.S. tar sands mining story.
It had to be produced quickly as the next night represented a monumental night in the battle against medical waste incineration, an epic event that we simply could not afford to miss. This is the life of the entrenched EnviroNews reporter, racing and chasing another environmental thread, constantly drowning in a sea of never-ending environmental calamity.
The spontaneous, improvisatory interview was taped June 29th, 2013 the very same evening of the EnviroNews Documentary Showcase release featuring the U.S. Oil Sands test pit on the Tavaputs Plateau. The story had been picked up by Urry on the fly via way of a tip from an anonymous EnviroNews oil patch correspondent, which in-turn lead to the taping of the interview approximately 4 hours North from the Tavaputs mine site.
To our amazement, one man, by the name of Lewis Cooper, had gained community status as being the man responsible for stopping a proposed Utah tar sands strip mine in gorgeous, and now practically legendary, White Rocks Canyon.
His story, a fight against what he calls a “ghost company” by the gloomy name of ‘Black Oil Sands’ is one that parallels the current raging battle in the Tavaputs Plateau almost to a tee. Propriotery technologies, magnificent and unproven claims, and white picket fence investor stories are glaringly present in the cases of “Black Oil Sands” in White Rocks, and now U.S. Oil Sands (a Canadian company) on the Tavaputs Plateau.
In regards to Western U.S. tar sand plays from the present to the past, an anonymous and current oil CEO of over 20 years had this to say to EnviroNews USA on camera: “It never worked before, I seriously doubt it’ll work now.”
FILM AND ARTICLE CREDITS
- Emerson Urry - Producer, Journalist, Interviewer, Video Editor, Sound Editor, 3D Animator
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