Western energy wealth has social costs

By Bob Moen

updated 4:38 p.m. ET March 4, 2006

ROCK SPRINGS, Wyo. - The daycare center at the YWCA is full of children these days and has a list of more than 60 children waiting to get in. At the same time, the number of people using the YWCA’s safehouse for domestic violence and sexual assault victims has risen 59 percent over a year’s time.

The YWCA of Sweetwater County and other social service organizations are seeing the effects — good and bad — of Wyoming’s booming energy industry.

The energized oil, gas and mining industry has meant plentiful and well paying jobs, a bustling economy and a state — known more for its aboveground natural resources in Yellowstone National Park and Devils Tower — awash in revenue to the tune of a $1.8 billion budget surplus. Conversely, it has resulted in jobs outside the energy industry becoming hard to fill, more crime and more demands on the already thin health care and social services systems. It’s a scenario playing out elsewhere in Wyoming and the West where there is heavy energy development.

So far government agencies, police departments and social service organizations are handling most of the basic social needs and problems associated with the boom. Sweetwater County is just one of eight counties in Wyoming experiencing large-scale energy development.

‘Promised land’ with problems
Rock Springs, a city built among high desert bluffs and hills of mineral rich southwest Wyoming, has managed to maintain its small-town, can-do attitude in dealing with being transformed from a hardscrabble mining community into a vibrant center of oil and gas activity.

But local officials and social service agencies say they are struggling to keep up with a growing workload at a time when they are losing employees to higher paying oil and gas jobs.

“This is the promised land now, but we don’t have the housing and we don’t have the resources,” Rock Springs Police Chief Mike Lowell said during a recent meeting of local police chiefs in Cruel Jacks Restaurant.

To help the counties most affected by the energy boom, Gov. Dave Freudenthal has proposed setting aside $100 million in grant money for infrastructure improvements. And state lawmakers are considering legislation that would increase access to mental health services and subsidize day-care.

Sitting on some of the richest natural gas deposits in the world, Wyoming is a hotbed of exploration, drilling and pipeline building. And all indications are that this is just the beginning. BP America Inc. plans to invest more than $2.2 billion over 15 years drilling natural gas wells in the south-central Wyoming.

“It brings a lot of new business and progress,” lifelong Rock Springs resident Betty Petersen, a volunteer at a church-supported thrift store in the oldest block of downtown Rock Springs, said. “But it brings some bad things.”

Meeting basic needs
There’s more demand for help with basic needs such as finding work clothing, food, a place to stay, medical care and child care. There’s also more crime.

“Anytime you have quick growth in the economy, it brings with it a variety of social problems — drug use, alcohol abuse, child abuse,” said Rodger McDaniel, director of the Wyoming Department of Family Services.

The Food Bank of Sweetwater County provided food assistance to 143 households of oil and gas workers over a one-year period in 2004 and 2005 — up from 72 the previous year. Crisis calls to the YWCA in Rock Springs increased from 1,511 from July to December in 2004 to 2,351 during the same six-month period in 2005.

The number of crimes in Sweetwater County increased 11 percent between 2002 and 2004.

“These people work hard and play hard,” said Sweetwater County Sheriff David Gray.

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