A daily dispatch from the public domain
Most of what happens to public land never makes the news.
Clean energy is the future — but not every acre is worth paving for it. Weekly analysis of where the energy buildout meets public land, and who’s paying the bill.
Five notes, every week
The week’s decisions on public land, filed as five short notes. Sent on Substack, sorted by beat here.
Long-form analysis
Separate, deeper pieces on one decision at a time — what it does, who gained, what it costs.
Conservation first
Every buildout gets weighed against the ground it takes. Documents cited, not press releases.
Long-form analysis
The essays, one decision at a time.
Longer pieces published here on the site — separate from the five weekly notes. Hover a line to see where it happened.
Mar 26
Solar Is Destroying Something Ancient - And Nobody's Talking About It
Biocrust
Mar 26
What They Left in the Ground
Oil & Gas
Feb 12
California’s Oil & Gas Leasing Door Is Creaking Open Again
California Oil & Gas
Jan 23
Delay Without Resolution: How California Permits Clean Energy
Soda Mountain Solar
Dec 22
Gravel Roads & Yellowcake
Public Lands
Dec 22
Boom Towns, Second Boom
Dispatch
Every essay stays free and stays online.
Open the full archiveStanding references
Trackers and fact sheets.
The dispatch tells you what happened yesterday. These tell you where it fits.
Public Lands & Energy Tracker
Leasing, permitting and development actions across federal ground, logged as they are issued.
Open the tracker Live tracker · CaliforniaCalifornia Regulatory Action Tracker
State-level rulemakings and access decisions on California public lands, with the comment windows.
Open the tracker ReferenceGeothermal vs. oil & gas
How the two are permitted, leased and royalty-rated on the same federal acre — side by side.
Read the fact sheetThe Ledger
Five notes a week, straight from the record.
Each week’s decisions on public land — the lease sale, the filed complaint, the comment window closing Friday — written short and cited. The Ledger runs on Substack, where you can read it, reply to it, and argue with it.
Follow The Ledger on SubstackFree. Five notes a week, plus every essay.
Who this is for
People who need the decision before it is a headline.
Hikers, Hunters, Anglers, and everyone who uses the ground
Access gets decided in comment periods you were never told about.
Agency and Hill staff
You know your own office's file cold. This is the other four, in one place, before the call.
Reporters
The lead nobody has run yet, with the docket number already attached to it.
Attorneys and organizers
Filings, deadlines, and a running record you can cite when it matters.
Ground truth
On paper, every parcel is a number and a bid.
On the ground it is a basin, a creek, and an elk herd that used to winter there. Drag the line.
Illustration of a typical federal lease buildout. Swap in your own before-and-after photographs at any time.
Five things that happened to your land this week.
Five notes a week, plus the long-form essays. No paywall on the record.