WRA: Lands
Western Resource Advocates Lands Program Update
Colorado Moves Forward with New Oil and Gas Rules
In late September, the Colorado Oil and Gas
Conservation Commission (COGCC) approved
a sweeping set of new rules governing
oil and gas drilling in the state. This broad
set of reforms will require the oil and gas industry to implement new safeguards to better
protect Colorado’s water supplies, air quality,
lands, and wildlife. Although substantial
compromise was required by all participants
in the rulemaking process, the end result is
improved protection from the activities of a
booming energy industry.
After his election, Governor Bill Ritter
changed the make-up of the COGCC, turning
it from a board dominated by the industry
to one more representative of other perspectives.
The new commission responded to citizen
concerns about the failure of outmoded
oil and gas drilling rules to protect the state
from the negative environmental and social
impacts of an extraordinary drilling boom.
WRA attorneys represented a coalition of
environmental groups in the rulemaking proceedings
and played a large role in providing
expert testimony and battling industry efforts
to water down or eliminate needed protections.
Among the changes in the rules were measures
to protect drinking water and wildlife habitat,
control odor and dust, and require disclosure
of toxic chemicals used in the drilling process.
Rules regarding the safety of open waste pits,
which often contain toxic substances, were
deferred for future deliberations.
Colorado’s approach of reassessing a broad array
of regulations all at once sets a precedent
for other states similarly confronting drilling
booms. Some of the approved rules break new
ground, while others bring Colorado closer
to the protections imposed by neighboring
states
Saved from the Drill: WRA Pushes Back Against Questionable Southern Colorado Lease Sale
WRA successfully challenged the inclusion of
145,000 acres of Rio Grande National Forest
in a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) oil
and gas lease sale, forcing the withdrawal of
that acreage from the sale. The Rio Grande
National Forest is not known to have extensive
oil and gas resources. The lease proposal
shocked local residents, who questioned its
size as well as the inclusion of high-value
forestlands in an area with questionable oil
and gas deposits.
WRA successfully argued that the federal
agencies had not carried out any analysis of
the environmental impacts of drilling in the
forest since 1995, when only 23 additional
wells were planned. The proposed leasing of
more than 145,000 acres could result in hundreds,
if not thousands, of wells. The impacts
to the forest of this monumental increase in
drilling had not been considered by the BLM.
The BLM rescinded the lease sale until a more
thorough analysis can be done.
“Not leasing now was the right decision,” said
WRA Lands Program Director Mike Chiropolos.
“By stepping back to ‘look before
it leaps,’ the Forest Service avoided repeating
the mistakes it has made on other National
Forests across the Rockies.”
The initial lease sale, which was scheduled to
occur on May 8th, put more than 175,000
acres up for lease in 14 Colorado counties.
The vast majority of these lands were in the
Rio Grande National Forest, which had not
had a single acre leased for oil and gas drilling
since 1994.
Roan Plateau Protection
 Western Resource Advocates has long advocated for legislative protection of Colorado’s magnificent Roan Plateau. The Roan Plateau is a vital area of great beauty that supports diverse wildlife, including essential stream habitat for Colorado’s purest populations of cutthroat trout and crucial winter range for big game herds estimated at 13,000 deer and 9,000 elk. The BLM’s recent decision to issue oil and gas leases on all 55,000 acres of undeveloped land on the Roan, jeopardizes this landmark’s natural beauty and wildlife habitats.
The BLM projects that industry will drill 3,693 new wells above the rim of the Roan Plateau, and 13,495 wells in the Roan Plateau Planning Area. While WRA recognizes that oil and gas development may be appropriate on some public lands, we assert that the top of the Roan Plateau should not be compromised.
Representing a broad coalition of conservation and wildlife groups, WRA will continue to work to preserve the majesty of the Roan Plateau.
WRA’s advocacy has helped win support for long-term protection:
- In June 2007, BLM responded to WRA’s protest of its management proposal by re-opening public comment on “areas of critical environmental concern.” WRA submitted comprehensive comments on the need for protections, including a report by John Woodling, a retired fisheries biologist.
- Mr. Woodling’s recommendation is to fully protect the priceless native trout watersheds on the Upper Plateau from significant threats to water quality from spills, accidents, and sedimentation.
- Although Colorado Governor Bill Ritter proposed a phased leasing program short of full protection, the State is advocating for increased protections consistent with the Division of Wildlife’s scientific recommendations for protecting trout and big game habitat.
- WRA continues to advocate Congressional legislation to protect the Roan, modeled on recent acts that protected Otero Mesa in New Mexico and the Rocky Mountain Front in Montana, as well as the pending Wyoming Range Legacy Act. Colorado’s magnificent public lands warrant an equal level of protection.
- WRA is prepared to use every available policy and legal option available to ensure that the Roan’s wildlife and scenery are passed to future generations as an intact legacy.
Please check back regularly for updates. For more information, visit the “Save the Roan” website.
Photo courtesy of Colorado Environmental Coalition.
Working with the Navajo to Protect Cultural Sites in New Mexico
To the casual traveler, the stretch of Highway 550 that connects the Four Corners region to Albuquerque is a desolate landscape. To geologists and the hundreds of oil and gas companies operating in the San Juan Basin, the region contains one of the world’s most prolific natural gas and coalbed methane fields. To Native American residents, the landscape is distinguished by an abundance of historical, cultural, and scenic riches.
The Bureau of Land Management’s current plan for these lands fails to balance mineral development with other values, such as historic preservation and the health and vitality of Native American communities. WRA has filed federal court litigation challenging the Plan, on behalf of a diverse group of plaintiffs including three chapters of the Navajo Nation and the grassroots group Diné CARE.
Although several thousand Navajo reside in the region, individual tribal members and local tribal governments do not receive royalties from oil and gas drilling. Often, neither the energy companies nor BLM provide advance notice before entering tribal lands to drill wells, bulldoze roads or dig new pipelines. This endangers the integrity of values including sacred sites, historic properties, natural springs, and plants gathered for traditional uses such as medicine, handicrafts and dying wool.
During a summer field visit to these lands, hosted by President Samuel Sage of the Counselor Chapter of the Eastern Navajo Agency, WRA attorneys viewed firsthand the impacts of drilling on tribal lands. By visiting with local Navajo and hearing their stories, we gained a new appreciation for the need to comply with federal environmental and cultural protection laws.
Navajo people are entitled to safeguard the cultural and ecological integrity of their lands. To expect the Navajo to bear the brunt of development, without receiving any benefits, is fundamentally unfair. The National Historic Preservation Act requires the government to closely consult with tribes on oil and gas development that affects tribal interests.
WRA is working with the local communities in the Four Corners region and has petitioned the courts to require balanced management of federal lands. Navajo residents will continue to dwell in their ancestral homeland long after the last gas well has been plugged and abandoned by industry.
Recent Developments
Land Program Highlights
Recent Work to Protect Western Landscapes
WYOMING: Protecting Sage Grouse Habitat in Pinedale Resource Area
WRA is working closely with Audubon to protect Wyoming's greater sage-grouse from impacts caused by oil and gas development, specifically by:
1) protesting the sale of oil and gas
leases covering hundreds of thousands of acres of "core" sage-grouse
habitat (nesting, strutting and brood rearing areas); and
2) by
challenging BLM's proposed Resource Management Plan for the Pinedale
area, comprising tens of thousands of acres of important sage-grouse
core population areas.
WYOMING: Limiting Air Pollution in Pinedale Gas Fields
WRA is partnering with the Upper Green River Valley Coalition to
ensure that emissions from increased oil and gas activities in the
booming Pinedale Anticline field do not contribute to further degradation of
visibility in Class I wilderness areas, cause air quality violations
or unhealthy levels of ground level ozone. Pinedale, a rural Wyoming town with a population of less than 2,000, has experienced ground-level ozone pollution worse than Los Angeles at times due to excessive emissions produced by oil and gas drilling activities.
WYOMING: Stopping Drilling Contamination in Pavillion
Pavillion is a small farming community in
central Wyoming experiencing rapid growth in oil and gas drilling. Because of air and water contamination problems resulting from the drilling activity, WRA is working with local groups to press Wyoming's Department of Environmental Quality for stronger controls on oil and gas
production facilities to protect the health of local residents.
WYOMING: Providing Citizens with Information on Toxic Drilling Chemicals
WRA is assisting the Oil and Gas Accountability Project (OGAP) and
coalition of individuals and organizations across Wyoming to gain
access to information about chemicals used by the oil and gas industry
under the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know law. A number of toxic chemicals can be used in the oil and gas drilling process and citizens can be exposed to them through spills, vapors and water wells contaminated through " fracing," a process that breaks apart tight underground formations using chemicals, water, sand and extreme hydraulic pressure.
WYOMING: Human Health Needs to Factor into Oil and Gas Drilling Expansion
WRA, local citizens and grass roots groups in Pinedale and
Pavillion are working to persuade the BLM to prepare Health Impact Assessments for
large natural gas development projects proposed on public lands. These assessments will take into account the human public health and environmental health impacts of Wyoming's explosive growth in oil and gas drilling. Area residents have felt the detrimental effects to local air and water quality due to the drilling. With proposals to more than double the current number of wells in the Pinedale Anticline in the works, Wyoming residents are pressing to have their health concerns taken into account in the decision-making process.
COLORADO: BLM withdraws 17,500 acres from lease sale
WRA attorneys advised citizens' groups and landowners in Western Colorado on federal oil and gas law and formulating strategies to give local people and their elected representatives a voice on leasing decisions of "split estate" lands. Our joint efforts resulted in BLM's decision to withdraw 17,500 acres from the May, 2005 Colorado lease sale. It is only fair for private landowners to have a chance to review and comment on leasing decisions for the mineral estate. Once leased, the landowner has little say over future decisons that could result in wells being drilled adjacent to their residences and within their farm or ranch.
NEW MEXICO: Farmington
WRA is representing a unique coalition of individual ranchers, Eastern Navajo Chapters, Native American interests, and conservation groups united by their determination to ensure that future oil and gas development in northwestern New Mexico proceeds in accordance with federal law. In their federal court challenge, plaintiffs challenge the Bureau of Land Management’s Revised Resource Management Plan for the Farmington Field Office, which proposes to authorize nearly 10,000 new oil and gas wells in an area that already hosts over 20,000 active wells as a result of significant oil and gas development over the last 50 years.
The Bureau of Land Management’s new plan to allow 50% more drilling in this area would effectively eliminate any wildlife habitat values in the region and increase air pollution in an area already suffering serious health impacts from ozone emissions. Our case challenges the Bureau of Land Management’s failure to comply with its responsibilities to require rational, phased development of its lands by balancing uses and complying with governing law for the protection of the environment and human health. WRA has asked the court to require the Bureau of Land Management to take a hard look at the impacts to all resources by analyzing a reasonable range of alternatives and cumulative impacts, to consult with concerned Navajo Chapters about affording real protection for Tribal cultural sites in the area, and to prevent widespread degradation of resources. Briefing of this federal case is now complete.
In 2005, WRA began working with Forest Guardians and others to file challenges to individual drilling proposals in “Areas of Critical Environmental Concern,” for which Congress has directed the Bureau of Land Management that special management attention is required to protect and prevent irreparable damage to important historic, cultural, and other values. WRA is requesting that new development should be proposed pursuant to a comprehensive plan that takes account of baseline conditions, ensures careful monitoring, and protects the special resources behind the ACEC designation. However, BLM continues to rubber stamp new projects, refuses to survey the location and impacts from past drilling, or declines to require drillers to submit a comprehensive plan of future development.
Wildlife is showing stress from unmanaged drilling. According to counts conducted by the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, from 1999 to 2004, elk numbers crashed from 987 to 119 and mule deer from 1519 to 691. In November 2005, the Bureau of Land Management authorized winter drilling in a Bald Eagle protection area – although Forest Guardians observed three eagles during a site visit.
COLORADO: Leasing in Citizens-Proposed Wilderness
The Bureau of Land Management is leasing Colorado’s natural treasures with breakneck speed, notwithstanding citizen efforts to identify and protect landscapes with outstanding wilderness and recreational values. These lands were included in the Colorado Wilderness Act of 2003, introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Colorado Congresswoman Diana DeGette, which would permanently protect them from uses that would compromise wilderness character -- such as oil and gas leasing, exploration, and development. When the Bureau of Land Management leases these parcels, the lands become burdened with new mineral development rights and will lose their wilderness character as development occurs. The Bureau of Land Management consistently offers for lease nearly every parcel nominated by industry. In doing so, the Bureau of Land Management refuses to conduct further environmental review and fails to consider alternatives that could protect surface resources, such as prohibiting surface-disturbing activities or requiring the use of directional drilling. WRA has appealed several of these leasing decisions on behalf of local and national conservation groups, in the hopes that Colorado’s wild landscapes might remain intact. If the Bureau of Land Management proceeds with its aggressive leasing program, Colorado’s mid and lower-elevation wilderness lands will be seriously diminished before Congress can properly consider permanent protection.
COLORADO: Responsible Motorized Recreation
WRA recently argued before the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in support of the Forest Service’s Molas Pass closures. In 2001, the Forest Service closed a 200 acre area in Andrews Lake and the Bear Creek drainage to snowmobile use. The area, located in the San Juan National Forest, was closed to prevent conflicts between snowmobilers and back-country skiers and to protect prime habitat for the threatened Canada lynx. Several motorized vehicle clubs then sued the Forest Service demanding that the area be re-opened. WRA intervened in the lawsuit on behalf of client conservation groups to support the Forest Service. Judge Blackburn issued an order rejecting the motorized vehicle clubs’ arguments, but motorized groups appealed the decision as part of their plan to litigate every closure decision, regardless of size, proof of user conflicts or the quality of the agency decision-making process.
UTAH: Responsible Motorized Recreation
To protect pristine forest habitat from the tide of ORV (Off-Road Vehicle) abuse, we are using the: 1) the travel planning process, which is currently underway in the Ogden Ranger District of the Wasatch-Cache National Forest and the Fishlake National Forest, and 2) the petition process, which allows citizen groups to seek the closure of environmentally-damaging routes and trails.
Most recently, we filed an administrative appeal on behalf of the Ogden Chapter of the Sierra Club. As a result, the Forest Service withdrew its Travel Plan opening new ORV routes and designating a 500 mile trail network across the Wasatch-Cache National Forest. The Forest Service cited the District Ranger’s failure to analyze adequately cumulative environmental impacts as the basis for the remand for further environmental review. At issue are roadless areas, wildlife habitat, water quality and opportunities for quiet recreation.
UTAH: R.S. 2477
WRA wants to ensure that R.S. 2477 does not become the knife that cuts through Utah’s forest habitats. We contribute to a regional effort to prevent use of the repealed statute to open up new routes in sensitive areas. First, we use Utah’s open records law to gain access to documents and other records. Second, we take work to prevent bogus R.S. 2477 rights-of-way claims on Utah’s National Forests.
Already, we have used Utah’s open records law to get an order requiring the Utah Attorney General’s Office to release records related to 20 routes claimed as “highways” under R.S. 2477 by Utah and its counties. Continuing our efforts to protect Utah’s wild places from willy-nilly and unsubstantiated R.S. 2477 claims, we are before the Utah Court of Appeals arguing that records maintained about R.S. 2477 rights-of-way pursuant to state statute should be available to the public.
UTAH: BLM Oil and Gas Leasing
WRA's objective is to protect sensitive National Forest lands in Utah from oil and gas drilling, and to strictly condition drilling in those areas where it occurs. Our efforts to date have saved almost 50,000 acres of the Manti-La Sal National Forest from oil and gas leasing, but leases for approximately 105,000 acres in other Utah National Forests have been approved and leases for 60,000 acres more are pending. Many of these threatened areas are roadless.
Recently, however, a federal district court in California rejected the Bush Administration’s “State Petition” rule and reinstated the Clinton-era Roadless Rule. This means that over four million acres of Utah’s most intact forest ecosystems may be spared from oil and gas development. WRA will continue to our work to ensure that the Roadless Rule is enforced in Utah and that the Forest Service properly considers environmental impacts before it leases our most pristine Forest lands for oil and gas development.
WYOMING: Greater Red Desert
The Bureau of Land Management has its own name for the Red Desert of southern Wyoming. They call it “Desolation Flats” in their drilling proposal -- although the area is neither desolate nor flat. On the contrary, the Red Desert is a land of beautiful natural contrasts that contains blossoms and badlands, canyons and buttresses. The diverse and vibrant area also includes important wildlife habitat and linkages. Nonetheless, the Bureau of Land Management has adopted a plan that would allow up to 385 new natural gas wells, 542 miles of road, and 360 miles of new pipeline in a quarter-million-acre section of the southern Red Desert. This proposal would compromise 50,000 acres of the proposed expansion of the Adobe Town Wilderness Study Area, impair the eligibility of the Monument Valley Management Area for designation as a protected Area of Critical Environmental Concern, sever the Powder Rim Wildlife Linkage, and foreclose other environmentally protective management and mitigation measures that may be considered in the ongoing revision of the Great Divide Resource Management Plan. WRA represents a coalition of conservation organizations in an appeal of the “Desolation Flats” drilling proposal and is actively monitoring site-specific drilling projects. For more information, click here.
Read more about the "Desolation Flats" gas project in Wyoming’s largest and most spectacular desert wilderness.
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