Western
conservationists and sportsmen are urging Bureau of Land Management
officials to begin rigorous enforcement of key federal laws and
regulations designed to protect the West’s land, air, water and
wildlife in the face of exploding energy development.
“Throughout
the West, BLM field staff members have been unable to carry out their
basic duties to protect the nation’s public lands because of pressure
from appointed agency officials in Washington, D.C.” said Tweeti
Blancett, whose family’s historic New Mexico ranch has been ravaged by
natural gas drilling. “Veteran BLM employees have been ordered to cut
back on routine inspections and enforcement and to ignore measures
needed to reduce pollution of the West’s air and water so energy
development can occur at any price.”
The
result, Blancett said, has been an assault on the West’s public lands
that has resulted in polluted water, spikes in air pollution and
declines in native wildlife populations that are the basis for the
West’s growing recreation-based economy.
The
BLM will hold a field hearing in Denver Tuesday, Nov. 14 to allow
public comment on its pilot programs to put more money and resources
into BLM offices where energy activity is most intense.
Blancett
and others will attend the hearing to focus on the agency’s overall
failure to monitor, regulate and enforce environmental laws and
regulations. They include:
- In
Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, the vast majority of drilling sites
violate BLM’s own regulations to protect natural resources. Despite
regulations that require sites to be reclaimed, a BLM survey last year
found more than 80 percent failed to meet even basic reclamation
standards.
- In
Wyoming’s Upper Green River Valley, the BLM violated agreements with
federal and state agencies intended to protect the area’s public lands
and wildlife from the impacts of drilling. An internal BLM document
obtained in early September listed numerous failed commitments
including the agency’s failure to monitor air quality. BLM also refuses
to mitigate impacts to wildlife. Studies have shown that under the
BLM’s watch, ozone-causing pollution from the Pinedale Anticline
natural gas field is six to eight times higher than predicted. The
native Sublette mule deer herd that winters on the Anticline has
declined 46 percent since the onset of the drilling boom.
- In
Western Colorado, the BLM ignored requests from local governments and
residents and auctioned 13,000 acres within the designated watersheds
that are water source for the cities of Grand Junction and Palisade.
The leasing violated the letter and spirit of a management plant BLM
agreed to in 1993 and a 1996 BLM agreement with other agencies pledging
to work with local governments to protect water sources.
- In
BLM’s Farmington, New Mexico office amid intense natural gas
development, the BLM’s own audit gave the agency failing grades on its
inspection and enforcement program.
“BLM
has failed to enforce its own regulations and industry has failed to
comply,” said Blancett, a member of a sixth generation ranching family
in northwestern New Mexico. “Our historic working ranch is now a
wasteland of well pads, roads, pipelines and compressor plants. The
water in every spring and stock tank is contaminated so badly it kills
livestock and wildlife,” she said.
“Ranches
such as ours should not be sacrificed for the short-term gain of giant
energy companies, and the BLM needs to be allowed to do the job it’s
supposed to do.”
Mike
Eisenfelt, a Farmington, New Mexico resident who has witnessed the Four
Corners energy development first hand, said the BLM’s pilot projects to
speed up the issuance of drilling permits has been a failure.
“With
more than 18,000 existing natural gas wells, more than 12,000 more
proposed and 99 percent of the 1.2 million available acres leased, the
entire emphasis has become revenue generation,” Eisenfelt said.
“Extraordinary natural resource values and cultural resources in the
Farmington Field are being devastated by current BLM energy policies.”
In
response, ranchers, hunters, anglers and former agency officials from
throughout the West have formed the grassroots organizations calling
for monitoring and enforcement of federal law and regulations.
“We
know from personal experience that the BLM has many well qualified and
dedicated professionals who want to do their jobs, but the clear
directives from higher-ups in Washington to clear the way for energy
development has stymied and frustrated them,” said Linda Baker of the
Upper Green River Valley Coalition.
Veteran
BLM employee, hunter and outfitter Bob Elderkin has paid especially
close attention to how the BLM has regulated energy development in
Western Colorado.
“BLM
needs to start working with and listening to groups such as the broad
coalition in Colorado that has put together Wildlife Management
Guidelines for energy development,” said Elderkin, who worked on energy
development at BLM and is now a member of the Colorado Mule Deer
Association.
“The
BLM needs to change their historical management operation from
permitting individual gas wells to permitting drilling pads and
requiring wells be drilled from that single pad,” Elderkin explained.
“That will allow the companies to drill wells with minimum impacts on
the land.
“It’s the multiple pads, roads and pipelines that cause the problem for wildlife.”
The
agency has been ordered to issue drilling permits as quickly as
possible but often ignores key environmental requirements. By requiring
more wells from a single pad and directional drilling, the BLM can
spend less time on approving wells and more on the environmental
protection they’re required to do.
“When
this energy play is over,” Elderkin said, “we want to still have our
way of life and our sustainable resource-based economy.”
Dennis
Beuchler, a veteran U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist now with
the Colorado Wildlife Federation, has worked with Elderkin in
developing the Wildlife Management Guidelines endorsed by 38 sportsmen
and conservation groups and local governments.
“The
BLM should endorse these guidelines as well,” Beuchler said. “And it is
critical that the BLM staff be permitted to enforce its own regulations
to assure monitoring, inspection and enforcement at energy development
sites. As a federal employee for more than 30 years, I know first hand
how intense the political pressure can be on BLM employees.”
Beuchler
said wildlife in areas such as the Piceance Basin, Little Snake
Resource Area and Roan Plateau in northwestern Colorado are threatened
by energy development.
“But
people throughout the state need to understand that much of Colorado,
from the Western Slope to the northeastern and southeastern corners of
our state will be the subject of intense energy development,” Beuchler
said. “This level of development makes it all the more important for
BLM to fulfill its mission to protect our wildlife and other natural
resources during when energy development occurs.”
Wally
McRae, owner of the Rocker Six Ranch in Colstrip, Montana, has seen his
ranch come into the crosshairs of energy development permitted by the
BLM.
“The
BLM needs to remember that when they allow development of oil and gas
underneath the ground on my place, that a family lives here, and that
family has worked that land for more than 100 years,” McCrae said.
For more information:
Matt Sura, Western Colorado Congress (970) 270-5647
Dan Feinberg, Northern Plains Resource Council (406) 248-1154
Linda Baker, Upper Green River Valley Coalition (307) 231-1323
Dennis Beuchler, Colorado Wildlife Federation (303) 506-4588
Mike Eisenfeld, San Juan Citizens Alliance (505) 360-8994
Jill Morrison, Power River Basin Resource Council, (307) 751-5574
