Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal (D) is again criticizing the Bureau of Land Management's plans for energy development in the Upper Green River Valley, this time focusing on the agency's pending resource management plan for Pinedale, which would guide management of the area for the next 10 to 25 years.
Nestled between the high peaks of western Wyoming's Wind River, Gros Ventre and Wyoming ranges, the valley is home to more than 100,000 big game animals, the continental United States' longest big-game migration route, the largest mule deer herd in the United States and sage grouse habitat.
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| A view of Pinedale's vast expanse. Photo courtesy of Wyo. Gov. Dave Freudenthal. |
In a May 2 letter to BLM, Freudenthal called the agency's preliminary final environmental impact statement "unacceptable" and accused BLM of largely excluding cooperating agencies like the state of Wyoming from the process of developing the plan.
The agency's final environmental impact statement is expected to be publicly released next month, and a record of decision is expected in November.
Freudenthal said he is worried by "recurring failures" on the part of the federal agency to cooperate with the state in addressing "all the important resource values that will be affected," including air and water quality, critical winter range and migration routes for big game and sage grouse. The state has been working with BLM on the document for the past 10 months but has not received feedback from the federal agency that its comments are being received and addressed, he said.
"The brief written responses and explanations are inadequate to satisfy the need for understanding by state cooperators," he wrote. "If additional direct interactive discussions do not occur, this process is nothing short of a superficial opportunity for another meaningless cooperator review."
Not only is the document not thorough enough in its scope, Freudenthal said, but it also diverges from the analytical framework originally agreed upon by BLM and cooperating agencies. Without telling the state or the public, BLM changed its long-range plan from a "performance-based" one to a "prescriptive" one, he said.
The plan "is currently some kind of hybrid document that we quite frankly have never seen before," Freudenthal wrote. "This is unacceptable."
BLM's resource management plan for the Pinedale area would guide development in two of the nation's richest energy fields, the Jonah Field and the Pinedale Anticline. The intense level of energy development in the area has come under fire in recent months because of ozone alerts warning of health hazards.
In recent weeks Freudenthal has also blasted the U.S. Forest Service after discovering that it had what he called an inappropriate relationship with an energy company seeking to lease federal forest land in Sublette County for energy development.
In his latest letter, the governor suggested that Wyoming will seek its own methods of ensuring a balanced approach to the management of public lands in the valley if BLM does not address the state's concerns.
"Without an adequate opportunity for meaningful cooperator participation in the review, the State of Wyoming may have to consider other avenues to ensure that the Pinedale Field Office manages its resources in a coordinated and effective manner," the governor wrote. "The stakes are too high and the potential impacts too great for this process to be short-changed."
Freudenthal complained in the letter that the BLM plan seeks to avoid detailed environmental reviews, leaving the state "in the position of controlling emissions and wildlife impacts through a series of regulatory actions instead of cooperative planning."
BLM's use of management areas for varying levels of oil and gas development "does not instill sufficient confidence that other resources and resource values will be adequately considered and protected," he wrote.
"The descriptions do not clearly define the areas, distribution, intensity, or timing of surface disturbances during the life of the RMP," Freudenthal added. "Without additional clarification, development could easily be allowed to occur over the majority of the Pinedale area simultaneously and in such dispersed levels of activity that it could significantly reduce habitat function at the landscape level as well as the localized level."
Despite the governor's concerns, Kellie Roadifer of BLM said the agency had worked with cooperating agencies in developing the document. "We had meetings at the point where we felt there was something to discuss that needed the cooperators' input," she said.
Roadifer also said environmental and socioeconomic concerns would be dealt with in more detail at the development stage, when the agency has a better idea of what projects energy companies are interested in pursuing and what the effects will be.
Nevertheless, critics of the plan said BLM is putting too much emphasis on energy development.
Rollin Sparrowe of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership said the BLM plan for the Pinedale region should take into account multiple uses of public lands, including fish and wildlife resources as well as recreational activities. "Although the public has not had a chance to review the revised plan, the governor's strong statement leads us to believe the plan fails at achieving this balance," he said in a statement.
Linda Baker of the Upper Green River Valley Coalition said the best course of action for BLM to take at this point would be to go back and do another draft analysis. "Since the draft came out a year ago, a lot has happened here," she said. "There are 3,100 additional wells in the Jonah Field and some unknown number of wells in the Pinedale Anticline, we've had ozone exceedences, and the [Department of Environmental Quality] is spinning, trying to figure out how to address 88 water wells that have been contaminated with benzene."
Gable is an independent energy and environmental writer in Woodland Park, Colo.
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