A federal judge has rejected EPA’s request for a warrant to inspect a Utah Indian tribe’s oil and gas operations as court records outline an escalating clash over access to reservation property.
“EPA is once again ignoring its role as a federal trustee and disrespecting our Tribe’s sovereign authority to regulate access to our homelands,” Shaun Chapoose, chair of the Ute Tribal Business Committee, said in a news release Thursday. The release also accuses the agency’s Denver regional office of repeatedly trying to curtail fossil fuel development on its lands.
Attorneys for EPA had sought the administrative warrant under seal last month in U.S. District Court for the District of Utah from U.S. Magistrate Judge Cecilia Romero. The move came after the tribe told the agency that an access permit was needed to conduct previously announced Clean Air Act inspections of compressor stations and other facilities on the Uintah and Ouray Reservation in northeastern Utah.
The reservation is located in the Uinta Basin, part of which is flunking EPA’s 2015 standard for ground-level ozone, a lung-damaging gas that is the main ingredient in smog. Ozone is spawned by the reaction of nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds in sunlight. Both pollutants are tied to fossil fuel production.
