The state of Wyoming is making good on its vow to fight the Bureau of Land Management’s proposed land-use plan for southwest Wyoming that the governor and members of the state’s congressional delegation argue unnecessarily restrict land uses across a 3.6-million-acre planning area.
Five agencies, including Wyoming State Parks and Cultural Resources and the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality, have filed formal protests challenging BLM’s Rock Springs resource management plan, Republican Gov. Mark Gordon’s office announced Wednesday.
The deadline was Monday to file administrative protests to the final environmental impact statement the bureau unveiled last month.
The Wyoming DEQ, in a protest letter filed last week by Todd Parfitt, the state agency’s director, argues that Wyoming, not BLM, “actively regulates land/mining, water quality, air quality, abandoned mine land management reclamation, solid and hazardous wastes, and general environmental issues throughout Wyoming,” including on “state and federal public land.”
