As the clock counts down for the planned lease of the top of the Roan Plateau for natural gas drilling, environmentalists are pinning their hopes on the courts, Congress and administrative actions to delay or block it.

Gov. Bill Ritter, who has criticized the Bureau of Land Management plan and offered his own alternative, said his office does not plan to protest the Aug. 14 leases formally.

“At this juncture, we have done what we believe we can do,” said Ritter, a Democrat, at an appearance at the unveiling of a solar array in Carbondale on Tuesday. His plan falls short of environmentalists’ hope that there will be no leasing at all on the plateau.

Ritter said Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., is working on including his plan in the defense authorization bill pending in the Senate. Salazar, who also attended the event, confirmed that he is trying to submit legislation to make Ritter’s plan law before the lease sale.

“I’m going to do everything I can to try to implement the amendment,” Salazar said. 

He added that there might be a variety of bills to which he could try to append the governor’s plan, which would replace the BLM proposal.

“I’m hoping we can stop them,” Salazar said. “We came up with the right plan. The federal government should not run roughshod over those who know the land best.”

Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., has also offered legislation that would ensure the revenues from the leases are shared between the federal treasury and state coffers.

Environmentalists say none of those plans goes far enough to preserve the surface of the Roan Plateau, which has become a key battleground in the fight between energy development and environmental protection on public lands in the West.

They are preparing to file a lawsuit arguing that the BLM failed to address the environmental and fiscal impacts of its plan adequately, and will ask a U.S. district court in Denver to block the leases until the lawsuit is resolved.

Environmentalists are also planning to file a written protest of all the leases on top of the Roan, a move likely to delay any drilling, if not the actual issuing of the leases. According to BLM rules, no leasing can take place until the protests are resolved.

A coalition of environmental groups plans to use its Web site, saveroanplateau.org, to give citizens the opportunity to file their own protests of the leases with the BLM. The protest period ends later this month.

The Roan Plateau, a vast mesa northwest of Rifle, is believed to sit on top of a sweet spot of natural gas reserves. That has pitted the energy industry against environmentalists and wildlife advocates who have fought to keep drill rigs off the top of the plateau to protect deer and elk habitat and creeks full of native cutthroat trout.

The BLM plan, drafted with help from the state Division of Wildlife under former Gov. Bill Owens, a Republican, would keep drill rigs off approximately 21,000 acres of the Roan Plateau’s surface to protect sensitive areas such as creek beds and cliff sides, but would otherwise open the top to drilling in a phased plan intended to limit the impacts at any one time.

Environmentalists worry that even those restrictions could be waived.

“Whatever happens here has to be done very thoughtfully,” said Steve Smith, of The Wilderness Society, “and we should not take this false panic over energy prices as a reason to rush into a place like the Roan Plateau, of all places, with all the unique features we need to protect in the long term. We need to step back and come up with a plan that is different from ‘lease the whole thing.’”

After Ritter took office, his administration reviewed the plan and called for protecting about 15,000 more acres to safeguard areas of environmental concern further.

Many wildlife groups, including Trout Unlimited, the National Wildlife Federation and the Colorado Wildlife Federation, have endorsed that plan. The House passed a bill sponsored by Salazar’s brother, Rep. Ken Salazar, and by Rep. Mark Udall, both Democrats, to implement it, but it must also be passed by the Senate.

Environmentalists say Ritter’s plan is an improvement over the BLM’s, but still doesn’t go far enough to protect the Roan. They want to see drill rigs banned from the top of the plateau altogether.

“We don’t think a partial lease is the solution,” said Pete Kolbenshlag with the Campaign to Save Roan Plateau.

Underlying the debate are the dwindling days of the Bush administration. Environmentalists accuse the BLM of trying to press the Roan leases through before Bush leaves office. Meanwhile, their tactics are partly intended to delay any action on the Roan into the next administration, which they hope will be less inclined to speed energy drilling on public lands.

“This administration in general has been really single-minded in its commitment to open public lands and to energy development in general,” Smith said. “We hope that, by coincidence, next year there will be a different perspective in the new administration. But with or without that, we think this plan needs to be challenged and needs a more thorough review by whoever’s in office.”

dfrey@aspendailynews.com