A coalition of environmental groups filed a lawsuit against the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) this week, claiming the federal agency illegally approved 1,400 gas wells in Garfield County.
It claims the feds cut-and-pasted the findings of a 2006 air quality analysis, conducted to assess leases for the Roan Plateau, onto 30-plus projects that are not in that area, granting them approval for drilling without doing any actual analysis of the other sites.
“The agency hasn’t been taking air quality seriously and they’ve adopted a practice of approving rather than analyzing,” said Peter Hart, staff attorney for the Carbondale-based Wilderness Workshop.
The suit was filed by the nonprofit environmental-law firm Earthjustice, on behalf of the nonprofit organization, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society.
They are asking a federal judge to order the BLM to stop relying on the Roan analysis for other Western Slope proposals, and for a court order making the BLM go through the Environmental Protection Agency air quality analysis for each proposal.
The EPA environmental impact process is lengthy and open to the public. The suit claims the BLM skirted its obligations to the EPA by not conducting a new air analysis for each of the proposed sites it reviewed.
The approvals were issued by the BLM’s Colorado River Valley Office in Silt. A message left at that office was not returned on Friday.
The allegedly illegal BLM approvals were issued between 2008 and 2010 for varied oil and gas companies.
The suit will not affect gas leases in the Thompson Divide area, which have sparked controversy in the Roaring Fork Valley and protest from the Pitkin County commissioners (see related story). No federal environmental analysis has been conducted for the 70-plus existing leases there, and none have broken ground.
Hart argued Friday that air quality is among the most vital impacts to understand when the feds are considering allowing drilling on public lands.
“These are effects that we all feel,” he said.
He pointed to rural areas of western Wyoming where, in just the last decade of rampant oil and gas development, local air quality has degraded to a more-polluted state than major cities like Los Angeles and Houston.
Along with health concerns, Hart highlighted the recreation and tourism industries of Western Colorado that depend on clean air to attract visitors. He argued those factors should make air analysis all the more important for the BLM here.
The suit cites state statistics about the downward trend in Western Slope air quality, including a finding that 87 percent of the human-caused volatile emissions, and 72.5 percent of nitrous oxide emissions in Garfield County are from oil and gas development. Both forms of pollution can cause long-term health problems.
“Air quality monitoring has indicated that Garfield County may be in danger of violating federal air quality standards for ozone,” reads a Wilderness Workshop press release.
State monitoring authorities also have found 67 percent of benzene emissions in Garfield County are caused by local drilling.
andrew@aspendailynews.com
