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March 15, 2013 01:46 PM UTC

Colorado BLM using stalling tactic at Mesa Verde, new drilling proposals could come back this summer

  • 2 Comments
  • by: checks-and-balances

Is Colorado BLM Director Helen Hankins backpedaling on decisions to halt controversial drilling plans next to Mesa Verde National Park, Dinosaur National Monument, and in the North Fork Valley?

Barely a month after deferring oil and gas leasing decisions, Dir. Hankins’ staff are showing signs she is planning to welch on her office’s commitment to protect national parks and the heart of North Fork’s economic and agricultural center.

Earlier this week, the Durango Herald reported that:

[Connie] Clementson [Field Manager of the BLM Tres Rios office] made clear that the decision to defer the leases in Southwest Colorado does not take that land off the table for future development. After the BLM answers all the protests received about the lease sale, the land could be renominated for leasing as soon as August or November, Clementson said.

The Tres Rios field office manages lands near Mesa Verde National Park. The National Park Service criticized Dir. Hankins plans to offer leases for drilling on these lands and cited the lack of coordination by her staff.

When BLM announced the oil and gas deferrals near North Fork’s agricultural community, the Montrose Daily Press reported the following comments by Colorado BLM Communications Director Stephen Hall:

The deferral is not permanent, but the parcels won’t be offered for lease any time soon, said Steve Hall, communications director for the BLM in Colorado. “We didn’t put a timeframe on it. It’s safe to say we aren’t going to have them up (for bid) in the near future,” he said. “But we didn’t do what some had asked, which is defer them until the new resource management plan.

Dir. Hankins already deferred those North Fork leases earlier in 2012, then reinstated most of them after the public scrutiny died down. Is that what she’s doing now? And does Dir. Hankins plan to reoffer these same, heavily protested leases based on 30-year-old data?  Instead of being a real estate agent for Big Oil and driving-up speculation on public lands, Hankins should do the right thing and put our national parks, water and local economies on equal ground with oil and gas development.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

2 thoughts on “Colorado BLM using stalling tactic at Mesa Verde, new drilling proposals could come back this summer

  1. She can't leave well enough alone. What was the point of deferring them in the first place if we're just going to see the same destructive, poorly planned setup 6 months down the road? 

  2. People and communities need to stay on top of this.  This latest round of deferrals included #2 for the North Fork.  Folks in the North Fork are tired of the fight, but not so much so not to wage it–and win it–again. 

    Still, the preference would be to work with the Colorado State Office of BLM, Hankins and her staff, to do landscape level planning first and to put updated, protective management in place that addresses today’s resources and today’s uses, and not ‘analysis’ from the 80s, some dating back to the era of James Watt: being used to justify introducing a new industrial use into a populated area of already-heavily-utilized scattered public lands, surrounding and intermixed with farms, orchards, ranches and towns. 

    The fact of the matter is that the land use plan from the 1980s never ever looked at much that is relevant today–in terms of resources, above and below ground; water systems and sources; wildlife migration (let alone species listed since then); nationally significant contributions to selenium loads in the Colorado River System (to the tune of tens of millions in US taxpayer dollars already paid out); and, a long, long list of other issues. 

    As long as that the CO State Office of BLM keeps trying to lease around National Parks and in Colorado's organic, winery and fruit-growing hotbed, without landscape level planning that considers such; those who follow these issues will be forced to direct attention to that fight, again, rather than working with the agency proactively on putting the plans it needs to in place FIRST.  Colorado BLM's obtuseness helps no one.  Not the agency, not communities, stakeholders and the public, and not industry. 

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