To be fair to the Bureau of Land Management, its long-range planning process for the land it oversees in Southwest Colorado has been fraught with challenges. When the effort began in 2004, the local BLM office was merged with the San Juan National Forest office in a pilot, experimental joint-management project, and the two combined agencies were conducting a joint-planning endeavor. Five years into the effort – after a draft plan had been released – the agencies divorced, and the planning work done thus far had to be disentwined. And even before that, there were challenges to the draft land and resource management plan that the BLM and Forest Service were jointly addressing in a supplemental, environmental-impact statement.
Given those complications and the slow pace of federal agencies, it is not particularly shocking that the final Resource Management Plan for the newly created Tres Rios Field office did not come out until 2013. Nor is it altogether surprising that the plan drew protests from all facets of interests. What is utterly dismaying is that the BLM over lo these many years and opportunities – as well as promises – to address concerns, failed to do so.
When the agency filed its record of decision late in February, it enshrined into a law a plan that will replace the one from 1985 that is currently guiding management of 503,000 acres of land and 300,000 acres of nonfederal, subsurface mineral rights in eight counties across Southwest Colorado. After 30 years and countless new tools to better balance the various demands on public lands, the new plan ought to reflect the 21st century landscape. It does not.
Instead, the plan fails outright in delivering agency promises to consider and use such innovative tools as Master Leasing Plans – which allow for balance and mitigation of oil and gas activity in specific areas while ensuring access to the resources beneath the surface. The plans can account for and ward off potential damage to wildlife habitat, wilderness-quality lands and air quality – an increasing concern in many areas within the plan’s boundaries, including around Mesa Verde National Park, which is adjacent to proposed oil and gas development in the Gothic Shale. The BLM’s final plan fails to use Master Leasing Plans and many other such tools.
This, despite the fact that 27 protests were filed on the final plan released in 2013. The roster of protesters is diverse. Environmental groups, state agencies, two water districts, four counties, oil and gas companies, industry groups as well as individuals had issues with the plan, and all but one were denied outright or dismissed with comments. The one protest not dismissed was only partially addressed and not to the protester’s satisfaction. Absent in this process was any agency conversation with the protesters to attempt to remedy the concerns, though that is the typical method of resolving such complaints. Instead, the BLM dismissed the concerns with an alarmingly broad brush and pushed out a plan that does not reflect the facts on the ground, the tools at the agency’s disposal or the concerns of its stakeholders.
It need not have been that way. After a decade of work on the plan, the BLM could have addressed the issues raised by all sides. It could have heeded the considerable input offered by other agencies, the gas and oil industry, conservationists, local and state governments, water interests and individuals. It did not. It was a missed opportunity that the agency could correct with supplemental changes to the plan. Though not ideal, it is a necessary remedy.
