The Bureau of Land Management was handed a new tool in 2010 that enables the agency to consider the impacts of gas and oil leasing across a landscape. This innovation was a major step for the BLM, which has historically favored a more site-specific, piecemeal approach that was not sufficiently adroit to look at the cumulative impacts of leasing across a given area – or the mitigation measures available to offset those impacts. Now, though, with master leasing plans in its toolbox, the BLM is gaining experience at such landscape-level evaluations – before land and minerals are leased for development, and not at the once-every-few-decades comprehensive planning level that considers land use across a BLM district. It is a tool with much potential to balance conflicting uses of public lands more effectively, but local involvement is instrumental to the effort.
The BLM’s Tres Rios Field Office is conducting a master leasing plan for lands and federally controlled minerals in western La Plata and eastern Montezuma counties. The MLP was initiated in part because some landowners, recreationalists and conservationists felt that the BLM’s recently completed – after nearly a decade in the making – resource management plan failed to adequately consider the full impacts of proposed gas and oil leasing on the lands and their surroundings: Mesa Verde National Park is nearby, as is beloved mountain biking destination, Phil’s World. Water is scarce in the region, and many affected county roads are not designed for heavy industry. That is not to say that leasing should not happen, but a region-wide plan for doing so – and mitigating the impacts so as to strike a needed balance between resource extraction, preservation, residential and agricultural activities and economic vitality – can only improve the outcome for the area’s residents, visitors and natural resources.
La Plata County’s board of commissioners was a vocal proponent of the master leasing plan and is actively engaging in the process with the BLM. Its Montezuma County counterpart, though, has scoffed at the BLM’s master leasing planning work. That is somewhat perplexing, given those commissioners’ repeated call for local control over public lands. What better way to demonstrate Montezuma County’s involvement in such matters than to participate in a process that seeks local input? Instead, though, the commissioners told the BLM at a meeting last week that there are already enough regulations on the gas and oil industry and that it is too late for county involvement. That does not position Montezuma County well to represent its citizens in an important public process that could have real implications for many sectors in the county. In fact, it leaves the commissioners’ constituents hanging.
Gas and oil drilling is an essential economic element in Southwest Colorado, and ensuring that it occurs responsibly, with consideration and accommodation for inherently competing interests – such as irreplaceable wilderness quality lands, critical species and wetlands, residential and agricultural neighborhoods, and treasured recreational, historical and archaeological resources – benefits everyone in the region. To reach that goal, active participation is required. La Plata County is correct to seize the opportunity to advocate for its citizens; Montezuma County is turning away from it. That decision benefits no one.
