Ex-official slams BLM's energy plans
By BOBBY MAGILL The Daily Sentinel
http://www.gjsentinel.com/news/content/news/stories/2007/04/23/4_23_1a_B...
Monday, April 23, 2007
DENVER — When Ann Morgan was serving as Colorado state director of the Bureau of Land Management between 1997 and 2002, she saw firsthand, she said, how President George W. Bush’s administration immediately ordered the agency to make energy development top priority on public land when Bush took office in 2001.
The change was swift and dramatic, Morgan said last week in her ninth-floor Wynkoop Street office in downtown Denver. She serves as the Wilderness Society’s vice president of public lands.
Before becoming the state BLM director in Colorado, she served in the same role in Nevada for three years.
She testified Tuesday before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources to send one message to a Congress scrambling to deal with the long-range effects of America’s energy boom: The Bush administration’s bias toward widespread energy extraction on our public lands is wreaking ecological havoc throughout the Rockies.
Current administration policy, she said, is that any other legitimate use of land that gets in the way of energy development is seen as an “impediment” that should be removed.
“Our view is that the oil and gas development is a legitimate use of the public lands, but not everywhere on public lands and not in a manner that impairs other resources,” she said in her testimony.
Her claims were disputed by the ranking Republican on the Energy and Mineral Resources Subcommittee, Congressman Stevan Pearce, R-N.M.
Pearce dismissed Morgan’s claims as “wrong,” saying energy development occupies only a fraction of the BLM’s land nationwide.
Pearce, who represents oil-rich southern New Mexico, declined to comment for this story.
But Morgan said Thursday that the overall footprint of the small fraction of land that energy development directly affects is much, much larger.
“When you look at wildlife issues,” she said, “the footprint goes well beyond gas well pads.”
BLM spokeswoman Mel Lloyd said she disagrees with Morgan’s claim.
“We are a multiple-use agency,” she said.
Energy development is a critical part of the BLM’s program, she said, “just as important as the health of the land.”
Morgan said she believes the BLM’s mandate to make energy exploitation top priority is not only inappropriate, but it also steps on the toes of municipalities such as Grand Junction and Palisade.
“Best management practices,” or ways for energy companies to minimize their harm to the environment, shouldn’t merely be applied at the discretion of the BLM; they should be required, she said.
The BLM has the authority to mandate that Genesis Gas and Oil follow specific guidelines laid out in its proposed community development plan for the Grand Junction and Palisade municipal watersheds, Morgan said. But the agency chooses not to require it.
The watershed community development plan outlines how Genesis could drill the watersheds without harming water quality, but the plan is nonbinding and nonenforceable. A public meeting about the plan is scheduled at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Palisade Community Center.
“The agency is being pushed so hard that they’re not doing due diligence,” Morgan said, adding that if the Genesis plan and other best management practices were requirements rather than suggestions, “it would be seen as an impediment to the oil and gas resource.”
Lloyd said the BLM will require Genesis to develop the watersheds in a way that will protect natural resources.
Morgan’s past experience with the BLM with regard to the agency’s approach to applying best management practices doesn’t characterize the agency’s position on them today, Lloyd said.
What’s more, Lloyd said, the BLM’s new top priority is the Healthy Lands Initiative, which involves improving wildlife habitat and taking care of the land.
In Colorado, the initiative is focusing on the southwest corner of the state, where the agency plans to restore Gunnison sage grouse habitat and is intended to compliment energy companies’ land restoration work.
Morgan said she believes the BLM and Congress are moving too fast on commercial oil shale leasing in the Piceance and Uinta basins of Colorado and Utah.
The BLM is set to issue an environmental study of its oil shale and tar sands leasing program long before results of the six oil shale research and development projects in the region are known, she said.
“We think that’s putting the cart before the horse,” she said.
“How can you know what surface impacts you’re going to have until you know which technology you’re going to be using?”
The BLM anticipates beginning to issue commercial oil shale leases in 2008 or 2009.
The agency enforces the use of best management practices at its discretion, but there’s no reason energy companies can’t follow them and choose to develop public land wisely in a time when they’re making record profits, she said.
“If you can’t do it right here and now, when can you?” she said.
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Bobby Magill can be reached via e-mail at bmagill@gjds.com.
