La Plata County officials and environmental groups are lodging objections to a far-reaching federal management plan covering natural gas and oil leasing decisions on more than 2 million acres of federal land in Southwest Colorado.
The land and resource-management plan covering the San Juan National Forest and Bureau of Land Management’s Tres Rios field office foresees that as many as 2,145 wells may be drilled in the planning area during the next 15 years.
The area includes parts of La Plata, Montezuma, Archuleta, Dolores, San Juan, Conejos, Hinsdale, Mineral, Montrose, Rio Grande and San Miguel counties. It includes almost 1.9 million acres of the San Juan National Forest administered by the U.S. Forest Service and 500,000 surface acres and 300,000 acres of subsurface mineral estate overseen by the BLM.
To date 1,339 wells have been drilled in the planning area.
La Plata County officials complained in a Nov. 5 letter that the management plan does not analyze the potential for shale drilling in the Mancos formation. Instead, the plan focuses on drilling in the Gothic formation and Fruitland coal-bed methane.
Environmental groups have objected to the prospect of more drilling that could affect air quality at Mesa Verde National Park, which receives special protection under the Clean Air Act.
“While we appreciate some of the changes Colorado BLM has made for leasing near Mesa Verde National Park, the BLM has still failed to put forward a plan that protects the park, one of America’s greatest national treasures,” Tom Pittenger, a former park ranger who leads Park Rangers for Our Lands in Dolores, said in a prepared statement.
Pittenger said the plan “fails to put our national parks and conservation on equal ground with oil and gas drilling.”
The plan has been a long time coming. Work to determine the scope of the document began in 1999; the draft management plan was released in 2007.
It replaces two plans drawn up in 1983 and 1985.
The agencies say their preferred plan focuses on activities that require roads, such as timber harvesting and natural gas and oil development, mostly in areas that already have roads. Other, relatively undeveloped areas, would largely remain untouched.
Jim Buickerood, public lands coordinator for Durango-based San Juan Citizens Alliance, said the management plan leaves incomplete some key sections, including areas of critical environmental concern that were nominated but not addressed and an inventory of lands with wilderness characteristics that he characterized as “incomplete” and of “poor quality.”
Buickerood said he’s concerned the agencies will finalize the record of decision without completing these areas.
“Will these undone pieces ever be taken care of?” he said. “We would all like to have some surety and certainty in a plan that’s balanced and completed.”
