There’s still about a month and a half to give feedback to the Bureau of Land Management on its resource management plans for the Colorado River Valley and Grand Junction Field Offices.
The BLM held its first public meeting on this process at the Glenwood Springs Community Center on September 12, 2023. It held a second meeting in Grand Junction the next day.
The plans cover oil and gas leasing in a little under 2 million acres of land from Eagle County to Grand Junction.
The BLM rewrote the environmental impact statements for both field offices after 2015 and 2018 lawsuits from Carbondale-based environmental advocacy group Wilderness Workshop. A judge ruled the original statements didn’t adequately consider the downstream environmental impacts of drilling for oil and and gas.
In the original plan, set to go into effect in 2024, also called “alternative B,” 87% of the land managed in the Colorado River Valley Field office would’ve been open to oil and gas leasing, and 80% of the managed land in the Grand Junction field office would have been open. The BLM is currently considering two additional plans: “alternative E” and “alternative F.”
In E, 20% of the CRVFO’s land would be open to leasing, and 19% of the GJFO. In F, only 3% of the land would remain open in the CRVFO, and only 7% of the GJFO.
Alternative F would close 94% of the 1.9 million acres in both field offices to leasing.
E and F both prioritize leasing on lands that have the high potential to yield oil and gas, rather than land that has a medium or low potential.
BLM officials at the Glenwood Springs public meeting discussed the timeline and the lawsuits that required them to rewrite the environmental impact statement for the original plan.
Greg Larson is the BLM’s Upper Colorado River District Manager.
During the meeting, he advised people to focus comments on specific aspects the agency may have missed, or scientific papers they should consider, rather than opinions without justification.
“Helping us refine our impacts analysis, where do we have it right, where are we maybe missing some information, or getting something wrong,” he said. “Providing scientific literature, information we haven’t considered relevant to the project, that’s all really really helpful.”
“This is less of a voting process and more of a ‘let’s get a really good document in front of our decision maker,’” he added.
The decision maker will be Doug Vilsack, the BLM’s Colorado State Director.
Erin Riccio is Wilderness Workshop’s advocacy director, and says many people don’t realize that under current management, many popular areas for outdoor recreation, like Red Hill and the Crown, are technically open to oil and gas development.
“So I think it’s important that our community dives into this plan a little bit more, and thinks about the lands that we all love and care about and use, and how we can have a voice and stake in their future management,” she said.
Riccio said the new plans are more reflective of the BLM’s multi-use mission, as well as the community’s values.
“We value them for recreation purposes, we value them for the solitude of wilderness, we value our water sources that come from it,” she said. “So I think the community is just excited to see a balanced management plan, a management plan that reflects the different uses and perspectives of our public lands.”
Omar Sarabia is the director of Defiende Nuestra Tierra, Wilderness Workshop’s program focused on outreach to the Latine community.
He said it was great to see that the BLM had information in Spanish, as well as an interpreter at the meeting. Sarabia also hoped to get Spanish information on the online comment website as well.
“They’ve been very receptive about the language justice,” he said. “I think it’s a key component in order to educate our Latino community to participate in this process.”
Sarabia said much of the valley’s Latine community lives downvalley, where oil and gas development is prevalent, and it impacts their quality of life disproportionately.
“Basically, our backyard is full of oil and gas,” he said. “This is why it’s very important to get involved to get rid of the oil and gas industry that is impacting the health of my community… If you don’t participate, they’re going to assume that it’s okay, and it’s not.”
Kirby Wynn, Garfield County’s oil and gas liaison, also attended the meeting. Garfield County has been a cooperating agency with BLM in this process, and Wynn said in an email that the county could choose to submit a public comment in the next month and a half.
Garfield County commissioners have said they prefer the original plan that a judge struck down, that would keep 80% of the CRVFO’s managed land open to leasing.
Public comments are due by mail or on the BLM’s website by November 1, 2023.
