Uproar over federal drilling leases next to parks

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Uproar over federal drilling leases next to parks

By PAUL FOY (Associated Press Writer)

From Associated Press

November 16, 2008 3:19 PM EST

SALT LAKE CITY - The view of Delicate Arch natural bridge - an unspoiled

landmark so iconic it's on Utah's license plates - could one day include a

drilling platform under a proposal that environmentalists call a Bush

administration " fire sale " for the oil and gas industry.

 

Late on Election Day, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management announced a Dec. 19

auction of more than 50,000 acres of oil and gas parcels alongside or within

view of Arches National Park and two other redrock national parks in Utah:

Dinosaur and Canyonlands.

 

The National Park Service's top official in the state calls it " shocking and

disturbing " and says his agency wasn't properly notified. Environmentalists call

it a " fire sale " for the oil and gas industry by a departing administration.

 

Officials of the BLM, which oversees millions of acres of public land in the

West, say the sale is nothing unusual, and one is " puzzled " that the Park

Service is upset.

 

" We find it shocking and disturbing, " said Cordell Roy, the chief Park Service

administrator in Utah. " They added 51,000 acres of tracts near Arches, Dinosaur

and Canyonlands without telling us about it. That's 40 tracts within four miles

of these parks. "

 

Top aides to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne stepped into the fray, ordering

the sister agencies to make amends. His press secretary, Shane Wolfe, told The

Associated Press that deputy Interior Secretary Lynn Scarlett " resolved the

dispute within 24 hours " last week.

 

A compromise ordered by the Interior Department requires the BLM to " take quite

seriously " the Park Service's objections, said Wolfe.

 

However, the BLM didn't promise to pull any parcels from the sale, and in an

interview after the supposed truce, BLM state director Selma Sierra was defiant,

saying she saw nothing wrong with drilling near national parks.

 

" I'm puzzled the Park Service has been as upset as they are, " said Sierra.

 

" There are already many parcels leased around the parks. It's not like they've

never been leased, " she said. " I don't see it as something we are doing to

undermine the Park Service. "

 

Roy and conservation groups dispute that, saying never before has the bureau

bunched drilling parcels on the fence lines of national parks.

 

" This is the fire sale, the Bush administration's last great gift to the oil and

gas industry, " said Stephen Bloch, a staff attorney for the Southern Utah

Wilderness Alliance.

 

" The tracts of land offered here, next to Arches National Park or above

Desolation Canyon, these are the crown jewels of America's lands that the BLM is

offering to the highest bidder, " he said.

 

An examination of the parcels, superimposing low-resolution government graphics

onto Google Earth maps, shows that in one case drilling parcels bordering Arches

National Park are just 1.3 miles from Delicate Arch.

 

" If you're standing at Delicate Arch, like thousands of people do every year,

and you're looking through the arch, you could see drill pads on the hillside

behind it. That's how ridiculous this proposed lease sale is, " said Franklin

Seal, a spokesman for the environmental group Wildland CPR.

 

In all, the BLM is moving to open 359,000 more acres in Utah to drilling.

 

Other Utah leases that are certain to draw objections from conservation groups

include high cliffs along whitewater sections of Desolation Canyon, which is

little changed since explorer John Wesley Powell remarked in 1896 on " a region

of wildest desolation " while boating down the Green River to the Grand Canyon.

 

Others extend to plateaus populated by big game atop Nine Mile Canyon, site of

thousands of ancient rock art panels, Moab's famous Slick Rock Trail and a

campground popular with thousands of mountain bikers.

 

Sierra, the BLM's director for Utah, said the Park Service was consulted on the

broad management plans that made the sale of parcels next to national parks

permissible, even if it was not given notice on which specific leases were being

offered. She apologized for that omission but said notice wasn't legally

required.

 

She said national parks want to keep oil and gas wells five to 10 miles away

" but that policy doesn't exist. "

 

Roy said the standard for an eyesore visible from a national park turns on what

a " casual " observer might see.

 

The hostility carried over into an e-mail exchange between Sierra and Mike

Snyder, the Denver-based regional Park Service director, who noted his agency's

demand that BLM pull 40 to 45 drill parcels from the auction list. " You stated

that you were not willing to do this, " Snyder wrote Nov. 6.

 

Within hours, Sierra responded " These decisions and the lands available for

leasing should come to no one's surprise, " according to copies of the e-mails

obtained from her office.

 

Sierra said she instructed her district and field managers to educate the park

superintendents on why drilling is OK " adjacent to and near the park

boundaries. "

 

In the e-mail, Sierra boasted of having " a very good working relationship " with

Roy, the federal coordinator in Utah for the Park Service, but in an interview

he said he had " no idea this sale was coming down the pike. "

 

Roy said that when he asked Sierra what was going on, she replied: " We added

some tracts, sorry we didn't notify you. We can take up these concerns when we

issue " drilling permits. He said his response was: " Holy cow. "

 

Sierra didn't dispute this account, but said " I don't think I was in a mood that

dismissed his concerns lightly. " She said she had promised only to review the

objections, parcel by parcel, before the auction is held Dec. 19.

 

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On the Net:

 

Arches Nat'l Park: http://www.nps.gov/arch/