BLM sifts through 90K drilling plan comments

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

By Ben Cannon

The Bureau of Land Management is currently considering more than 90,000 comments from individual citizens and interest groups regarding that agency’s alternative plan recommendations for future natural gas development in Sublette County.

Earlier this year, the BLM released conservation alternative plans, including a preferred alternative that would enable more leasing with less regard to wildlife concerns, according to one conservation advocate.

“The preferred alternative has loopholes,” said Linda Baker, a community organizer with the Upper Green River Valley Coalition. “Basically if someone thinks there’s minerals under there, they can drill.”

Baker hopes the BLM will pay particular regard to the preservation of lands between Boulder, just south of Pinedale, and the Bondurant Rim, a swath of land known as the Wind River Front. Included in that area is Trapper’s Point, a major corridor that bottlenecks wildlife through the area.

Sublette County has seen booms and busts over the last few decades, bit it has never experienced development of the intensity currently underway. Local officials fear stress on infrastructure and services – heavy industrial traffic on Pinedale’s Main Street, a lack of workers to run shops and restaurants, etc – impacts to wildlife, and increasing economic singularity could be setting Sublette County up for a severe downturn when development inevitably ebbs, which some estimates put anywhere from five to 20 years.

“There has been a change of heart in the level of development intensity here,” said Baker, whose group was one of several to submit comments to the BLM expressing concern over the rate of transformation in Sublette County. Others who voiced concerns included Sportsmen for the Wyoming Range, and Town of Pinedale and Sublette County electives.

Pinedale Mayor Steve Smith said BLM surveying techniques do not take into account the socio-economic impacts on his town, the largest in Sublette County.

“The impacts aren’t just on Main Street,” Smith said, “they’re on water and sewer treatment. [Our comments] don’t take a position of ‘for’ drilling or ‘anti’ drilling, they’re just concerned with meeting the needs of our community.”

Pinedale is currently working on a master plan that should help the town assess various impacts and better deal with infrastructural strains.

In town, despite anecdotal reports that tourism might be down for a lack of hotel rooms booked through the summer to seasonal gas field workers, some local businesses are reporting banner years. Rock Rabbit Coffee Shop owner Dan Abernathy is moving down Main Street to a location three times the size of the space he currently inhabits.
“Our business has been great,” Abernathy said.

“From what I’ve heard, everybody’s doing fine. [The gas field workers’] families are coming to visit and spending money ... . The worst problem for other businesses is finding help.”

The BLM will revise its preferred alternative based on the comments currently under review and is expected to release that amended finding sometime in early 2008. At that time, there will again be windows of opportunity for public involvement.
“I do encourage folks to maintain vigilance and optimism,” Baker said.
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BLM sifts through 90K drilling plan comments | Planet JH News Article: General Environment

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