Colorado residents ask Feds to withdraw lease parcels to go up for oil, gas auction

Scores of residents in Colorado’s North Fork Valley aren’t nearly as keen about oil and gas drilling as the wide-eyed Democrats and Republicans who talk about tapping America’s energy reserves. Representatives from nearly 50 ranches, farm restaurants, farm markets, and food producers sent a letter to U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar asking that he direct the Bureau of Land Management to withdraw all 22 of the proposed lease parcels scheduled to go up for an oil and gas auction in August. “The proposal would lease these lands under a flawed land use plan from the 1980s that fails to protect the land, water and people of Colorado’s North Fork,” the letter reads. “The parcels proposed for oil and gas leasing — which include water sources, major irrigation canals, grazing permits and ranching operations — are scattered among and surrounding our farms, our wineries, our farm markets and restaurants, our schools, towns, and communities. No consideration was given in the decades-old land use plan — and therefore no oil and gas stipulations or management prescriptions exist — to maintain the area’s agricultural operations, its businesses, or any of the other unique community features.” The parcels in question cover about 30,000 acres, mostly on BLM lands near Crawford, Hotchkiss, Paonia, Somerset and the Paonia Reservoir State Park. Only about 900 acres are privately owned. The North Fork Valley — named after a Gunnison River tributary — is home to one of the highest concentrations of organic farms in Colorado and one of just two designated wine regions in the state. The mere prospect of oil and gas development in the valley is already scaring off home buyers. Real estate brokers report that they are losing sales contracts and having to put others on hold as potential home buyers wait to see whether the BLM approves any or all of the 22 proposed leases...more