New Mexico Battles Feds to Stop Gas Drilling Near an Aquifer New Mexico officials say a gas drilling proposal on federal lands threatens a pristine aquifer that could someday provide drinking water to 15 million households, but the state's protests have met with resistance from the federal office administering the project. The Bureau of Land Management, which governs development on the 20 percent of New Mexico's lands owned by the federal government, approved drilling on the Otero Mesa, a 1.2 million acre wilderness grassland in southern New Mexico, earlier this month. Because the BLM relied on decade-old data in a four-year-old environmental review, neither the Environmental Protection Agency nor the state's environment departments were involved in the decision. But state officials in New Mexico's Department of Energy Minerals and Natural Resources say the BLM ignored evidence of unique risks in that area. They want the BLM to conduct a supplemental environmental impact statement, which, under federal law, would then require an EPA review....