Environmentalists call for 'do-over' on management plan

A coalition of environmentalists and landowners is calling on the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to rewrite its proposed management plan for federal lands around Buffalo, arguing that the current draft would roll back protections aimed at preventing oil and gas development on areas unsuitable for drilling. BLM officials defended their proposal. The draft Buffalo Resource Management Plan, which will govern 780,000 acres of BLM surface land and 4.8 million acres of federal minerals, clarifies past ambiguities about where companies are allowed to drill and will mean more consistent management in the region, they said. Industry officials, meanwhile, welcomed the move, saying it provided companies flexibility while also ensuring conservation goals are met. The debate highlighted the rising stakes in the Powder River Basin, where oil development is now increasing. The BLM projects that 1,773 wells will be drilled in coming decades throughout the western reaches of the basin covered under the Buffalo plan. An additional 2,721 coal-bed methane wells are expected to be drilled in the area. Under the 1984 plan governing the Buffalo region, development was prohibited on slopes greater than 25 percent. It was restricted in areas susceptible to erosion and locations where reclamation efforts were deemed unlikely to succeed. The draft plan would allow companies to drill in those areas provided they produce site-specific plans saying how they intend to mitigate environmental concerns. "It can really hurt private landowners who have federal minerals beneath them," said Jill Morrison, an organizer at the Powder River Basin Resource Council, a Sheridan-based landowner's group. "The reason those stipulations were put in place originally was to protect those fragile landscapes and those areas that really can’t be reclaimed."...more