Normally we post articles on places to recreate or beer to enjoy in the southern Rockies. Today we need to focus on protecting one of our most important places in the region, Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve.
The Trump administration is busy leasing virtually all public lands to the oil industry, knowing that they will lose power to do so soon. Even the Bush administration had some restraint in their leasing programs, protecting most national parks or wilderness areas from oil drilling nearby that would foul the water, destroy vegetation, spread light and air pollution in to the parks and other protected area. No so the Trump folks.
While we’ve all been aware of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s absolute devotion to the oil industry at the exclusion of all other concerns for our public lands with regards to places like the Bears Ears National Monument that he ordered shrunk by 85%, less known are the rampant oil drilling happening on almost all BLM lands nationally.
Now it comes out that the BLM plans to allow oil drilling within a mile of the eastern boundary of the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve in southern Colorado. These public lands are managed by the National Park Service and while the oil drilling would not happen within the park or preserve, it could happen on the San Isabel National Forest directly to the east of the park.
Various environmental groups plan to challenge the oil leasing including Wildearth Guardians, Earthjustice and the San Luis Valley Ecosystem Counsel. Oil leasing is an exclusive use of land that destroys wildlife habitat, closes areas to recreation, and pollutes the surface and ground water. Most oil companies do not clean up their drilling sites but abandon them, leaving clean up costs to the tax payers while federal budget cuts under Trump have left cleanup programs wanting.
The Bureau of Land Management manages federal mineral rights regardless of what agency or private land owner has the surface ownership of a property. Thus the BLM is leasing land on the national forest and private land with federal mineral rights.
The BLM proposes to lease almost 19,000 acres of land east of Great Sand Dunes. Leasing means that the oil companies that win the leases have the option of drilling though they may not. Many public land oil leases are never developed. Drilling involves building new roads, scraping off an area with heavy machinery, erecting a tower, tanks and other industrial debris, injecting toxic chemicals into the earth and then releasing methane into the atmosphere. Oil pipelines are sometimes built but heavy truck traffic that kills wildlife and raises dust is a given.
With the oil industry firmly in control of all key agencies in the Trump administration, multiple use and land protection is out the window until Trump is impeached or democrats regain control of one or either houses of Congress.
For more information on these oil leases and how to protest to the BLM on them call 719-269-8500
