Sweetwater County has a lot to say when it comes to the Bureau of Land Management’s Resource Management Plan draft for the Rock Springs Field Office, and the Board of County Commissioners is working to ensure that comments on behalf of the county will be ready by the upcoming public comment deadline.
Land Use Director Eric Bingham spoke to the commissioners again during Tuesday’s meeting to present the draft of the county’s comments.
“We are finally narrowing down the process here and getting towards the end,” Bingham told the commissioners.
Working with Chief Civil Deputy and Prosecuting Attorney John DeLeon and Coalition of Local Governments Attorney Danielle Bettencourt, Bingham put together both a letter and a chart to organize the county’s official comments to the BLM. The letter and chart, which are both still in a draft stage and not finalized yet, were presented to the commissioners and are available to view in the agenda packet on the county website.
The letter begins by pointing out that the County and other cooperators worked with the BLM for years to develop “an alternative that was not completely finalized but headed in the direction of a more balanced alternative” that promoted multiple use and sustained yield.
“However, behind closed doors and without any coordination with the County or other cooperating agencies, the BLM has taken a complete reversal in direction and released a Proposed RMP and DEIS that eliminates multiple use within the RSFO and in turn Sweetwater County,” the letter continues. “The adverse impact of the BLM’s decision to move forward with Preferred Alternative B in the Proposed RMP will be felt most heavily by Sweetwater County and its constituents, as well as the State of Wyoming as a whole.”
The chart presents the primary issues in the RMP draft that the county is opposed to, gives a summary of each issue, lists the regulations and codes violated, details the harm and environmental impact, and presents a proposed solution or recommendation. The main issues addressed by the county are Areas of Critical Environmental Concern (ACECs), Visual Resource Management (VRM) Class II designations, consistency with local land use plans, failure to coordinate with cooperating agencies in changing the Preferred Alternative from Alternative D to Alternative B, transportation and travel, right-of-way exclusion and avoidance areas, and biological resources.
Bingham said that he believes the failure to coordinate with cooperating agencies when changing the Preferred Alternative is one of the strongest points the county is making.
“When you go through the NEPA process, there’s supposed to be meaningful participation,” he said. “Where did that meaningful participation happen when you switched alternatives? It didn’t happen.”
The county had received no communication from the BLM on the issue since 2019, according to Bingham. Commissioner Mary Thoman added that the day it was announced that the BLM had selected Alternative B as the Preferred Alternative was the same day there was a cooperator meeting for the first time in about a year and a half.
After going through the issues, Bingham pointed out that more detail on socio-economic impacts will also be added into the comments.
“We saw ad valorem taxes last year at 8.5 million, and they said there will be a 74% reduction in that, so it goes from 8.5 to 2.9,” Bingham said. “And guess who gets to see the biggest chop of that? The schools.”
Bingham added that the numbers go down even further when looking at just the county’s budget, and that these numbers just apply to the restrictions on oil and gas.
“If county funding is reduced because of decisions made by the Bureau of Land Management on 70% of our public lands on all of our minerals, we will all suffer severely if they go through with Alternative B,” Commissioner Thoman said during the meeting. “I can’t stress that enough.”
The commissioners plan to look at the final version of the comments during the next meeting on January 16, which is one day before the end of the BLM’s public comment period.
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