Protesting the BLM RMP

After spending the last few weeks going over the Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) updated plans for the Rock Springs Field Office Resource Management Plan (RMP), the Sweetwater County Board of County Commissioners has submitted a letter to the BLM to protest the RMP and highlight their concerns about the plan. 

The county's protest focused on the BLM's failure to follow proper procedures in the RMP process, and highlighted the potential negative socioeconomic impacts the proposed RMP could have on Sweetwater County.

After the RMP draft was released last year and received thousands of comments, the BLM made changes and released the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) and Proposed Resource Management Plan on August 22, kicking off a protest period. With almost exactly a month to file a protest, the county started going through the document. Land Use Director Eric Bingham, Chief Civil Deputy and Prosecuting Attorney John DeLeon and Environmental Attorney Danielle Bettencourt have worked together on responding to the RMP over the past year, and they once again teamed up to put together the county's protest letter, working closely with the county commissioners.

The commissioners discussed the letter's progress at both their September 3 and September 17 meetings, and hosted a special meeting on September 20 where they approved the protest letter, which had to be filed by September 23.

"We have gone through the Resource Management Plan and identified some of the comments that were addressed by the Bureau of Land Management in their FEIS and some of the items that we still have concerns with," Bingham told the commissioners during the September 3 meeting.

Bingham showed the commissioners maps comparing the differences between the currently existing RMP, the BLM's previous preferred Alternative B, and the new proposed plan. He used the maps to highlights changes in things like Areas of Critical Environmental Concerns (ACECs), trail corridors, visual resource management areas, and right of ways, all of which influence what development can take place in certain areas.

Commission Chairman Keaton West noted that the proposed RMP did address some of the previous concerns, and made improvements in areas like the checkerboard and Little Mountain, but all of the commissioners expressed the fact that they still have concerns.

"It has improved from Alternative B, but I don't think many understand the severity that Alternative B brought forth," Commission Chairman Keaton West said. "It's a large change from Alternative B to the proposed RMP, but it's still a significant hit, especially to oil and gas, and that's problematic."

Commissioner Taylor Jones agreed, pointing out how different the proposed RMP is from what currently exists. Both he and Commissioner Island Richards expressed concern about the possibility of current leases for oil and gas being in restricted areas under the new RMP, and either being difficult to renew or difficult to access to get the product out.

"They layered upon layered ways to destroy our economy," Commissioner Richards commented.

"It hurts us in a number of different ways, and what they have proposed is absolutely not a balance," Jones said.

During their special meeting last Friday to approve the letter, the commissioners and Bingham went over some of the final details to be added to the letter, including addressing the potential socioeconomic impacts of the proposed RMP. Commissioner Mary Thoman pointed out that the cooperators who worked on the RMP for years wanted to heavily emphasize the fact that the RMP used outdated models when it presented its information on socioeconomic impacts, using models that were nearly a decade old. Bingham also pointed out that the BLM didn't do much actual study on socioeconomic impacts, even with the outdated models, and only provided a range of potential effects but not specifics.

The protest letter points out that the county relies on income from natural gas, oil and trona, and a decrease in valuation due to closing public lands to fluid mineral leasing or closing access to areas "will severely impact a wide range of County services that depend on this money." The proposed RMP shows a potential 74% reduction in oil and gas production, which the county explains would result in a loss of over $12 million.

"The most significant revenue shortfall would impact local school districts, whose revenue would drop from $8,502,839.98 to $2,946,684.32," the protest letter states. "This loss of public revenue would further reduce funding for essential services, including health and safety agencies such as the Sheriff's Department, County Health, and Sweetwater County Public Works."

"The biggest thing when you look at this letter and the protest is BLM's lack of following procedures and process," Bingham also explained to the commissioners.

The bulk of the protest letter goes into detail about the ways the BLM failed to follow proper procedures.

"The BLM's complete disregard for mandatory processes and procedures outlined in FLPMA, NEPA, and implementing regulations and policies has resulted in a flawed

and unsupported Proposed RMPA and FEIS," the letter concludes. "The only way to sufficiently resolve the many errors and insufficient analysis is to either go back to step one and start the RMPA again or conduct a supplement environmental impact statement that is based on appropriate inventories of the planning area with the appropriate level of involvement of the cooperators during the process."

Other leaders throughout Wyoming have also been at work to protest or try to stop the proposed RMP.

Congresswoman Harriet Hageman introduced a bill to prohibit the implementation of the RMP and FEIS, which has been passed by the House Natural Resources Committee.

Governor Mark Gordon announced on Wednesday that the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality, Wyoming Game and Fish, Wyoming Department of Agriculture, Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, and Wyoming State Parks submitted protest packages to the BLM. The BLM Director is required to respond to these protests, and a Protest Resolution Report will be published by the BLM in the near future, according to Governor Gordon's office. The Governor is also conducting the 60-day consistency review that is part of the process, and his review will be submitted and reviewed in late October.