On March 13, the BLM announced that it was not incorporating suggestions from the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, or any other conservation interests for that matter, and will be giving the go ahead to drill the Roan Plateau based on its own flawed plan. The BLM’s plan will result in a significant reduction in mule deer and quite likely the local extinction of Colorado River cutthroat trout.

Of course, the agency is saying that its plan is good enough and to trust its bureaucratic judgment, yet folks from all walks of life — from Gov. Bill Ritter to sportsmen — have come out in opposition to the BLM’s plan. Fact is, if drilling occurs on the Roan Plateau, big game will lose habitat, cutthroat streams will be degraded, and the backcountry nature of the Roan Plateau will be lost forever. There are no assurances that the Roan Plateau can be drilled without impact, only rhetoric.

The recent news of four drilling-mud spills in Garden Gulch, just west of the much contested BLM Roan Plateau Planning Area, shows that safe drilling in sensitive areas in not a guarantee, but a gamble.

When considering the Roan Plateau Planning Area, the streams that bisect the top of plateau are sensitive because of the assets they possess that most of the region has already lost. They provide habitat for Colorado River cutthroat trout. Native to the Colorado River drainage, these trout once swam in rivers throughout the Colorado Basin, from the upper Green River in Wyoming all the way south to the San Juan River in New Mexico. Today, fewer than 100 pure Colorado River cutthroat populations exist in the West, and three of them are located in the streams that flow on top of the Roan Plateau.

Were a spill of this scale to happen in the watersheds containing pure cutthroat trout on the Roan Plateau, such as Trapper Creek, Northwater Creek, or the East Fork of Parachute Creek, it could very well wipe out these last remaining fish. Drilling mud contains a mixture of water, oils, and clay as well as other unknown chemicals that are trade secrets of operators. The clay alone could be enough to smother trout eggs and kill aquatic insects trout rely on for food. When oil and other secret chemicals are thrown into the mix — creating varying levels of toxicity — the impacts to water quality and trout could be devastating.

One of the Garden Gulch spills reported contained at least 30,000 barrels, or 1.2 million gallons, of drilling mud. There were three other spills that occurred between November 2007 and February 2008, two of which went illegally unreported by the operator. Given the size of the spills, the frequency, and the failure of the operator to report the spill, the odds are not good that sensitive watersheds on the Roan Plateau would have been adequately protected. It also speaks to the industry’s overall commitment to “responsibly” drill for natural gas on the Roan. If operators aren’t reporting spills of drilling mud to the proper officials, what else isn’t the industry doing correctly?

If the BLM leases public lands on the Roan Plateau for development, these leases should not allow for surface use or disturbance within Colorado River cutthroat trout watersheds. Also, deer and elk habitat needs to be protected.

With the BLM’s obstinate position that effectively declares, “Thanks for the lively discussion, but we are going to drill it our way,” sportsmen and the state of Colorado have once again been ignored, a sentiment that seems to be a working protocol that has leased, drilled, and generally made mess out of public lands important to sportsmen throughout West.

What are the state and hunters and anglers to do in the wake of the BLM’s ill conceived decision? Exactly what sportsmen in Montana, Wyoming and New Mexico have done on the Rocky Mountain Front, Wyoming Range and Ville Vidal: lean on our Congressional delegation to provide the leadership and protection that the Roan Plateau deserves.

All that sportsmen are asking for is setting aside a small portion of a region that is being feverishly developed. The watersheds on the Roan Plateau that contain pure Colorado River cutthroat trout represent less than 1 percent of the natural gas-rich Piceance Basin and half of the Roan Plateau Planning Area is already owned or leased by the natural gas industry. Hopefully our elected officials will make the safe bet for balanced development on the Western Slope and ensure that cutthroat trout watersheds and big game habitats on the Roan are protected by allowing no development to occur within them. Anything less is a gamble sportsmen of Colorado are not willing to take.

PAUL VERTREES
Colorado Backcountry Hunters and Anglers
Cañon City

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 27th, 2008 at 11:27 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.