After narrowly losing in the U.S. House recently, supporters of drilling for oil and gas a few miles off 85 percent of America’s coastlines vow they’ll be back soon with another such proposal. But they’re likely to encounter the same firestorm of opposition from environmentalists, citizens’ groups and even moderate Republicans, who have focused on damage that oil and gas rigs, pipelines and ships might do to marine and coastal wildlife, tourism and cherished vistas.
Since 1981, federal law has put coastlines from Alaska to California and Maine to Florida off-limits to drilling, because waterfront owners fretted about unsightly rigs and oil spills. But national attention to such concerns has been selective.
Western states also face lasting impacts of intensive energy development: Wildlife herds are shrinking, our vistas have been compromised and the tranquility of the quiet landscapes subsumed under the roar of bulldozers and drill rigs. Yet unlike the debate over drilling in coastal states, few voices outside our region have sounded any alarm about what’s happening in the Rockies.
The interior West isn’t asking for a flat-out ban on drilling, as was granted energy-rich coastal states. All we want is to balance energy development with other public values.
In Wyoming, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management plans to allow natural gas drilling in a crucial antelope migration route. The antelope movement is North America’s second-largest mammal migration, exceeded only by caribou wanderings in Alaska.
In New Mexico, locals are fighting to prevent drilling on Otero Mesa, which really ought to be preserved as wilderness.
In western Colorado, Uncle Sam plans to let oil and gas companies drill in the watersheds for the cities of Grand Junction and Palisade. Yet last summer, Congress exempted an oil drilling technique (involving the injection of hazardous chemicals into the ground) from the Safe Drinking Water Act. So Grand Junction and Palisade may have little recourse if oil and gas drilling pollutes municipal water supplies.
In central Colorado, proposed drilling on the Roan Plateau could cause mule deer populations to drop by a third, a potential loss of thousands of deer.
In northwestern counties, plans to develop oil shale involve an extensive network of electrical lines and pipelines. At risk are wildlife and hunting and fishing operations that now sustain the area’s economy.
Federal policy should balance the need to develop energy resources with other public and commercial values, including wildlife, clean air and water, tourism and community stability.
