WASHINGTON — The federal government should revisit its decision allowing surface drilling atop Roan Plateau because of the state’s pending comments on the policy, two U.S. lawmakers from Colorado said Monday.
The Bureau of Land Management gave Colorado 120 days to comment on the agency’s decision to open Roan to additional drilling. The BLM should incorporate those comments, said Reps. John Salazar, D-Manassa, and Mark Udall, D-Eldorado Springs.
“In order to give credibility to this 120-day review and comment period, the BLM must give the state’s input the seriousness it deserves,” Udall and Salazar said in a letter to Jim Caswell, director of the Bureau of Land Management. “That requires the BLM to reopen (the decision).”
The letter comes less than a week after Salazar and Udall lost the latest round in their legislative fight to block surface drilling on Roan Plateau. The pair put language barring surface drilling in a House energy bill that passed this summer. But the words were stripped out last week when the legislation was merged with Senate energy bill language.
The BLM earlier this year decided to allow drilling on public lands. Some drilling already is allowed on private lands.
A spokesman for the BLM said the agency had not seen the lawmakers’ letter and couldn’t comment on it.
Gov. Bill Ritter last week told The Denver Post that he would suggest some sort of “modification” to the plans announced in June.
After Colorado’s comment period, which ends next week, the BLM can begin negotiating with the state on how many drilling leases could be issued, what those leases would contain and other particulars. That’s expected to take at least three months. Issuing leases could take up to a year, the BLM has said.
By law, if the BLM altered its plan in any way based on the state’s comments, it would need to reopen the decision to allow additional public comment. It wasn’t known Monday evening how much time would be added to the process if the BLM reopened the decision record.
Some who want the drilling argue that Salazar, Udall and others are simply stalling because they don’t like the outcome. Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., last week accused Democrats of dragging out the issue because they believe it could help Udall as he runs for the Senate seat Allard is vacating.
“It’s certainly not a stall tactic,” said Rick Palacio, spokesman for Salazar. “There’s no point in taking the comments if you’re not going to give any weight to the comments.”
