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Activists Claim Oil, Gas Leases Need Study

Posted on: Tuesday, 29 November 2005, 18:00 CST

By Joe Baird, The Salt Lake Tribune

Nov. 29--A trio of environmental groups say the state must pull back the oil and gas leases it has offered for sale in the northern end of the Great Salt Lake until it does an environmental analysis and includes the public in the process.

Friends of Great Salt Lake, the national and Salt Lake chapters of the Audubon Society and the Utah chapter of the Sierra Club filed a request for postponement last week with the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and Lands. The organizations argue that the division's own rules require an analysis of the leases, and it must open the process under its public trust obligations.

"The regulations are a little confusing to read, but they are quite clear in terms of the requirements for site-specific analysis and involving the public," Joro Walker, an attorney with Western Resource Advocates, the law firm representing the groups, said Monday.

The division earlier this month offered the last of 78 tracts for potential oil and gas development northwest of Promontory Point near Rozel Point -- home of the lake's famous Spiral Jetty. Altogether, the leases are just less than 178,000 acres.

Division officials said at the time that site-specific analysis wouldn't be necessary until actual development proposals were approved. And they said they satisfied public comment requirements when they created a comprehensive management plan in May 2000 that opened up the northwest portion of the lake for oil and gas exploration.

Dave Grierson, the division's ecosystem management coordinator, said Monday that state officials would review the group's request.

"They've asked us to do a review and we will obviously take a look at it," Grierson said. "As far as asking us to suspend the leases, I'm not sure, at this point, that we're in a position to do that."

The environmental groups' request says that the lake's five-year-old management plan "identifies, but does not analyze" potential serious adverse impacts that could arise from energy development.

The same management plan, they add, also notes that there are "sensitive ecological interests" in the lake's north arm that are currently buffered by reduced access. The islands there provide critical habitat for the American white pelicans and other shorebirds.

"Even minimal human presence has [been] shown to disrupt the birds using the north arm, to the point that they move off the island to less productive habitat," according to the management plan.

The request for action also notes concern about energy development on the lake in the context of other environmental problems there -- specifically the recent discoveries of high levels of methylmercury in the water, possible selenium contamination and high levels of contaminants on the lake bed.

And a University of Utah geologist warns that the lease area is part of an active fault line -- including the Great Salt Lake Fault -- that could generate earthquake magnitudes of 7 to 7.2 at the north end. David Dinter, a noted expert on the lake's geology, voiced his concerns in a letter attached to the groups' request.

"The division's position is, nothing has happened. If it doesn't work out, they can withdraw the leases. On the other hand, if your intent is not to lease them, why lease them?" said Walker. "If the intent is to develop, we're saying do some analysis up front, so you're not only being honest with the public, but the lessees."

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Source: The Salt Lake Tribune

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