The Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department sparred over climate change before finalizing a major new plan Wednesday that will set the tone for mineral and energy development in the West.
The “Master Leasing Plan” for the Moab region took years to pull together, reflecting a “culmination of a significant effort” by Interior’s Bureau of Land Management, local, state and federal partners “to provide for responsible development and conservation” over nearly 785,000 acres of federal lands, the Interior Department said.
The master plan is part of a “sweeping” new push started six years ago by the Obama administration to reform oil and gas development in the Moab to ensure the environment was being adequately protected.
In 2010, the oil and gas leasing system “was close to the breaking point with nearly half of all proposed parcels receiving community protests and a substantial proportion resulting in litigation,” the Bureau of Land Management said. “The plans establish a framework for determining which areas are appropriate for responsible exploration and development of oil and gas resources while protecting the area’s conservation resources.”
The region is home to the iconic Arches and Canyonlands national parks, which include the “spectacular red rock landscapes and unique geologic features” that are emblematic of the Moab, the bureau said. More than two million people visit and enjoy recreational activities in the region each year, benefiting local economies and creating jobs.
But it is also an area of substantial mineral and energy resources. The plan will cover a range of leasing activities including recreation, oil and gas production, mining and grazing.
“Balance is essential,” said Interior’s Bureau of Land Management Director Neil Kornze. “In this plan we make sure that southern Utah’s energy resources can be responsibly accessed while also ensuring that Moab’s recreation economy can continue to flourish.”
The plan was issued after a long back-and-forth with interested groups, which included the EPA, according to comments issued with the master plan Wednesday.
The EPA appeared very concerned that the Interior Department was not addressing climate change and greenhouse gas emissions strongly enough in the plan’s environmental impact analysis.
In its response, the bureau wasn’t shy in telling the environmental agency that it was off base in some of its suggestions, especially when it came to gauging future emissions from activities that haven’t occurred.
EPA’s head of environment assessment and compliance for the National Environmental Policy Act sent a number of comments on how the bureau was accounting for air emissions, pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions linked to climate change.
“The draft [plan] does not include a discussion of mitigation to minimize [greenhouse gas] emissions from the proposed action,” the EPA official wrote in one of several comments. The proposed action was oil and gas drilling in the Moab.
“We recommend that the final [plan] describe measures to reduce GHG emissions associated with the project, including reasonable alternatives or other practicable mitigation opportunities and disclose the estimated GHG reductions associated with such measures.”
The Bureau of Land Management responded by informing the agency that emission reduction strategies would be accounted for through reductions of other pollutants, and no further mitigation alternatives were needed.
The EPA went further, prodding the agency over what it described as a limited analysis of the climate change impacts of the master plan.
“We recommend that the BLM provide a more meaningful frame of reference for discussion in the final [environmental impact statement]. For example, the Final EIS could cite an applicable federal, state, tribal or local goal for GHG emission reductions, and discuss whether the emissions levels are consistent with such goals, or compare emissions to a reference point that is easily visualized by the public, such as energy required to heat x number of homes annually.”
The Interior Department said it was impossible to do what EPA was asking.
It said it was not using a limited evaluation of climate effects “as a reason to not analyze GHG’s, but rather to demonstrate why no meaningful analysis is possible.”
“Comparing speculative GHG emissions to how much energy is required to heat an average home adds nothing to this analysis, and is neither relevant nor informative when it comes to potential climate change impacts from GHG emissions,” BLM added.
The EPA continued to tell BLM that its climate impact analysis may have been shortsighted, recommending “updated information … for some of the background emission data provided for Utah, U.S. and Global C02 emissions, and we recommend that this updated information be used in the final EIS.”
BLM simply responded to the comment by saying it “utilized the best available information at the time of analysis.”
EPA continued to prod BLM, asking it to calculate the emissions from mining potash, or potassium salts, which Interior said it couldn’t do for lack of information.
EPA said that even “if a quantitative estimate is not possible, we recommend that the BLM qualitatively discuss in more detail the potash mining and beneficiation process and likely sources of GHG emissions,” according to the comments.
“It may be possible to use information from current mining processes to give general information about the amount of energy needed to produce potash, and associated GHG emissions,” EPA recommended.
BLM was frank in its response, saying it wouldn’t speculate on emission impacts potash mining may or may not have.
“It is neither appropriate nor informative for BLM to be speculating on how potash processing may or may not occur in the planning area, and what impacts may or may not be associated with processing allowed under current state and federal permitting regulations,” it said in response to the EPA.
“This is also true for any calculations of greenhouse gases, and would be highly speculative with no discernible impact possible to assign to any speculative emissions estimates,” BLM added.
“How this would inform the analysis or management decisions is unclear based on this comment.”
