A federal lawsuit is intended to block the reactivation of vintage oil and gas leases that would facilitate tar sands development within Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, two wilderness study areas and what is now the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah.
Four environmental groups filed the lawsuit Wednesday in Salt Lake City, challenging a Bureau of Land Management decision to "effectively issue 23 new oil and gas leases on approximately 38,000 acres of some of the nation's most spectacular BLM and Park Service managed lands." Plaintiffs are the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, Natural Resources Defense Council, The Wilderness Society and the National Parks Conservation Association.
According to the lawsuit, five holders of Combined Hydrocarbon Lease (CHL) applications in the 1980s wanted to amend traditional oil and gas exploration leases to allow the excavation of tar sands. The BLM never approved or rejected the proposed plans.
The BLM failed to hold the leases in suspension while the change application was being considered, the lawsuit said. The leases subsequently expired between 1983 and 1993.
Suspending the leases retroactively and reviving them now amounts to issuing new leases on land now declared off-limits to new oil and gas leasing, the lawsuit said.
"Conventional oil and gas or tar sands development in these remarkable landscapes will have dramatic, lasting negative impacts including destruction of prehistoric and historic cultural resources, degradation of air quality and pristine night skies, loss of wildlife habitat, and loss of wilderness values and characteristics," the lawsuit said. "Overall, the sight and sound of heavy industrialized activity authorized by the subject leases will mar these spectacular public lands for generations."
BLM spokeswoman Mary L. Wilson said the BLM had a legal duty to suspend the leases. But since it did not, the failure cannot be attributed to the lease holders.
"BLM's procedural failure to suspend the oil and gas leases when the complete plans of operation were submitted cannot be attributed to the applicants," she said. "The applicants had procedural rights that BLM can honor now only by suspending the oil and gas leases and processing the CHL conversion applications that the applicants wish to pursue."
Even if the leases were reinstated as approved for tar sands exploration, there would be no development without National Environ- mental Policy Act documentation such as an environmental assessment or an environmental-impact statement, Wilson said.
E-mail: sfidel@desnews.com