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Colorado Springs Gazette Editorial Where the hell is the Roan Plateau? Four or five years ago, if you mentioned Colorado’s Roan Plateau, that’s how most people would have responded. And even today, we’re sure, most Coloradans couldn’t find it on the map without help.
But since the West’s energy boom began, the “stunning,” “pristine,” “special,” teaming-with-fragile-flora-and-fauna Roan has taken on near-mythical status with the anti-drilling crowd, like some lost world re-discovered. Blocking leases on federally owned portions of the plateau has become an obsession for these groups and their political allies, despite years of exhaustive study, a lengthy public process and extraordinary efforts by the Bureau of Land Management to produce a plan that sensibly balances economic and environmental goals.
The tug of war last week moved from the regional to the national stage, when members of Colorado’s congressional delegation, Democrats all, launched an effort to overturn years of careful planning and torpedo the leases. A scheme by Reps. Mark Udall and John Salazar to bar BLM from moving ahead, by withholding funds in an Interior Department spending bill, was averted only after a Congressional Budget Office analysis found that this would have significant fiscal impacts. Salazar hinted that CBO’s “scoring” of the amendment was part of a Bush administration plot. But it was he and Udall who were acting like conspirators.
Having seen his brother’s plan thwarted, Sen. Ken Salazar then got into the act, using a much-abused Senate rule to place a “hold” on the nomination of James Caswell to head the BLM. In effect, Salazar is holding Caswell’s nomination hostage, and leaving an important federal agency leaderless, until be can extort concessions from BLM. This is more than just undemocratic; it’s Machiavellian.
“They will not get a BLM director until we come to some resolution on this issue,” said Salazar, sounding every bit the pompous senator. “I will not allow the Western Slope to become a sacrificial zone for the rest of the nation.”
A sacrificial zone? Rational debate is impossible when a supposedly sober-minded senator uses such rhetoric. And if the West is making bigger sacrifices, Salazar is partly responsible, since he supports drilling bans elsewhere, including in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. If he and other members of the Democratic Party didn’t support so many moratoria, the burden would be more equitably shared.
Just as members of Congress should be forced to find budget offsets for any spending increases they propose, opponents of drilling, on the Roan or elsewhere, should be required to come up with “energy production offsets,” by providing specific alternative sites where drilling can take place, to make up for the shorfall. We challenge Udall, the Salazars and other drilling opponents to do so. They won’t, because opposition wells up virtually everywhere drilling is proposed and this would make someone else’s Roan Plateau the “sacrificial zone.”
No politician is stupid enough to support a blanket ban on drilling, especially when energy prices are pinching. They just oppose drilling in the “pristine,” “special,” “irreplaceable” parts of their state or congressional district, which amounts to the same thing. Then Americans wonder why energy prices are through the roof and U.S. dependence on oil and gas imports continues to grow.
Salazar and others say this was a “rushed” decision. But these leases have been in the talking or planning stage since 1999. The studies have been done, meetings held and public comments considered. And the BLM has been sensitive to the concerns of the zero-drilling crowd, without caving in to it. The plan will be phased in over 20 years, ensuring that no more than 1 percent (or 350 acres) of the plateau’s top is disturbed at a time. Drilling in one section can’t begin until the other is reclaimed. The number of drilling pads has been cut from 420 to 193. BLM is insisting that only state-of-the-art technology is used. Greg Schnacke, executive vice president of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, calls the plan “probably one of the most restrictive plans ever developed.”
But because they didn’t get all they wanted, which is a total ban, the extremists and their political allies want to jettison the process and take matters into their own hands. There’s only one plan for drilling on the Roan that will meet with their approval — no drilling. But the Bureau of Land Management is charged with managing its vast holdings for multiple uses, which include helping meet the oil and gas needs of an energyhungry society. And with the nation facing a serious energy crunch, the no-drilling option simply doesn’t make sense. |
