From the Western Slope Conservation Center Newsletter:
As you’ve probably heard by now (but who can keep up, it’s been a dizzying week of news) the proposal in the Senate that sought to mandate the sale of millions of acres of Colorado public land has been deemed to be in violation of the Byrd Rule. It therefore cannot be included in the budget reconciliation package.
This is a major success for efforts to keep Colorado’s public lands public, but does not guarantee an overall win. Continued efforts to revise the bill’s language and reintroduce the plan mean that we must stay vigilant in our efforts to oppose any further attempts to sell off our public land.
Our public lands are heavily used and beloved by locals for recreational activities as well as necessary components to our livelihoods. Selling them to private stakeholders would remove environmental protections on air, water, and wildlife, and significantly impact local economies. See our blog post on the recently failed proposal here, with details and contact information that will be relevant to future attempts.
Celebrate this victory, and continue to fight future iterations of this attack on our public lands.
The “Big Beautiful Bill” passed, which is bad news for the environment. Multiple other reconciliation provisions threaten our public lands and the ability for lands management decisions to be made at the local level. As of a few days ago, and keeping in mind some details may have changed in the final version which we’ll be following, provisions include:
- Mandatory leasing. The BLM’s ability to defer leases proposed by the oil and gas industry would be impacted, as they would now be required to offer at least 50% of the leases proposed by these industries, and would have to offer said leases within 18 months.
- Removing public input. Fees imposed for protesting oil and gas leases, limiting the ability for local hunters and anglers, public officials, and community members to participate in the decision making process.
- Permit-by-rule, allowing oil and gas companies to certify themselves that they are in compliance, and begin drilling within 45 days.
- NEPA reviews allowed to have a “project sponsor” for a fee of 125% of the estimated fee for preparing a NEPA document. This fee would pay for the streamlining of the environmental review process, and would prohibit administrative and judicial review of any sponsored EAs/EISs, significantly limiting local communities’ abilities to be involved in the NEPA process.
- Funding limitation on Grand Junction and Colorado River Valley SEIS, which was developed in partnership with local community members and resource and wildlife specialists and allows for the management of recreation areas, wildlife habitat, and wilderness areas while also allowing for oil and gas production on nearly one million acres. The funding limitation would impact this well-balanced and community oriented SEIS.
- Rollbacks to current royalty rate and fee reforms for drilling on public lands. The reforms were made just a few years ago, and implemented a necessary raise in royalty rates, a fee for the nomination of lands for auction, and eliminated non competitive leasing. It would also allow for the drilling of up to 200 million acres of public lands. In bringing back non competitive leasing and rolling back a nomination fee, our public lands are at risk of needless nominations that, when not auctioned off, are made available for incredibly low fees for oil and gas companies to add to their reserves. See our blog post on this significant threat to our public lands here.
The Keepitpublic.co also website continues to be a good resource for updated information and actions to take.