Thursday, July 01, 2010
Fisher Girl at Strawberry Reservoir
The U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management are not following the government’s own forest plan for the Uinta National Forest in north-central Utah, according to three conservation groups that have filed an injunction to stop the re-leasing of 219 square miles of land for oil and gas drilling in an unusually scenic region that includes Utah’s most popular fishing area—Strawberry Reservoir.
The Utah Rivers Council, the Utah Environmental Congress and the Citizens’ Committee to Save Our Canyons want to delay drilling on 140,000 acres because federal regulators did not follow the 2003 Forest Plan for Uinta and instead used a 1997 environmental impact statement before reissuing leases to companies that want to extract oil and gas from the forest.
By not abiding by the 2003 plan, the government is allowing drillers to disregard concern for riparian corridors, which consist of plant life found near streams, rivers and lakes. The environmental groups also claim that the Forest Service failed to establish protections for wetlands and intermittent streams before issuing the leases.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
Groups Sue Uncle Sam to Protect Uintas (by Suzanne Ashe, Courthouse News Service)
Utah Rivers Council v. U.S. Forest Service (U.S. District Court, Central Utah) (pdf)
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