Governor Blasts BLM Management Plan
Final EIS to be issued June 27
by Joy Ufford

Citing what he calls “recurring failures” of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) state and Pinedale offices to work with the state as a cooperating agency, Gov. Dave Freudenthal harshly criticized the agency’s draft revised Pinedale ResourceManagement Plan (RMP).

In his May 2 comments to BLM project manager Kellie Roadifer and field manager Chuck Otto, the governor said, “...the BLM must treat state cooperators as true partners on the interdisciplinary team for this Pinedale RMP revision process.”

“To put a finer point on the problems caused by the lack of partnership to date in the Pinedale MP process, it has only been through follow-up telephone discussions between state cooperators and BLM staff that on April 21, 2008, the state first became aware that the fundamental underlying premise of the Pinedale RMP has apparently been changed froma ‘performance based, adaptive management’ plan to a ‘prescriptive’ plan,” he wrote.

Roadifer responded to his comments this week.

“Changes from the Draft EIS to the Final EIS are all within the scope of the alternatives analyzed in the DEIS and are in response to the public comments received last spring on the Draft EIS,” she said. “As you know we received about 98,000 comments. The Final EIS does our best at incorporating the public comments to make a better plan for managing the public lands in the Pinedale area.”

She said the governor’s comments were based on “an internal version of the Preliminary Final EIS for the use of BLM staff and cooperating agencies.”

“We did meet with cooperators, including the Governor’s staff, between the issuance of the DEIS and preparation of the PFEIS,” Roadifer said. “The state, as well as other cooperating agencies, provide expertise in their areas of specialty and ensure that the document is compatible with areas where the cooperating agencies have jurisdiction, such as air quality, water quality and wildlife populations.”

Areas of concern

Gov. Freudenthal’s comments continued to a list of items he called “specific areas of concernwith the Pinedale RMP PFEIS document.” These include the need for an RMP implementation strategy, local socioeconomic impacts, visual impacts on historic and cultural resources, certain categorical exclusions, habitat fragmentation protection of currently unleased acreage, air and water quality concerns and off-highway vehicle use.

Roadifer said she couldn’t go into specific detail about the forthcoming FinalEIS, scheduled for release June 27.

“Changes from the Draft EIS to the Final EIS are all within the scope of the alternatives analyzed in the DEIS and are in response to the public comments received last spring on the Draft EIS,” she said. “As you know we received about 98,000 comments. The Final EIS does our best at incorporating the public comments to make a better plan for managing the public lands in the Pinedale area.”

Health impacts?

Carmel Kail, a vocal member of the new citizens’ group CLOUD (Citizens Learning about Ozone’s Unhealthy Destruction) holding a public forum on air quality May 13, said she “whole-heartedly concur(s) with the points and tone of the governor’s letter.”

One of CLOUD’s goals is the inclusion of a healthimpact assessment in the Anticline SEIS, or even in the RMP, a topic the governor did not address in his comments.

“The Governor’s letter’s omission of specific reference to analysis and disclosure responsibilities regarding health impacts to local human populations both peculiar and disappointing,” Kail said. “The responsibility is clearly one of the federal agency.”

Roadifer said the BLM has “not yet reached a decision on inclusion of a health impact assessment in the RMP FEIS.”

“Even if it is not included in the RMP EIS, that would not preclude the preparation of the assessment, or inclusion in another major EIS, such as the Pinedale Anticline SEIS,” she added.

“One is left to hope that other pending federal actions with similarly inadequate documents and processes will also now be challenged,” Kail said of the governor’s letter about the Pinedale RMP. “Immediately to mind is the pending BLM approval of the 4,400 Anticline gas well proposal, predicted to occur months before any RMP decision. It would make little sense to ignore this 4,400 elephant in the room...”

More public review?

Gov. Freudenthal said he “believe(s) a revised Pinedale RMP Draft EIS needs to be written and noticed for public comment... If a comprehensive revised draft EIS document is published for public review and comment, we will have several more opportunities to collaboratively address any and all remaining cooperator concerns and issues in order to either resolve them or at a minimum create mutual understanding of the rationales for divergent positions.”

There won’t be another public comment period per se for the Final EIS to be issued June 27, Roadifer said, but there will be a 30-day “protest period” for those who commented previously to protest its decision.

“The next look for the public is the Final EIS,” she said. “We typically get a lot of comments during those (protest) periods although we don’t as for them, and we try to address them.”

Then the final decision on the RMP, which guides BLM land management decisions for the next two or three decades, will be made after all protests are resolved and presented in the Record of Decision, available in November, Roadifer explained.