Representative of the Bureau of Land Management got some questions—and some challenges—from the Summit County Council last week, as they briefed the council on BLM land they are hoping to sell or lease around the Wasatch Back.
The questions centered in particular on land that could be put up for energy leases in the eastern end of the county.
The council heard from BLM Salt Lake Field Manager Matt Preston, who said they administer 700 acres in the county, and hundreds of thousands of acres of subsurface minerals.
Questioned by council member Glenn Wright, Preston talked about their overall mission.
“We have a multiple use mission to manage public lands.” Preston said, “One aspect of the mission that congress has given us is to manage for mineral development under the mineral leasing act.”
Wright questions, “What are the other jobs you have? Other than managing mineral development?”
“We manage wilderness areas and other similar protected areas.” Preston answered, “We manage livestock grazing. We manage just general recreation from camping and mountain biking to hiking, lot of hunting happens on public lands.”
“And is the implication that you manage the quality of those lands?” Wright asked.
Preston replied, “We manage public lands for sustainable development and for use for the current and future generations.”
He said they’re looking at leasing the rights under some 1,600 acres of private land in the eastern county, near Dagget County. Preston said the process does include environmental assessment under NEPA (the National Environmental Protection Act.) He talked about the procedure they follow.
“With offer for competitive lease or non-competitive if no one buys it for competitive lease it’s bought and then it’s leased. A company is then obligated to give us their development plan specifically wells, roads, pipelines, any other infrastructure they would need. The timing they’d be using it. We analyze that and another public facing document, another environmental analysis that would be much more specific about that type of development. In that case we would be much more specific about the type of climate impacts if we do expect those.”
Council member Roger Armstrong asked if they’ve received a purported directive from the Trump Administration, restricting agencies from taking climate change into account in making their decisions. Preston said they have heard that the White House Council of Environmental Quality is looking at a rule change.
Wright said one report indicates that about 25 percent of the country’s energy carbon footprint comes from public lands. He said the recent Climate Assessment report leads him to once conclusion.
“It doesn’t make any sense to me at all to lease any public lands for energy.” Wright said.
“I think the response to that from the BLM’s perspective is energy is still important for our country.” Preston answered, “and the president and the secretary have committed to have America have an energy dominance, or energy priority and the BLM is fulfilling part of that mission by offering—”
“But you also said in my initial questions to you that your responsibility is to maintain the environmental quality of the rest of the BLM lands.” Wright said, “You’re obviously at counter-purposes here. A study has said that additional fuel removal from our lands are going to cause environmental degradation.”
“That’s I think back to the balancing act.” Preston said, “We recognize the need for energy and we also recognize the need for conservation in some areas. BLM is what I would characterize, congress gave us a tough mission. We have to do that balancing act and try to find where sustainable development is appropriate and where it’s not appropriate.”
“I would have no problem with you leasing it for a solar farm, a wind farm or geothermal activity.” Wright said.
Later on, council chair Kim Carson said they will speak out, both about federal lands in Summit County and in southern Utah.
“We will make sure our voice is heard. The end result, I’m hoping it will have an effect. We’re a huge economic driver and I think that’s one connection we’re trying to continually make. That if you continue on this route of wanting to open up more oil and gas and particularly coal extraction that has a direct effect on the Summit County economy. As we see climate change and increased warming and reduced number of ski days per year.”
