Commissioners vote to support withdrawal of county gas leases

Vote goes 2-1

Not everyone is happy with the added attention Gunnison County and the North Fork Valley are getting from oil and gas companies. The opposition to the spread of oil and gas operations has grown alongside the industry, as more and more questions are raised about the impacts of the operations on surface and ground water.

At a meeting on Tuesday, September 21, the Gunnison Board of County Commissioners heard from members of the Thompson Divide Coalition (TDC), which would like to see the remaining leases in a 221,500-acre area spanning Gunnison, Pitkin, Mesa, Garfield and Delta counties taken off the table with legislation.
The group is proposing the Thompson Divide Withdrawal and Protection Act that could be sponsored by Rep. John Salazar as soon as this fall, according to TDC board president Jock Jacober. The act would remove the lands from public lease offerings. Then the group hopes to work with willing leaseholders to keep development off the land as much as possible.
TDC board member Marj Perry told the commissioners that part of the group’s motivation for setting such a large area aside is to protect a critical wildlife migration corridor connecting the Grand Mesa to the Elk Mountains.
In a letter urging the commissioners not to support the proposal, Gunnison Energy Corporation (GEC) president Brad Robinson pointed out that of the 81 square miles of Gunnison County that are inside the boundary TDC has proposed for the protected area, more than 44 acres are already leased.
Lee Fyock, GEC director of environmental and permitting, told the commissioners, “There’s over 100,000 acres of already leased land [in the proposed area] that will not be for sale. The Forest Service and [Bureau of Land Management] found this to be a high quality potential resource and those leases will remain. I think I speak for a majority of the leaseholders in that area when I say they will not be given up.”
County manager Matthew Birnie pointed out that the existing leases in Gunnison County effectively cut off the unleased portion from the rest of the protected area. Perry said she “was hopeful that the group would be able to work with some of the leaseholders to keep some of that area open.”
In his letter, Robinson said, “The proposed area is not pristine by any means. Coal mines, at least 36 drilled or permitted oil and gas wells, 3 major natural gas pipelines, the Wolf Creek Gas Storage Field [a 15-square-mile unit], compressor stations, numerous graveled and paved roads, ranching, gravel pits, a ski lift and thousands of acres of private lands including subdivisions are all within the proposed boundaries.”
The commissioners acknowledged that the land wasn’t perfect, but commissioner Jim Starr was interested in learning more about the value of that area as a migration corridor. Starr and fellow commissioner Hap Channell, while recognizing the value of the natural gas industry in the county, voted to support the potential legislation.
Commissioner Paula Swenson voted against county support for the bill, saying she was “not ready to sign on to support the legislation because we have worked so hard in Gunnison County with the industry. We need to honor our industries since they’ve been working very diligently with us. I think this might be a little overreaching in our county.”
The commissioners voted 2-1 in support of the proposed TDC proposal.