On April 17, 2007, Ann Morgan got to do
something that few Western conservationists have done since 2001:
testify before a congressional committee. The subject before the
Energy and Minerals Subcommittee of the House Natural Resources
Committee was the BLM’s ongoing push to open up as much of
the public domain as possible to oil and gas drillers.
Morgan is eminently qualified to speak on this topic:
Before she started working for The Wilderness Society, she served
five years as the BLM director for Colorado, a state in the heart
of the gas boom. Morgan’s full testimony can be read here.
She recently spoke with HCN executive director
Paul Larmer from her office in Denver, Colo.
PL: Why did
you leave the BLM?
AM: When the Bush administration came
in and started to make policy changes that put energy development
ahead of every other use on BLM lands, I knew I wouldn’t be
comfortable carrying them out. They offered me a not very
attractive job in D.C., and I proposed instead that they loan me
out to the University of Colorado. They agreed.
PL: And
now, after teaching for a couple of years, you have left academia
and the BLM to work for a nonprofit environmental group. You could
have made the big bucks working for industry, like some of your
other departed Interior colleagues.
AM: Actually, when I
first left, I talked to a couple of oil and gas companies about
sharing some of what I know about making oil and gas drilling more
sensitive to the environment, but they weren’t interested.
They had no incentive because this administration doesn’t
require them to do better.
PL: Isn’t the BLM
required to enforce what’s called Best Management Practices
for gas drilling operations?
AM: The agency could easily
do it, but right now it just suggests using Best Management
Practices. It’s voluntary. If BLM required Best Management
Practices, the industry would do it, then crow about it to their
stockholders. And they would still make great profits.
PL: I’ve talked to a few people from the Clinton
administration who said this gas boom would have happened in the
West even if Al Gore had become president – millions of acres
of public land were already leased to energy companies and the
price of gas was up high enough to spur the market.
AM:
Yes, the boom would have happened. But not like it is now. When I
was state director, I didn’t lease in roadless areas; I
didn’t lease in proposed wilderness areas. That’s not
happening now.
PL: By selling leases to energy companies
in those environmentally important areas, the BLM has attracted a
lot of negative attention. Couldn’t the agency have avoided
the wrath of Westerners by just giving the industry 95 percent of
what it wanted instead of 100 percent?
AM: Maybe, but the
overall impacts we’re seeing from gas drilling can’t be
ignored: When the air quality goes down in our national parks, when
migratory routes of elk and deer are disrupted and when wastewater
from coalbed methane operations pollutes ranchlands, the
conservation community is going to notice.
PL: The
Interior Department is making some noises that it is concerned
about the impacts of energy development. It recently announced a
new Healthy
Lands Initiative that would provide the BLM with $15
million to do land restoration and reclamation in heavily impacted
areas of the West. This is good news, isn’t it?
AM:
It’s nice to hear them at least acknowledge the problem, but
the initiative is kind of a sham. It looks like some of the
proposed projects have been sitting around for awhile and
aren’t even located in the gas fields. If the BLM had
required companies to use Best Management Practices to begin with,
we wouldn’t have to spend public dollars to clean up after
them.
PL: Don’t companies have to post bonds that
will cover reclamation costs should they walk out of town?
AM: Yes. The requirement is $10,000 per lease, or $25,000
for all leases in one state, or $150,000 for all leases in the
country.
PL: That seems ridiculously low.
AM:
It is. These bond requirements haven’t been looked at in
years.
PL: Now that Democrats control Congress, and the
voices of landowners, researchers, and conservationists like you
are being heard, will we see changes to this administration’s
policies promoting drilling and leasing?
AM: This
administration will disregard whatever studies are done or whatever
testimony is given. But a new administration can use the
information we are gathering to take action.
PL:
Won’t a new administration have a hard time moving a
bureaucracy like the BLM?
AM: The Bush administration
moved very quickly from day one to implement its vision; there is
no reason why someone else couldn’t come in and move things
back just as rapidly. Even petroleum engineers in the BLM have told
me they think things are moving too fast.
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