COLORADO/NEW MEXICO
That loud sucking noise you hear from the San Juan Basin comes from
20,000 gas wells. Now, industry is targeting a state park for one
more well pad. Navajo State Park, home to Navajo Lake —
“Colorado’s answer to Lake Powell” — is owned by the
Bureau of Reclamation, which built Navajo Dam just south of the
Colorado-New Mexico border in 1962. Colorado and New Mexico lease
the land as state parks, while a private entity owns the subsurface
mineral rights.
Colorado officials say drilling in a
state park isn’t entirely unprecedented; wells already stand
on the New Mexico side of the reservoir, and another one is slated
for an eastern Colorado state park. Since a federal agency owns the
land, the application, submitted by Energen Resources Corp., will
undergo review according to the National Environmental Policy Act.
Energen proposed the gas well in the park after adjacent
landowners demanded drilling restrictions on private land. John
Barborinas, a Bureau of Indian Affairs fire specialist, lives next
to the park and says the well will be in a wetlands area next to
the reservoir. He says it would contaminate domestic water wells,
foul air quality, disturb wildlife wintering grounds and lead to
increased trespassing and noise pollution.
“There’s
no place that’s sacrosanct” to the oil and gas industry, says
Mark Pearson of the nonprofit San Juan Citizens Alliance.
Reclamation and Energen are finalizing details for the well pad,
and a draft environmental assessment, open to public comment, will
follow. For more information, contact Sugnet Environmental Inc. at
sugnetco@sugnet.com.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Gas well slated for state park.
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