What You Can Do! Please send a short letter or email to the BLM
opposing this proposal on the grounds that its implementation would be
illegal and would forever mar the region’s ecosystems. Letters are due
this Wednesday (July 25, 2001).
Here is some background information concerning this proposal and other
information you may wish to include in your letter.
The Atlantic Rim Coalbed Methane Project proposal should NOT be
implemented because it would industrialize a huge area of public land,
threaten many rare or vulnerable animals, and will harm the greater Red
Desert and Medicine Bow ecosystems.
- Wide-open and wild landscapes provide Wyoming its identity and make it
unique. If the BLM continues to push through massive proposals such as the
Atlantic Rim Project, then Wyoming truly will become (with no areas without
roads, pipes, and machinery) like everywhere else.
- In Wyoming, the average coalbed methane well shoots out fifteen
gallons of water per minute. In fact, some wells in Carbon County area
have produced more than fifty gallons of water per minute. Furthermore,
this water is often very high in sodium content. So, with its 3,880
different wells, the Atlantic Rim Coalbed Methane Proposal could spew out
as much as 84 million gallons of saltly water per day, every day for decades,
into an area naturally adapted to dry conditions. Please tell the BLM that
it must not implement this proposal because the area’s rare warm-water fish,
the round-tail chub and the blue-head sucker, would probably not survive the
onslaught.
- BLM should drop this proposal because it would destroy potential
black-footed ferret habitat, and harm populations of other rare and
vulnerable animals such feruginous hawk, white-tailed prairie dog, Colombian
sharp-tailed grouse, and burrowing owl.
- The "project area" is also very important big game habitat that needs
protection.
- This proposal should not be implemented because the long-term health of
the region’s ecosystems are far more important than the short-term gains
(ranging between 10-30 years) associated with coalbed methane production.
The Atlantic Rim Coal Bed Methane Project Proposal should not be
implemented because it is illegal.
- To provide for balanced and environmentally sound management, the Bureau
of Land Management is required to maintain a Resource Management Plan for
each area under its auspices. The BLM Rawlins Field Offiice has realized
that the Atlantic Rim proposal violates its long-term plan. But rather than
scrapping this huge and environmentally destructive project, the BLM has
decided to redraft its long-term plan while it simultaneously works to
implement this coalbed methane project. In your letter, please tell the
BLM that this course of action is blatantly illegal and that it must either
dump the Atlantic Rim proposal or first revise its Resource Management Plan,
and only then consider implementing the Atlantic Rim proposal.
- The BLM has also decided to allow a part of the project, exploratory
drilling, to occur while it analyzes the proposed project’s environmental
impacts. Please tell the BLM that this is absurd and again illegal because
federal agencies are required by law to study potential environmental impacts
before projects are implemented; not after the fact when the environment has
already been degraded.
Wyoming’s Atlantic Rim / Muddy Creek Area, intersected by the Continental
Divide and located on the west side of the Sierra Madre range of the
Medicine Bow National Forest. This ecologically important area is now
threatened by a BLM proposal of mammoth proportions, the Atlantic Rim
Coalbed Methane Project which proposes the drilling of 3,880 new wells
and the associated construction of a gargantuan amount of new roads and
pipelines. View