May 25, 2010

Send your email today to halt drilling in Adobe Town

We need your help to halt new drilling threats in the pristine wilderness of Adobe Town. Even in areas that the BLM itself has evaluated to possess wilderness character, wells, access roads, and pipelines are being permitted today with minimal environmental review. This is happening with the "Desolation Road" project in northern Adobe Town as well as in the "Barricade Unit" at the foot of the Skull Creek Rim.

You can help protect Adobe Town by altering BLM National Director Bob Abbey!

The Haystacks, near the "Desolation Road" wells. Marty Stupich photo.

In the heart of the southern Red Desert, Adobe Town is a geological wonderland of pillars, buttes, badlands, natural arches, and canyons. Wild horses course across its sagebrush deserts, sage grouse find breeding and nesting habitats, and birds of prey nest on the cliffs and pinnacles. This is a fragile landscape receiving 5 inches of rainfall a year, an scars on the land can take more than a century to heal.

Industrializing Adobe Town would needlessly sacrifice wildlands of national park quality for marginal gas deposits and a brief span of profits for the oil and gas industry. 

Please tell the BLM Director that Adobe Town is a priceless national treasure that must be spared from oil and gas drilling. Time is of the essence, because drilling permits are being issued now. Send your email to BLM Director Bob Abbey at robert_abbey@blm.gov.

A sample letter follows:

Dear Director Abbey,

Adobe Town is one of Wyoming's most oustanding BLM wildernesses, but less than half of its lands are currently protected inside a Wilderness Study Area. Drilling is happening now in lands that the BLM itself has determined to have wilderness qualities, but this drilling is being rushed through with minimal environmental review and without applyin advanced techniques that could minimize the impact on the land.

The Desolation Road project was approved without ever letting the public comment on the Environmental Analysis. BLM botched its analysis by asserting that wilderness qualities were only present in neighboring Wilderness Study Area lands, when in fact the BLM's own wilderness inventory found that most of the project area, including the proposed BLM wellsite and much of the access road, are inside lands of wilderness character. Despite the significant impacts that drilling and roadbuilding will have, BLM illegally approved the drilling without an Environmental Impact Statement.

On the eastern side of Adobe Town, drilling is moving ahead in lands of wilderness character in the Barricade Unit, under the new Rawlins Resource Management Plan that has so many legal deficiencies that is currently being challenged in court.

Plase halt the drilling in Adobe Town and apply long-term safeguards that prevent high-impact drilling techniques in these sensitive lands. Drilling should not occur here, but if it does, gas corporations should be required to use the most advanced techniques to minimize their impact on the land.

Sincerely yours,

[your name and address]

Thank you for doing your part to protect Wyoming's largest and most spectacular desert wilderness!