The New York Times
June 22, 2005
By TIMOTHY EGAN
RIFLE, Colo., June 15 - As a sometime carpenter, Keith Goddard has all the
work he can handle in this place where new houses rise with the sun and a
gas well is poked into the ground just about every other day.
But Mr. Goddard is worried sick. From his backyard here on Colorado's West
Slope, he can see the little bit of unspoiled paradise left in this valley,
the high, green top of the Roan Plateau. That piece of public land is where
he goes to make his living in the fall, as a hunting guide. Energy companies
want to drill on it.
"It's crazy what's going on," said Mr. Goddard, who has a face deeply
reddened by the mountain sun.
Mr. Goddard, who says he is a political independent, has organized hunters
to protest government plans for introducing gas wells into grazing areas for
deer and elk. "I'm not against oil and gas development," he said, "but when
you put wells in every 20 acres, that means you're no longer managing public
lands for the public anymore."
Amid the clank, clatter and fire of the largest natural gas boom ever on
public land in the West, a new kind of sagebrush rebellion is stirring.
Ranchers, cowboys, small property owners and local government leaders - the
core of the Republican base in the Rocky Mountain West - are chafing at the
pace and scope of the Bush administration's push for energy development.
Some people are filing lawsuits, challenging federal authority to drill in
certain areas. Others are protesting new gas and oil leases. Federal
officials say they have received thousands of letters opposed to drilling in
areas like the Roan Plateau. One state, Wyoming, has passed legislation
giving landowners more say in how mineral rights beneath their property are
tapped.
The battle cry is the same as in past movements: a call for local control
over a distant federal landlord. But for the first time, it is the
Republicans who find themselves the target of angry speeches about lost
property rights and tone-deaf federal land managers. And people who have
been on opposing sides of the major land battles in the West - mainly
property owners and ranchers versus environmentalists - are now allies.
"The word from Washington is drill, drill, drill, and now they've basically
destroyed our ranch," said Tweeti Blancett, a coordinator for George Bush's
presidential campaign in San Juan County, N.M. "We've been in a firestorm
down here. A lot of Republicans are upset."
The 32,000 acres of public land that Ms. Blancett and her husband, Linn,
have long used for grazing cattle is now riddled with gas wells and
pipelines. Petroleum byproducts have poisoned the water, she said, killing
animals and causing the fertility rate to plummet.
The couple has hired Karen Budd-Falen, one of the best-known lawyers in
fights over federal land policies. They have sued to try to force the
federal Bureau of Land Management to clean up the land. Ms. Budd-Falen got
her start working against environmental restrictions with the Mountain
States Legal Foundation, an intellectual incubator for such property rights
stalwarts as James Watt, the former interior secretary under President
Ronald Reagan.
A prominent Republican from Cheyenne, Wyo., Ms. Budd-Falen said the drilling
boom had turned the political world upside down in the West, home to the
sagebrush rebellion of the 1970's and other later battles against federal
government restrictions on development of public land. Now property owners,
ranchers and home builders are worried about overdevelopment.
"I'm amazed at the number of calls we're getting from landowners who are
really frustrated with what's going on," Ms. Budd-Falen said.
The fight has drawn in what is called the world's biggest Boy Scout ranch,
the Philmont in northeast New Mexico; ranchers from Montana's Front Range
and Wyoming's high desert; and retirees who have bought into the West's real
estate boom only to find gas derricks blocking their mountain views.
For the Bush administration, the dispute poses a conundrum. The president
has made oil and gas drilling a priority on federal lands. Last year, the
Bureau of Land Management issued 6,052 permits to drill oil and gas wells,
triple the number from 10 years ago. Nearly 40 million acres of public land
outside Alaska now have oil and gas leases on them.
With natural gas prices more than doubling over the last five years, market
demand is driving the boom, administration officials say. This region,
sometimes called the Persian Gulf of gas, has enough natural gas to heat 55
million homes for almost 30 years, the government says.
But by pushing for so much drilling close to national parks, wilderness
areas and favored hunting grounds, the administration has angered many
communities.
In this valley along the Colorado River, a Bush stronghold all the way to
the Utah border and beyond, several counties and small towns have passed
resolutions urging the administration to keep the industrial rigs out of
some of the remaining wild land.
Colorado and New Mexico, in the center of the boom, are also where Democrats
hope to tip the balance of the national electoral map. The oil and gas
drilling, while providing jobs and an infusion of money to some areas, is
seen as a threat to other regions that have prospered by catering to tourism
and retirees.
"We hear those concerns and we are trying hard to address them," said
Rebecca Watson, the assistant secretary of the interior for lands and
mineral management. "We're trying to balance the concerns of property owners
with wildlife and the environment and our energy needs."
What makes the fight particularly bitter is the nature of land ownership in
much of the West. Because of the legacy of the homesteading era, people may
own the land on which they live or graze livestock, but not own the mineral
rights below the surface. Typically, the Bureau of Land Management sells
leases for those mineral rights, which often results in energy companies
putting up small industrial camps to get the gas beneath somebody's home.
These so-called split-estates properties cover 58 million acres in the West.
"We moved out here for peace and privacy, and now they trying to surround us
with gas well pads," said Nancy Jacobsen, who owns 47 acres of high country
just outside the town of Silt, not far from here.
Ms. Jacobsen is a leader in an effort to get an initiative on the state
ballot that would give property owners more say in how oil and gas companies
use their land. Five state legislatures took up bills on similar issues this
year, but only Wyoming passed one.
Ms. Jacobsen said she registered as a Republican in the last election, but
now considered herself an independent because of this issue. She said her
property value fell by $300,000 in the last assessment because of the nearby
gas development.
"What this industry is doing right now to people's property is
unbelievable," she said.
Despite such discontent, Republican Party officials liken the issue here to
a family fight, and say it is not likely to alter long-term political
alliances.
"It's complicated, because what you have is a collision of two strong
Republican ideals: respect for property rights and the need for a national
energy policy," said Rachael Sunbarger, a spokeswoman for the Colorado
Republican Party." But I don't think anyone changes their party affiliation
over a single issue."
Of course, many people own both property and mineral rights. And very few of
them have complained about an energy policy that has brought so much money
to an area that looked to be played out nearly 30 years ago, during the last
energy boom.
The Interior Department says it has issued new guidelines to ensure that
energy companies are more responsive to property owners, give adequate
notification of drilling, and minimize scars to the land.
"I have every empathy in the world for someone who has just found a dream
home in the West and then an oil and gas company man knocks on their door
and says we're going to start drilling," Ms. Watson, the interior official,
said.
But the Interior Department came under sharp criticism a few months ago when
it tried to auction a new round of natural gas leases in Colorado without
telling the surface owners about it. The department blamed an agency Web
site that used to post such notices but was down because of security
concerns.
The other major issue involves drilling on large pieces of public land that
have long been used by outdoor enthusiasts.
"It's tough to beat the federal government," said Gordon Johnston, a
lifelong Republican and three-term county commissioner in Sublette County,
Wyo. "But there are a lot of us who feel we have to fight them, because
they're wrecking this land."