WildEarth Guardians

Wednesday, August 6, 2014
Clean Air, Climate Endangered by Fossil Fuels in Wyoming's Powder River Basin

Report Finds U.S. Bureau of Land Management Turning its Back on Air Pollution from Unprecedented Expansion of Coal, Oil and Gas
Contact: Jeremy Nichols (303) 437-7663

Buffalo, WY—Clean air, the very hallmark of the western United States, stands to be severely degraded in the face of a proposed Bureau of Land Management plan that would open up northeastern Wyoming to unprecedented levels of coal mining and fracking, prompting WildEarth Guardians to call on the agency to abandon its fossil fuel plans.

“The Bureau of Land Management is putting fossil fuels above all else, including our clean air and our climate,” said Jeremy Nichols, WildEarth Guardians’ Climate and Energy Program Director.  “Their latest coal, oil, and gas plans aren’t just unprecedented, they’re monstrous and stand to turn northeastern Wyoming into a polluted wasteland.”

Under a draft Resource Management Plan for the Buffalo Field Office in northeastern Wyoming, the Bureau of Land Management has proposed to approve the drilling of more than 14,000 new oil and gas wells and the strip mining of 10.2 billion tons of coal from 106,400 acres (more than 160 square miles). 

The proposal represents one of the largest expansions of coal and oil and gas development on public lands in the western United States and portends massive increases in air pollution and greenhouse gases.

In a report submitted to the Bureau of Land Management today, Guardians detailed how the agency significantly underestimated the air quality and climate impacts of the proposed Buffalo Resource Management Plan, calling into question whether the Agency will be able to safeguard air quality standards and protect the climate. 

The Buffalo Field Office, which contains the Powder River Basin of northeastern Wyoming, is already the largest coal producing region in the United States and one of the most heavily drilled regions in the western United States, with more than 70,000 oil and gas wells.

In its analysis of the environmental impacts, the Bureau of Land Management asserted this expanded fossil fuel development would not endanger air quality, including public health limits on smog, particulates, and other harmful gases, or threaten the climate through increased greenhouse gases.

However, an expert review of the Agency’s assumptions found that that air pollution levels from coal, oil, and gas development were significantly underestimated, that carbon pollution was not properly accounted for, and that current monitoring data showing current air quality problems was ignored.

The Bureau of Land Management, for example, underestimated emissions of haze and smog-forming nitrogen oxides by more than 25,000 tons, equal to overlooking the air quality impacts of more than 2.7 million passenger vehicles (according to the EPA, an average passenger vehicles releases 18.2 pounds of nitrogen oxides annually).

Numerous exceedances of health standards have recently been reported, exceedances of smog, nitrogen oxide gas, and particulate limits.

The report calls into question the adequacy of the Bureau of Land Management’s environmental draft environmental impact statement for its proposed Buffalo Resource Management Plan.  In response, Guardians today is calling on the Bureau to revise its analysis, provide a new opportunity for public comment, and ensure the Plan effectively safeguards clean air and the climate.

The call comes on the heels of Environmental Protection Agency criticism of the Bureau of Land Management for failing to demonstrate that streams and streamside habitats, as well as drinking water aquifers, would be adequately protected from expanded fossil fuel development in the Buffalo Field Office.

In a November 2013 letter, the EPA found the draft environmental impact statement to be “inadequate” and ordered the Bureau to revise its analysis.