THE WILDERNESS SOCIETY
COALITION TO PROTECT AMERICA’S NATIONAL PARKS
FRIENDS OF THE EARTH
NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL
April 19, 2023
SUBMITTED VIA E-PLANNING
Greg Sheehan
State Director
Bureau of Land Management, Utah
Project Contacts:
Angela Wadman
Physical Science Tech Bureau of Land Management
Tylia Varilek
O&G Leasing Team Archaeologist Bureau of Land Management
Re: Comments on the 2023 Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Utah Third Quarter Oil and Gas Competitive Lease Sale Draft Environmental Assessment and Draft Finding of No Significant Impact (DOI-BLM-UT- 0000-2023-0001-EA)
Dear State Director Sheehan:
On behalf of our organizations, members, and supporters, we thank you for accepting and fully considering these comments on the Draft Environmental Assessment (EA) and Draft Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) for the Bureau of Land Management Utah 2023 Third Quarter Oil and Gas Lease Sale. Our organizations and members are deeply invested in sound stewardship of our public lands and committed to ensuring that they equitably benefit all people, address environmental justice, protect biodiversity, and serve as a solution to – not a cause of – climate disruption.
We appreciate inclusion of Alternative B in the Draft EA for this lease sale. However, for the reasons explained in this comment and in our scoping comments, we respectfully request and strongly urge deferring many of the remaining parcels. Instruction Memorandum (IM) 2023-007, the Federal Land Management Policy Act (FLPMA), and analysis under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) counsel additional deferrals.
As we did in our scoping comments, we continue to strongly urge the Department of the Interior Department (DOI or Interior Department or Interior) to begin both seriously addressing the structural deficiencies that it has identified in its Report on the Federal Oil and Gas Leasing Program and durably implementing the Inflation Reduction Act’s (IRA’s) requisite leasing program reforms through the fossil fuel rulemaking process.
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