Nine Mile Canyon Update July 21, 2008
We are waiting for the decision of record for the West Tavaputs Draft EIS. The date for release keeps getting pushed back. You may have read that the EPA warned the BLM that the air quality model is insufficient and needs to be re-done. Evidently the BLM is going to do that over the next 10 weeks but is not going to release it as a supplemental EIS for public comment. The BLM has received the final report for Constance Silver’s dust study for Nine Mile Canyon but is not letting the public see it yet. In addition, Carbon County (Utah) has formed a Nine Mile Canyon Road Authority and invited the Nine Mile Canyon Coalition to sit on the board. They have released a memo that they will be conducting tests of three dust suppressants on stretches of the road in the Canyon. We understand that will begin this week. Last week I visited the Canyon and observed the application of a dust suppressant that looks promising (I think this is a separate operation than the test strips, but no one can confirm that right now). However, it doesn’t look like the road surface has been sufficiently prepared so I have some concerns that the product may not be as effective as it could be. The Nine Mile Canyon Coalition, in partnership with other groups, formally asked for an extension of the comment period for the DEIS so we could hire an engineering firm to study alternative routes into the Canyon, something the DEIS did not consider very seriously. This was denied, but we will be moving ahead with several partners to commission a study anyway. We also formally asked that the DEIS be withdrawn because it was incomplete and insufficient, but that was denied also.
In the meantime we asked for a state director’s review of the whole process of granting statutory exclusions for drilling new wells without NEPA work. This was denied.
We have also been working on the listing of Nine Mile Canyon to the National Register of Historic Places. The nomination was considered by the Utah Board of State History last month and received positive comments. Only one landowner objected to the listing. The nomination now goes to the State BLM Director for her signature, but Bill Barrett Corporation has objected to the listing as has Carbon County, Duchesne County, and Uintah County (all in Utah). We have a meeting with Duchesne County Public Lands Committee tomorrow night to clear up some misunderstandings.
Our best efforts to protect the cultural resources of Nine Mile Canyon are to fix the existing road so there is not so much dust covering the rock art (BBC evidently is not going to use magnesium chloride anymore which is a great relief) and to develop alternative routes for accessing the gas leases on the top of the Tavaputs Plateau. The road engineering study will address this.
Pam Miller, Chair
Nine Mile Canyon Coalition