It is the season, so let’s go with a gridiron analogy.
The Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management plan to remove 224,713 acres from possible mining or oil and gas drilling for the next 20 years would seem worthy of an end-zone celebration in Crested Butte, where the community has spent more than 45 years battling a plan to mine molybdenum on Mount Emmons above town.
But they aren’t spiking the football just yet in the East River Valley, where they call the 12,392-foot peak the Red Lady and hardy skiers regularly carve their signatures in the glowing bowl above Elk Avenue. The draft decision released last week by federal land managers that suspends mining and oil and gas permits on public land inside the Thompson Divide is a first down in the red zone for Crested Butte. Twenty years is good. Crested Butte wants a forever ban.
“It’s a big step toward permanent protections,” said Julie Nania, the Red Lady program director for High Country Conservation Advocates, which has led the fight to block moly mining in Crested Butte since the 1970s.
It’s been a little more than a year since President Joe Biden visited Colorado to establish the Camp Hale-Continental Divide National Monument and block mining in the Thompson Dividem a 225,000-acre mix of mountains and rangeland between Glenwood Springs and Crested Butte. The Forest Service and the BLM Friday afternoon released a draft plan that would prevent mining and drilling there for the next 20 years.
Hunters, ranchers, conservation groups and local governments have been working to limit the impacts of mining and energy exploration in the Thompson Divide for many decades in Garfield, Gunnison and Pitkin counties. The fight has defined the community of Crested Butte, where a band of long-haired conservationists in the late 1970s began working to stop a plan to unearth a massive molybdenum deposit from an abandoned mine above the then-nascent ski town.
In the past few years, Crested Butte has shepherded a land swap that would see the Mt. Emmons Mining Co. receive about 550 acres around the Keystone Mine on Red Lady so it can better maintain a treatment plant that filters Crested Butte’s water supply in exchange for the company giving about 630 acres of wildlife habitat on four parcels to the Forest Service. The town’s voters in 2016 directed a portion of its real estate transfer tax to a fund that will pay the mining company to permanently extinguish 1,365 mining claims on 9,000 acres above town.
And that plan involves a conservation easement that will ask the federal government to not just suspend, but permanently remove mineral rights on the mine-owned land, which will prevent all future development while allowing recreational access and protecting watersheds and wildlife habitat.
The Biden administration’s plan to suspend mining and oil and gas permits is only one front in the Crested Butte push to block moly mining on the Red Lady. It’s also a step for the rest of the Thompson Divide.
The federal government’s Finding of No Significant Impact in its Draft Environmental Assessment notes that the withdrawal of mining and drilling would “have the beneficial effect of being wholly protective of the natural, social and physical environments” in the region. The federal agencies are taking public comment on the plan through early January.
Tourism and recreation are vibrant in the Thompson Divide, accounting for more than 15,540 jobs, compared with about 1,380 jobs in mining and oil and gas extraction. Mining has been declining in the Thompson Divide for several years, as the energy industry transitions in the Western Slope. The Forest Service in 2015 stopped leasing about 61,000 acres in the White River National Forest in the Thompson Divide. In 2016, the BLM canceled leases for undeveloped oil wells on about 30,000 acres in the region.
The federal report released last week identified 63,582 acres with a high potential for locating oil and gas, but more than 25,000 acres are off-limits under the management plan for the White River National Forest. The report identified about 2,668 acres with a high potential for locating mineral deposits. There are 22 active oil and gas leases covering 22,800 acres inside the proposed withdrawal area of the Thompson Divide — most issued in the 1970s — and those leases will remain intact.
The environmental report suggested that any losses of oil and gas exploration with the withdrawal of acres inside the Thompson Divide would likely be replaced by operations outside the region.
“The proposed action would protect the agricultural, ranching, wildlife, air quality, recreation, ecological and scenic values of the Thompson Divide area for both intrinsic and economic value to local communities,” the report reads.
The two federal agencies said they have collected about 60,000 comments during two comment periods in the past two years and a majority supported the withdrawal.
Kathleen Sgamma, the president of the Western Energy Alliance, said none of the trade group’s more than 200 oil and gas company members would protest the Thompson Divide withdrawal plan because most energy companies have turned away from the area when the Forest Service and BLM stopped leasing. Still, Sgamma said she has problems with how the Forest Service and BLM release the plan on a Friday a few weeks before Christmas with a public comment period running through the holiday season.
“This is clearly a cynical ploy to sneak the withdrawal through with as little resistance as possible,” she said, noting that her group will ask the Forest Service to extend the comment period for another 30 days through January. The Forest Service and BLM are planning a virtual public meeting on the Thompson Divide plan Dec. 18 at 6 p.m.
The withdrawal was cheered by conservation groups and supporters of the Colorado Outdoor Recreation Economy Act, or CORE Act. Colorado U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, a Democrat, first proposed the legislation in 2013, which includes permanent removal of all oil and gas development in the Thompson Divide.
“I encourage all who care about this special place to weigh in during the public comment period,” Bennet said in a statement in which he promised to continue pushing for passage of the CORE Act.