Conservationists criticize State oil and gas lease sale

Conservation groups are crying foul over a state oil and gas lease sale slated for this fall that they say could open the door to drilling on the banks of the Yellowstone and Boulder rivers, sites they say stand to lose their pristine beauty and water quality if drilling is allowed to occur.

But the director of the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation said Tuesday that there is no difference between the state land for lease this September and the existing 6,000 acres leased for mineral development in the bed of the Yellowstone River.

While the sale of a lease is a preliminary step toward actual drilling n contracts and environmental reviews are required before any dirt is moved n conservationists say the proposed sale of riverbed tracts signals the need for DNRC's lease-selling process to be revised.

"We view this proposal as totally insane," said Scott Bosse, director of aquatic conservation at the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. "This is an example of the oil and gas industry breathing on its own fumes."

Oil and gas companies nominate tracts of state land for the DNRC's quarterly sale.

The GYC Tuesday submitted a two-page letter to DNRC Director Mary Sexton asking that the 28 leases located in and along the two rivers be removed from the sale.

According to the letter, 14 of the leases include the bed of the Yellowstone and 18 include the bed of the Boulder.

All of the leases in question are in Park and Sweet Grass counties, mostly around Big Timber.

Drilling in these areas could cause water-quality issues, hurt fisheries and lead to roads being built and heavy machinery placed along the rivers, Bosse said Tuesday.

Kerry Fee, president of the Joe Brooks Chapter of Trout Unlimited in Livingston, agreed.

"Once you go in there and wreck (nature) or disturb it, it's going to be hard to put it back the way it was," Fee said.

But Sexton said there was little her department could do to permanently put the leases on hold.

Anyway, she said, the leases going up for sale are far from unprecedented, and their impact will be mitigated by stipulations put in place after environmental impacts are measured.

Currently, the state has 27,000 acres of riverbed leased, Sexton said. Of those, 6,000 are on the Yellowstone River.

When riverbed is leased, she said, no drilling is allowed from the surface; companies must drill horizontally from adjacent private land.

"If we lease the bed of a river, there's no drilling there," she said.

Rep. John Sinrud, R-Bozeman, said the concerns being raised by GYC and Trout Unlimited over the Yellowstone and Bolder River tracts are overblown.

"They always like to fear monger without any evidence whatsoever," said Sinrud, director of development for the Western Tradition Partnership, a public advocacy group that promotes more energy development in Western states. "They are continually saying the sky is falling, without any evidence."