A federal court in Washington, DC, has blocked the Interior Department from allowing energy exploration on thousands of acres of public lands on the eastern boundary of Utah’s Arches National Park.

This marked the first time a federal court has had an opportunity to review a Bush administration-backed exploration project. Environmental groups said they expect the court’s decision to put the brakes on the administration’s efforts to open up western public lands to energy development. The ruling will require the federal government to undertake a more rigorous environmental review before authorizing energy companies’ access to the region.

In its 12-page ruling, the court remanded a decision by the Interior Board of Lands Appeals (IBLA) last August, which upheld the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) approval of seismic oil and gas exploration activities by WesternGeo on approximately 23,040 acres of state and federal lands in Grand County, UT. It cited the IBLA’s “refusal to consider evidence relevant to the validity” of the environmental assessment (EA) of the project, as well as the BLM’s failure to “thoroughly consider” project alternatives, as the basis for its remand [Civil Action No. 02-1868].

Four environmental groups — the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the Wilderness Society, Sierra Club and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance — filed a lawsuit in September challenging the IBLA ruling, claiming BLM had failed to consider alternative plans and failed to take a “hard look” at the project’s environmental impact on the soil and endangered species, and the IBLA had ignored evidence that WesternGeo had violated special, mitigative conditions that were imposed on the project.

In October, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia enjoined WesternGeo from carrying out its exploration activities while the environmentalists’ challenge to the IBLA ruling was under review.

Ultimately finding in favor of the environmental groups, the court ruled that “what does appear from this record is a sense that the agency [BLM] was in a hurry to approve the [so-called] Yellow Cat Swath project, and considered the damage that would be done by the trucks [used to collect seismic data] relatively insignificant.” The vehicles, referred to as “thumper trucks,” weigh 60,000 pounds.

Moreover, “IBLA’s refusal to consider evidence that the [seismic] trucks had made 15-inch-deep ruts, not the four inches anticipated by the EA, and that they were using tire chains that nobody had mentioned in the EA approval process, is hard to understand,” the court noted. The IBLA’s decision not to include this was both “arbitrary and capricious.”

The court decision was a key victory for environmentalists. “The Bush administration can’t hand over our most serious sensitive wild lands without properly reviewing the potential environmental consequences and giving the public a say,” said NRDC senior attorney Sharon Buccino. “In this case, the court ultimately recognized that the Interior Department’s action would have caused lasting damage to Utah’s lands.”

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