January 15, 2020 - Yesterday, the Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity, Central California Environmental Justice Network, Los Padres Forest Watch, Natural Resources Defense Council, the Wilderness Society, Patagonia, and National Parks Conservation Association brought suit challenging the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's resource management plan that would open up 1.2 million acres of federal mineral estate across eight counties in California's southern Central Coast and Central Valley regions to oil and gas leasing. The plan for BLM's Bakersfield field office opens a vast portion of California to new federal oil and gas leasing that had been under an effective moratorium on new leasing as a result of lawsuits brought in 2011 and 2014 by the Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity, and Los Padres Forest Watch.
The Bakersfield office covers one of the largest oil and gas producing regions in the country: eight of the 20 largest oilfields in the lower 48 states are located in Kern County and approximately 200 new wells are drilled in the planning area every year. Oil and gas production harms communities and the environment by releasing air pollutants including nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter and volatile organic compounds, as well as greenhouse gases. In part as a result of this oil and gas development, the region also has some of the nation’s worst air quality, including being classified as an “extreme” nonattainment area for ozone under the federal Clean Air Act. These impacts are most severely felt by the local community, which has a population with higher proportions of Hispanic and black persons than the state average and a higher proportion of persons living below the poverty line.
The Club and its allies' lawsuit challenges the resource management plan under the National Environmental Policy Act. BLM violated the law by failing to take a “hard look” at the adverse environmental impacts of its proposed action by understating both the number of wells that will likely be fracked and the impacts of each fracked well. Additionally, BLM failed to meaningfully respond to public comments. Despite detailed and technical comments filed by the Club and others, BLM provided only a general boilerplate dismissal that failed to acknowledge and address the substance of the Club’s and our allies’ comments.
BLM's decision to reopen federal lands in California to oil and gas leasing is largely opposed by the public. In fact, BLM received over 90,000 public comments opposing new oil and gas leasing. If successful, the Club's lawsuit will force BLM to thoroughly disclose and consider the environmental impacts of fracking and other forms of oil and gas development, hopefully leading to a decision to eliminate or strongly restrict new leasing in California.