Field Notes

Field Notes: October updates from the Wyoming Outdoor Council

Posted on by Alan Rogers
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MONETA DIVIDE

The Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality recently issued a final wastewater discharge permit for the Moneta Divide oil and gas field. In response to environmental concerns and strong public opposition, the permit rejects Aethon Energy’s request to increase (by almost 400 percent) the amount of contaminated water it discharges into tributaries of Boysen Reservoir, and includes stronger pollution controls. Engaged citizens like you were crucial to guiding this decision: thank you! 

This new permit is still not without flaws, however. It gives Aethon four years to come into compliance with the new standards despite ongoing violations of the previous, more lenient permit. The Outdoor Council will continue to advocate for an accelerated compliance schedule. 

Aethon is now seeking to inject some of its contaminated water into the Madison formation, a drinking water quality aquifer protected under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The Wyoming Oil and Gas Commission will hold a hearing November 10 to consider this proposal. We’re asking Outdoor Council members to contact the commission and ask them to protect our drinking water by denying Aethon’s request.


TETON COUNTY STATE LANDS

During the 2020 session, the Wyoming Legislature passed a bill soliciting proposals for parcels of state land in Teton County. The Outdoor Council has collaborated with several partner organizations to submit recommendations on these parcels to the Office of State Lands and Investments. 

Most of the parcels in question are adjacent to federal public lands — primarily Grand Teton National Park and Bridger-Teton National Forest. We support selling these parcels to the federal agency in question to keep them open to the public and free from development, while also generating revenue for the state. For parcels surrounded by private land we recommended a mix of solutions including conservation easement, transfer to the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission to manage as wildlife habitat, and private development adhering to the Teton County Comprehensive Plan. 

Because these land transfers could take years to implement, we also proposed uses of these lands that could produce revenue for the state in the short term. These include conservation leasing, leases for recreation or tourism, and maintaining existing cattle grazing.

 

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Field Notes: September updates from the Wyoming Outdoor Council

Posted on by Alan Rogers
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FROM THE LEGISLATURE: Without any public disclosure that the topic would be discussed, and after public comment had closed, a Wyoming legislative committee decided September 11 to once again consider legislation that could effectively kill the state’s rooftop solar industry by changing our net metering law. Why does this sound vague? Because the committee never defined the content of the bill nor had a draft bill on the agenda. We’ll be discussing this topic at our next Conservation Cafeteria session, 12 p.m. Wednesday, October 7 on Zoom. Watch for an upcoming email to register.


LEASING PAUSED IN GROUSE HABITAT: The Bureau of Land Management has deferred all parcels in Greater sage-grouse habitat management areas from Wyoming’s upcoming oil and gas lease sale. This came in response to a federal court ruling early this summer that determined the BLM had failed to prioritize leasing outside core habitat as required by 2015 land management plan revisions. The Wyoming Outdoor Council formally protested the September sale, which originally included all parcels from a postponed June sale and more than 330,000 acres of sage-grouse habitat.

Also in the past weeks, Outdoor Council staff submitted a protest of a Converse County oil and gas project that has the potential to destroy sage-grouse leks and harm hawk, falcon, and owl populations.


TETON COUNTY WATER QUALITY: In the continued effort to protect drinking water in Jackson Hole, the Outdoor Council took several steps in recent weeks to guide county officials toward more effective regulations. First, we submitted detailed recommendations on water quality protections that should be included in Teton County’s Comprehensive Plan, which is currently being updated. These include modernized regulations for small wastewater facilities, requiring septic system inspections when property is bought and sold, providing incentives for homeowners to connect to existing sewer lines, creating a management plan to address the high levels of recreational use on rivers and lakes, and establishing a water quality database. We have also proposed a new rule that would require the Teton County Public Health Department to notify the public when elevated levels of nitrates are detected in any of the county’s 114 public water systems, investigate the source of the pollution, and require remedial action if necessary.

 

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Field Notes: August updates from the Wyoming Outdoor Council

Posted on by Alan Rogers

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WASTEWATER PLANNING: The Teton County Commissioners have approved funding to begin crafting a comprehensive wastewater management plan. The Wyoming Outdoor Council advocated for this important step toward addressing nitrate pollution in the area’s groundwater and our partner organization Protect Our Water Jackson Hole is contributing half the cost of the planning effort, up to $250,000.

TETON COUNTY CREEKS: The Teton County Board of Health has placed signs at public access points along Fish and Flat creeks, warning tubers and anglers about high levels of harmful bacteria in the water. The Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality listed all of Fish Creek and a portion of Flat Creek as “impaired” by E. coli earlier this year, meaning the water isn’t considered safe for swimming. The Outdoor Council is working toward solutions to address this dangerous condition.

CONVERSE COUNTY OIL AND GAS PROJECT: We are preparing to file a protest of the final environmental impact statement for a 5,000 well oil and gas project in Converse County and related amendments to a federal land use plan. If approved, the alternative selected by the Bureau of Land Management would waive existing protections for hawks and falcons, and potentially wipe out dozens of sage-grouse leks.

ENERGY TRANSITION: We recently submitted comments to the Wyoming Public Service Commission on Rocky Mountain Power’s Integrated Resource Plan, which seeks to add new wind and solar energy generation in Wyoming and other Western states as coal-fired plants are retired over the coming years. We urged the PSC to work with Rocky Mountain Power to prepare for changes to the energy economy and develop transition plans for affected coal workers and communities.

 

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