U.S. District Judge Charles Lovell ruled March 7 that industry groups challenging the Forest Service's 1998 decision did not have standing to bring their action.
The Rocky Mountain Oil and Gas Association filed the lawsuit in 1998, and the Independent Petroleum Association of America and Mountain States Legal Foundation intervened. RMGAA has since broken up into separate state organizations and into another group called Public Lands Advocacy, located in Denver.
Claire Moseley, executive director of Public Lands Advocacy, was surprised by the decision. "I don't see how a court could find that an industry group has no standing on this issue," she said.
The Forest Service's final Environmental Impact Statement on the oil and gas leasing proposal had found that energy production could be accomplished without causing environmental harm. But the service relied heavily on public comments opposing the proposal, deciding that oil and gas development would harm the area's "value of place."
The judge saw nothing wrong with that line of reasoning, although he noted that the service justified its decision in other ways. The Department of Energy, for example, had projected that combined domestic and important natural gas supplies are expected to keep pace with demand for the next 15-20 years, he said--a fact that Moseley said is disputed by DOE's own figures.
"Plaintiffs' arguments that the `value of place' criterion was treated inconsistently in the FEIS as opposed to the [Record of Decision] and that `value of place' is not a valid management criterion boils down to semantics, and are disingenuous at best," Lovell said in his opinion.
"From the beginning of the scoping process in 1994, the public has been overwhelmingly concerned with the value of the place, i.e., the Rocky Mountain Division of the Lewis and Clark National Forest," the judge said. "The `value of place' criterion is also inextricably part of recreation and tourism criteria."
Most of the people who commented on the draft EIS "did not want even the possibility of oil and gas technology spoiling the pristine scenery and diverse resources of the Rocky Mountain division," Lovell said. Environmental groups who intervened on the side of the government were pleased with the decision.
"The public overwhelmingly supports keeping the Rocky Mountain Front as it is today--a wild place, with healthy wildlife and significant cultural values," said Dennis Tighe, president of the Montana Wilderness Association. "The public and the Forest Service made it crystal clear that this area is more valuable as a wildland than as an industrial natural gas field."
Moseley, however, said many of the people who commented were not from the area and had no plans to ever visit it. "Obviously public sentiment has a role in the decision-making process, but it should not be weighed more heavily than anything else," she said.
Moseley said she thought the judge "missed the point." NEPA "is intended to allow the agency to make an informed decision," she said. "If it's informed, it should be made based on the findings in the analysis."
But Jim Angell, a lawyer with Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund who represented environmental and outfitters' groups, said, "The mere fact that you could put in a natural gas well without fouling the air or water doesn't mean it makes no difference to the experience." To Angell, the judge's decision means that the public "can have a legitimate voice" in these types of land management decisions.
The industry groups have not decided whether to appeal the decision, which despite the myriad issues involved, is only 7 pages long. Lovell issued it March 7, three weeks after oral arguments were held--a very quick turnaround.