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A Fragmented Divide? Simulating Gas Development in the Thompson Divide

Friday, May 3, 2013 8:10

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Top: Aerial photo taken October 2012 of the Yank Creek watershed in the Thompson Divide, a wilderness area located in western Colorado. Credit: Jane Pargiter – EcoFlight

Bottom: SkyTruth simulation of the same area of the Thompson Divide overlain with simulated five-acre well pads and new service roads (in white). To see more views of our simulation, click here.

Recently, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) announced they would temporarily suspend 25 oil and gas leases in the Thompson Divide, a wilderness area covering 221,500 acres of public land in western Colorado. Because the lease holders did not diligently develop these leases over the past decade and are running out of time, they’ve asked BLM for an extension. While this decision paused the clock on drilling for natural gas in this rugged portion of the White River National Forest, our friends at the Wilderness Workshop and Thompson Divide Coalition were pressing for BLM to allow the leases to expire this year.

The Lake Ridge unit of the Thompson Divide is a wilderness-quality area reaching from the Sunlight Ski Area in the north to McClure Pass in the south. It is
heavily forested, spans five watersheds, and provides valuable habitat for lynx, mountain lion, bear, moose, and elk. Recreation, grazing,
hunting and fishing in the area brings $30 million a year to Colorado’s economy. However, developing gas in this region would require heavy-duty horizontal drilling andhydraulic fracturing (fracking). Half of the leases are in roadless areas, meaning many new roads would be built.

Looking southwest over our simulation of drilling in the Lake Ridge Unit of Thompson Divide from north of the Sunlight Ski Area. To see more views of our simulation, click here.

Surface disturbance, habitat fragmentation, persistent noise, air pollution, heavy truck traffic, and industrial accidents are some of the issues the U.S. Forest Service will have to consider in their environmental assessment of the impact that drilling will have on this public land. To help visualize what this unconventional gas development could look like, we traced out access roads and 132 five-acre well pads onto Google Earth imagery of the Lake Ridge Unit west of Carbondale.

Looking north over the Thompson Divide with Carbondale to the northeast. To see more views of our simulation, click here.

While gas wells, roads, pipelines, compressor stations and other infrastructure could fragment the wilderness of the Thompson Divide, a widerange of stakeholders and citizen groups have joined together out of concern for this valuable resource. Local citizens have united with the goal of preserving the pristine and relatively undeveloped nature of the Thompson Divide wilderness, and we hope our simulation will help put in perspective what the future could look like if the leases are developed when BLM’s suspension ends on April 1, 2014.

Watch the video below to take an aerial tour of Thompson Divide as it looks today.

A Divide United from Peter McBride on Vimeo.

2013-05-03 08:02:25

Source: http://blog.skytruth.org/2013/05/thompson-divide-drilling-simulation.html

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