BLM studying another project near Nine Mile Canyon

A new front opened Thursday in the verbal war over development of the Nine Mile Canyon region of Carbon and Duchesne counties.

Bureau of Land Management officials announced they were releasing an environmental assessment on yet another oil and gas project in the vicinity, and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance is again objecting.

Nine Mile Canyon has one of North America's most extensive concentrations of ancient Indian rock art, which draws tens of thousands of visitors from all over the world. But the area also may have valuable oil and gas resources.

Last week, the SUWA and the Utah Rock Art Research Association, both based in Salt Lake City; the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Wilderness Society, both headquartered in Washington, D.C., and the Sierra Club in San Francisco filed a federal lawsuit to halt seismic testing in the Nine Mile Canyon vicinity.

They faulted the BLM for approving the Stone Cabin 3D geophysical testing project, which seeks to map underground oil and gas reserves using seismic waves. Plaintiffs asserted that the BLM failed to comply with federal laws protecting environmental and cultural resources when it approved the project.

Now the BLM has released a second environmental assessment on another project by the same developer, Denver-based Bill Barrett Corp. The new proposal is called the West Tavaputs Plateau Drilling Program.

BBC wants to drill 12 vertical wells on federal land and 10 on state land. "None of these wells would be in Nine Mile Canyon," says a BLM press release.

However, the area is close to the canyon.

The proposed wells are "all on top of the (Tavaputs) plateau," said Mark A. Mackiewicz of the BLM's Price District office. "There's no drilling of any wells in Nine Mile canyon."

According to a BLM press release, "If conventional wells prove successful, an additional 16 wells may be drilled from existing pad sites using a directional method of drilling."

To reduce sounds and sights discernible to visitors in the Nine Mile Canyon area, the project could also consider removing a compressor station at Water Canyon and moving the facilities to a site recently constructed on private land at the mouth of Dry Canyon.

In addition, a pipeline in Nine Mile Canyon would be replaced. BLM officials said they would ensure the proposed pipeline would blend in with existing sights "as seamless as possible." The pipeline would avoid historical and ancient resources, including standing structures and rock art, the BLM adds.