District Court Denies BLM Sale of Teshekpuk Lake

By Mark Hoerrner

Under the current administration where environmental concerns are taking a back seat to corporate petroleum interests, any victory that preserves America’s natural resources is a landmark victory. On Sept. 25, a U.S. District Court judge halted the planned sale of Teshekpuk Lake for oil and gas leasing. The judge declared that the Bureau of Land Management did not take properly consider the environmental impact of drilling in the National Petroleum Reserve, Alaska (NPRA).

"Having failed to fully consider the cumulative effects of the proposed development in [Northeast planning area of the NPRA] and the previously proposed action in the [Northwest NPRA planning area], Defendants have violated [National Environmental Policy Act] and abused their discretion," Judge James Singleton wrote in his decision.

The Teshekpuk Lake region , representing 600,000 acres of the BLM’s proposed 4.6 million-acre sale, is a hotly contested area by environmentalists because of the environmental significance of the Lake and its immediate surroundings. There are Alaskan native communities that live in the Northern Slope area subsisting off the ecosystem inherent to the lake. The lake is also a key molting ground for hundreds of thousands of migratory birds including the Pacific Black Brant and Greater White Fronted Goose, Huffines said.

"Teshekpuk Lake is one of the largest and most biologically productive lakes on the North Slope of Alaska," said Eleanor Huffines, regional director for the Wilderness Society. "We do not oppose all oil drilling in the NPRA, but some places are too important, both ecologically and culturally, to hand over to the oil companies."

Huffines said that the Society delivered more than 50,000 public comments opposing drilling in the area to representatives of the Dept. of the Interior. These comments included pleas from Alaskan natives, conservationists, scientists and members of the public at large.

Though the sale has been temporarily halted, it can be offered again if the BLM chooses to do so. The U.S. District Court directed the BLM to conduct an environmental assessment of the area.

"It is our firm belief that if they do an actual study as the court directed, they will find that it just wouldn’t be smart to develop this area," Huffines said.

While the Wilderness Society has not conducted a study of the area, the Audubon Society of Alaska, the Nature Conservancy and the National Academy of Sciences have done assessments of the area that show oil and gas drilling impact would produce a significant negative effect on the environmental stability of the Teshekpuk region.

Directly to the east of the area is the Prudhoe Bay Oil Field. It’s a vast 1000-sq.-mile expanse of pipelines, gravel pits, processing plants, industrial complexes that have fragmented the natural area. Prudhoe Bay’s oil prospecting can be seen from space.

The Prudhoe fields and the Trans-Alaskan pipeline have littered the North Slope with more than 400 petrochemical spills annually and those spills will still be evident in the soil for as many as 30 years, according to a study done by Trustees.org (www.trustees.org). Though the Prudhoe Bay site is listed as having a footprint of 12,000 acres, it’s impact is actually gauged at more than 640,000 acres.

Despite agreements past administrations have made with local conservancy organizations, native Alaskan tribes and the state which stated that only about 80 percent of the North Slope area would be open for sale, the current Bush administration has motivated the BLM to act in a "lease it all" mode of operation. Because of the court ruling, the BLM will need to conduct a new assessment of the area, but Huffines is reticent about how much effort the BLM will put into creating an accurate environmental picture of Teshekpuk Lake.

"The science is already there," she said. "The studies have been conducted and truly, all the BLM needs to do is look at the facts. We don’t know how limited the study would be, but we are encouraging them to do a full environmental impact statement. Unfortunately, we are of the opinion that the BLM won’t significantly change their opinion of this area."

It is not clear how long the BLM will take to study the area, and repeated calls to the BLM were not returned.