What Lies Beneath

The Nature Conservancy purchased the 97,000-acre Baca Ranch and two 14,000-foot peaks in southern Colorado. (AP Photo/Nature Conservancy, HO)

During the long era of the Bush administration, environmental legislation has been repeatedly steamrolled and the Alaska Wildlife Refuge has been pegged as an entrepreneurial oil drilling opportunity. But during that same period, Colorado has established one of the largest refuges in the federal refuge system.

In 2003, The Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit organiztion, purchased approximately 92,500 acres of private land in the San Luis Valley and established the Baca National Wildlife Refuge. The $33 million project was designed to “restore, enhance, and maintain wetland, upland, riparian, and other habitats for wildlife, plants, and fish species that are native to the San Luis Valley.” The refuge, managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), contains the largest and most diverse assemblage of wetlands in all of Colorado. The refuge is next door to the town of Crestone and Colorado College’s Baca campus.

But the Baca Refuge’s ability to provide protection for wildlife is being threatened by an antiquated nineteenth century mining law that is still on the books. The legislation separates land into “surface” and “subsurface” parcels, and oftentimes those who own the surface land do not own the rights to the minerals underneath. In the case of the Baca Refuge, the surface is federal land, while the minerals are owned by oil companies. When the refuge was formed, there was an attempt to buy out the mineral rights largely held by Lexam Energy Exploration, 25 percent of which is owned by oil giant Conoco. But the Nature Conservancy didn’t buy out Lexam, and, at the time, believed the energy company might leave the refuge alone. Today the area is under serious threat of exploratory drilling, which calls into question the meaning of the land’s Wildlife Refuge status.

The National Wildlife Refuge system does not usually acquire land where the mineral rights are severed, according to Michael Blenden, manager of the Baca Refuge for the USFWS. “This was a large conservation effort having the primary goal of protecting ground water in the San Luis Valley from out of basin exportation,” Blenden said. “Protracting the acquisition negotiations over the mineral rights question was likely to result in the whole deal falling through"—and that would have represented a greater threat to the Valley, Blenden argued.

The split ownership of the land is now creating a serious conflict of interest. Canadian-owned Lexam has plans for two exploratory wells, extending 14,000 feet into the ground. The goal of the project is to find out what is underneath the San Luis Valley, in the hopes that there is a large amount of untapped oil waiting to be extracted.

This is a new kind of operation for Lexam, a wildcat oil company. Lexam’s own consulting geologists report that the company has never taken on a project like this, where the drilling would be extremely deep. Deeper drilling poses higher risks, as it requires breaking through multiple layers of aquifer and toxic chemicals to fracture the earth.

Lexam received a state issued permit from the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission that would allow drilling in the refuge. Although the company already has a permit, it is not allowed to drill until the USFWS approves the plan. In January, the USFWS released an initial environmental assessment. Jay Slack, regional director of the USFWS, is responsible for deciding whether a full Environmental Impacts Report (EIS) will be required before drilling may be approved. Numerous environmental and community organizations, both local and regional, have voiced their objection to the drilling and are pushing for the EIS that would determine the extent of the destruction 14,000-foot wells could cause. The organizations claim that such drilling would create serious hydro-geological damage and potentially irrevocable disruption to the plants and wildlife in the refuge.

The USFWS, as a part of the department of interior, is caught between environmental welfare and the federal government’s push for speedy domestic oil extraction. “This is a constitutional issue that transcends administrations and is exactly why there are a significant number of national wildlife refuges and national parks that have oil and gas activity. This has been occurring for decades,” Blenden said.

The proposed drilling will require stadium lights and noisy diesel engines that will seriously disturb wildlife and the appeal of Colorado College’s Baca campus. This has caused Colorado College professors and students to get involved in the debate. The college’s law firm submitted formal comments to the Fish and Wildlife Service during the initial scoping period last September, discouraging drilling and encouraging a full EIS.

Oil is already drilled all over Colorado, but Baca is different. A wildlife refuge shouldn’t double as an oil drilling site. If Lexam continues speculating, then the land is effectively unprotected and its "refuge" status is meaningless. It is impossible to separate land from the rock beneath it.

Rachel DeWitt is a senior at Colorado College. An earlier version of this article appeared in the Cipher, part of the Campus Publications Network.

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