Oil companies eyeing drill sites in Los Padres National Forest will have to take their business elsewhere, following a move by the U.S. Forest Service to indefinitely suspend its leasing plan for new oil drilling in Los Padres.
After a decade of litigation and pressure from environmental groups, the Forest Service is starting from scratch on its environmental impact review of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and oil drilling in Los Padres. Until the review is finished—which may take years—the 52,000 acres of the forest previously zoned for oil and gas development are off the table.
For Jeff Kuyper, executive director of Los Padres ForestWatch, the suspended lease marks a victory in a battle fought by the environmental organization since its formation in 2004.
“We’re thrilled that the Forest Service has indefinitely hit the ‘pause’ button on their misguided plan to expand oil drilling in the forest,” Kuyper told the Sun.
The plan in question came about in 2005, after federal agencies concluded that oil development wouldn’t significantly impact the forest environment, namely endangered species including the California condor.
But the past decade has brought a wealth of new research on the effects of oil drilling and fracking, which is the reason environmental groups—including ForestWatch, the Center for Biological Diversity, and Defenders of Wildlife—legally challenged the Forest Service’s oil drilling plans and demanded a new environmental impact review.
Ileene Anderson, senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity, said the groups were especially concerned about fracking. Fracking involves pumping fluid deep into the ground at a high enough pressure to fracture surrounding rocks, allowing gas and oil to flow through the cracks. Opponents of the practice say it could be deeply harmful to the environment, and especially to water quality.
Kuyper said the Forest Service’s initial environmental analysis “didn’t evaluate for one second” the potential environmental impacts of fracking, and he expects the new review to find more risks associated with it.
“Our knowledge of fracking is still evolving,” Kuyper said, “but we do know a lot more now about what the potential impacts of fracking are on groundwater contamination, air pollution, its contribution to climate change, pollution of creeks and rivers—all of these things will have to be analyzed as part of this new process.”
Restarting an environmental review poses a daunting task for a federal agency, to say the least. The Forest Service will have to release a draft environmental impact statement, collect public comments, and hold a public hearing on it. The agency will then produce a final draft of the impact statement, and from there re-evaluate its plan for further oil development in Los Padres.
“Whether that will take one year or five years or 10 years or more, that remains to be seen,” Kuyper said. “For now, it’s reassuring to see the Forest Service making the right decision and placing the drilling expansion plan on indefinite hold.”
The hold could mean expanded protection for the California condor, as well. Back in September, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released its latest biological opinion on how the Los Padres oil development plan could potentially impact wildlife. The opinion said that despite the likely loss of up to two non-breeding condors, the oil development plan did a good enough job of mitigating effects on the population at large.
In response to the opinion, the environmental groups already suing the Forest Service over its oil leasing plans revamped the decade-old litigation to also demand a new biological opinion. As Kuyper told the Sun in a previous interview, the loss of two condors would be too many.
“It adds up to a lot of condors,” he said. “There’s a cumulative impact, and we’re concerned that because the population of condors is so low already—there’s about 200 condors in the wild in California—harm to a single condor is extremely significant and should be avoided at all costs.”
Forest Service Public Affairs Officer Andrew Madsen told the Sun that the agency stood by its biological opinion. However, in light of the agency’s change of heart toward the plan’s environmental impact review, the opinion has now been withdrawn.
After the Forest Service completes a new environmental impact statement, Fish and Wildlife will issue a new biological opinion on how new oil drilling might impact forest wildlife.
“What this new process means for condors is hopefully we’ll see the agencies rely on a more robust environmental review, and we’ll see stronger science backing up whatever decision is made,” Kuyper said. “Ultimately, that’s what’s going to make this decision hold water and stand up to scrutiny: Is it based on the best science out there?”
The environmental groups’ litigation will be tabled until the Forest Service completes its review, and potentially thrown out depending on how the review goes, Kuyper said.
“When you’re talking about oil drilling or fracking in a national forest, it’s important that the analysis is done right,” he said. “These are very ecologically sensitive areas, and they’re important for our communities’ water supplies. We want to make sure that all measures are taken to reduce impacts, or avoid them entirely.”
Staff Writer Brenna Swanston can be reached at bswanston@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Dec 15-22, 2016.
