Diné Citizens Against Ruining Our Environment v. Zinke

On April 23, 2018, the federal district court for the District of New Mexico dismissed all claims in a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM’s) approval of more than 300 applications for permit to drill (APDs) wells in the Mancos Shale in the San Juan Basin. The court found that that BLM had not violated either the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) or the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA). (The NHPA holding reversed the court’s initial conclusion in a March 31 order that BLM had violated NHPA for some wells for which the areas of potential effect contained historic sites.) With respect to NEPA, the court found that BLM had “properly tiered” its environmental assessments (EAs) for the APDs to a resource management plan and environmental impact statement from 2003 and had determined that new developments since 2003 in horizontal drilling and fracking technology would not have significant environmental effects. The court noted, for instance, that an EA had indicated that carbon dioxide emissions from a horizontal well would represent only a 0.0008% increase in New Mexico carbon dioxide emissions.

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