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Volume 6, Number 7 | March 27, 2014
Judge Chris Butler (left) keeps score as Jon Lipp completes his last rep in the “row” during a CrossFit regional qualifying round at Sopris CrossFit last week. Lipp is a trainer and co-owner at Sopris CrossFit. For more information, please turn to page 6. Photo by Jane Bachrach
Wilderness Workshop analyzing proposed BLM plan Comment deadline April 21 Sopris Sun Staff Report
T
he Carbondale-based Wilderness Workshop is busy analyzing a proposed BLM management plan released on March 21 that includes Red Hill, the Crown and parts of Thompson Divide. “This (plan) is a biggie,” said Wilder-
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ness Workshop spokesman Dave Reed. “It’s the blueprint for how over 500,000 acres of BLM lands in Garfield, Pitkin and Eagle counties will be managed for the next 20-plus years.” The Bureau of Land Management’s proposed plan also covers federal land in Grand, Jackson, Routt, Summit and Larimer counties. “Our proposed Resource Management Plan for the Kremmling Field Office is based largely on the comments we received from the public and our State and local cooperating agencies when we put our Draft Plan out for
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comment in 2011,” said BLM spokeswoman Stephanie Odell in a press release. “We believe the proposed plan provides a balanced approach to managing the public’s land and resources … for the next two decades.” The public comment deadline is April 21. A final decision is expected late this year. Reed and others at Wilderness Workshop have been plowing through the proposed plan since receiving it last week but an initial observation includes: Almost 29,000 acres will be closed to oil and gas leasing, and another 95,000 acres will only be allowed to
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be leased with stipulations that the surface can't be disturbed, but the BLM is projecting another 5,300 oil and gas wells will be drilled on its lands in the next 20 years, mostly west of the Thompson Divide (located west of Carbondale). According to a BLM website, of the approximately 12,000 comments received during the previous review process, the top concern was recreation and visitor services (13 percent), followed by “alternatives” and oil/gas leases (11 percent). Climate change concerns ranked near the bottom with 0.1 percent.
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