GREEN RIVER — The Sweetwater County commissioners unanimously approved a letter the county will send to the Bureau of Land Management regarding the Rock Springs Resource Management Plan review and revision.
“This is in response to the exciting news of an executive order by President Trump, 14156, which was declaring a national energy emergency, and through another executive order, unleashing American energy,” Eric Bingham, land use director for Sweetwater County told the county commissioners Tuesday morning.
Bingham said the new Secretary of the Interior, Doug Burgum, signed a series of secretary orders to comply with Trump’s executive orders. Secretary Order 3418 mentions the Rock Springs RMP and calls for the removal of impediments to development.
“Kind of the nickname ‘drill baby drill,’ as you’ve heard, that through these executive orders regulatory barriers are reduced,” Bingham said.
Bingham said some of the county’s biggest issues with the resource management plan involve development barriers, which he said include special designations, right-of-way exclusions, trail corridors, and “arbitrary and capricious distances established in that document.”
Following the order, the Department of the Interior is tasked with creating a process to review the plan.
Bingham said the letter also examines the biggest issues the county listed during its protest period, such as the numerous special designations and the lack of monitoring, along with inconsistent right-of-way designations. Bingham said the BLM didn’t address the comments the county submitted.
Bingham said one way the RMP could be re-examined is through a resource plan amendment. He said that happened with sage grouse when Trump was elected to his first term in 2016. The second process would revise the entire RMP, which could take much longer than an amendment, though the revision impacts the entire plan and not only a segment of the RMP the way an amendment would. A third process would be through litigation and a stipulated agreement, though Bingham said there are drawbacks to that option.
Commissioner Taylor Jones said Alternative C, the third of four initially-proposed management alternatives that focused on development, was supported by letters he received from one of the area’s trona mines and the Petroleum Association of Wyoming.
