Environmental groups last year won a case that overturned oil and gas lease sales in Montana from 2017 and 2018. Now they’re following up with a lawsuit against sales from 2019 and 2020.
The new lawsuit covers nearly 60,000 acres of land rights.
A handful of advocacy groups including the Montana Environmental Information Center and the Waterkeeper Alliance are asking A Montana federal district court in Great Falls to overturn 112 different lease parcels in central and eastern Montana and North Dakota.
The filing follows a ruling last year in which a judge found the Bureau of Land Management violated the National Environmental Protection Act by failing to analyze environmental impacts for leases from 2017 and 2018.
Attorney Melissa Hornbein with Western Environmental Law Center represents the groups and says her clients would be satisfied with either a similar ruling or a change of tact under the new Biden Administration.
“Candidate Biden when he was campaigning made it very clear and the incoming administration has as well that they consider climate change to be a priority and that they have promised a moratorium on new oil and gas leasing on federal land," Hornbein said.
She says the lease sales named in this lawsuit violate NEPA and fail to consider effects on climate change and groundwater quality.
Named as defendants are the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, Secretary of the United States Department of the Interior David Bernhardt and Montana Bureau of Land Management Deputy State Director of Energy, Minerals & Realty Donato Judice.
BLM Montana-Dakotas spokesperson Al Nash agrees that the majority of the lease sales named in this latest lawsuit fail to take comments from the district court judge’s 2020 ruling into consideration.
“We went forward with decisions on those lease sales with law, regulation, policy and in accordance with judicial decisions that were in affect at the time that we held the lease sales," Nash said.
He says the September 2020 sale was issued after the judge’s 2020 ruling and does follow NEPA.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management declined to comment and the U.S. Department of the Interior did not reply to YPR’s request for comment by this story’s deadline.
