Judge pulls plug on area fracking — for now

In a victory for conservation groups, a federal judge on Thursday rejected a government finding that no significant environmental impact would occur if hydraulic fracturing were used in drilling for oil or gas on 13 leased parcels in the Four Corners area.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management proposed hydraulic fracturing and approved the lease sale in October 2015.

But Senior U.S. District Court Judge M. Christina Armijo set aside the leases on about 20,000 acres and sent the issue back to the BLM “for further analysis and action.”

Hydraulic fracturing, known commonly as fracking, injects large amounts of high-pressure water and chemicals into underground shale deposits. This process fractures the deposits to extract oil and gas.

Five environmental groups sued, saying the BLM failed to provide convincing reasons to justify its decision to forego preparation of an environmental impact statement. The groups included Wild-Earth Guardians of Santa Fe and Amigos Bravos of Taos.

Armijo did not address those arguments, which she said could become moot based on any revised analysis by the BLM. The leases are in Santa Fe National Forest, which regulates the surface while the BLM regulates the subsurface.

The BLM stated that no drinking water sources were on or near the parcels, and there have been “no verified instances of hydraulic fracturing causing adverse effects to groundwater in the San Juan Basin.”

But the plaintiffs argued that the BLM failed to take a close look at effects on groundwater quality.

Kyle Tisdel, an attorney with the Taos-based Western Environmental Law Center, called the decision “a precedent-setting win.”

A spokesman in the BLM’s Farmington field office could not be reached for comment. The agency could appeal the judge’s ruling.

Residents and organizations submitted 100 letters opposing the lease sale. They alleged that federal agencies were erroneously relying on a 15-year-old BLM resource management plan to “rush to frack Mancos Shale without proper environmental analysis,” the environmental groups said in a statement.