PINEDALE, Wyo. - Five years into their energy boom, this little town nestled against the Wind River mountains and the surrounding Sublette County are still trying to cope with what it has wrought.

The discovery of vast natural gas deposits on the nearby Pinedale Anticline and Jonah Gas Field has delivered unprecedented riches, so many that political leaders struggle over how to spend the windfall. But the gas find is so huge and the pace of developing it so relentless that playing catch-up with infrastructure and services has become the primary pastime.

It may prove a cautionary tale for Utah residents of the Uintah Basin now in the midst of their own surge of energy development.

"We're constantly in a reactive mode," said Ward Wise, Pinedale's former city manager. "This is a national issue, but it's happening right in our backyard. We need to strike a better balance. Otherwise we run the risk of fracturing our communities."

On that much, just about everybody agrees. Traffic, a significant portion of which now consists of gas company trucks, is overwhelming Sublette's rural roads. New subdivisions are screaming for sewers, curbs and gutters. Classrooms expand and contract with the rhythms of drilling season, which extends from spring to fall.

"Our infrastructure to deal with this is nonexistent right now," said Sublette County Commissioner John Linn. "Fortunately, we have the resources to address it."

That is the unquestioned upside to the Sublette boom. Home to nearly 9,000 gas well sites, with another 3,000 likely on the way in the Jonah Field, a county already awash in energy-generated tax revenue will soon reap even more.

Consider: Sublette's countywide tax valuation was just over $379 million in 1999. Last year it passed the $2 billion mark, and the county of nearly 7,000 residents collected almost $121 million in taxes.

"If we handle it right, we're going to be able to do a lot of good things," said Pinedale Mayor Rose Skinner, citing projections that the gas supply in Sublette could stretch out for 50 years.

Flush with cash, the county has remodeled its courthouse. It has built a hockey rink; a senior citizens center. And school and county officials are debating whether to carpet the high school football field with artificial turf.

But Sublette's energy boom also has brought on other issues that can't necessarily be fixed with money.

County and city officials who previously had little use for zoning regulations have had to develop them in a hurry, with residential and commercial development threatening to sprawl out of control. Rising real estate prices have put the pinch on those seeking affordable homes. And the sheer number of gas field employees has increased pressure on county and city service providers, particularly law enforcement and health care.

"If I'm five years behind Pinedale, like in Utah, I'm going to find out who owns those gas leases, then I'm going to go ask what the impacts of this are going to be. I'm going to pin them down on that, then plan accordingly," said Wise.

Sublette County crime, for instance, is on the climb, with an increased number of DUIs, batteries and drug-related arrests. Methamphetamine, the narcotic of choice for those working 12-hour shifts and 14-consecutive-day stints in the gas fields, has become a problem, to the extent that the energy companies have now cracked down with more frequent drug testing.

"So many of the people we see are employed out there [in the gas fields], but then again, so many people in the county are now employed by the energy companies," said Marilyn Filkins, an assistant county attorney.

That spotlights another thorny issue: The gas companies pay so well - $25-$40 an hour - that other Sublette businesses struggle to hang on to employees. The county's unemployment rate is the second-lowest in the nation.

Wise and others fault the Bureau of Land Management for failing to anticipate the impacts of approving so many well permits in such a relatively compressed time period. The current boom actually began in 1999 under the Clinton administration, but took flight under the relaxed leasing and permitting rules of the Bush administration and has only intensified as gas prices have increased.

"When I got here [in 1998], we issued 75 drilling permits. This past year it was 400," said Prill Mecham, regional supervisor for the BLM's Pinedale Field Office.

The extent of energy development in Sublette County is not readily apparent. The Pinedale Anticline and Jonah Field lie southeast of Pinedale, well out of sight from the area's major highways. But seen from the air, "it looks like the subdivision from hell," said Randy Udall, director of the Aspen, Colo.-based Community Office for Resource Efficiency.

Indeed, the environmental challenges are the most emotionally charged of all.

"We're retired and we spend our time playing, so things like outdoor recreation are very important to us," said Bob Bennett, who with his wife transplanted here from California. "We don't want to see what happened in California happen here. But I know there are no easy answers." jbaird@sltrib.com