A federal judge has decided the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance will be allowed to defend its own interests in a lawsuit filed by three oil companies and three Utah counties over a hotly disputed 2008 oil and gas lease sale in Salt Lake City.
U.S. District Judge Dee Benson ruled Wednesday that SUWA may intervene as a defendant in lawsuits, now consolidated, which the companies and Uintah, Carbon and Duchesne counties filed in May against Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and the Utah office of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.
The suit seeks to force Salazar to issue leases on 77 bid parcels still at issue in a case SUWA brought against Interior in 2008. SUWA successfully argued before Benson that the federal government therefore could not adequately defend the group's interests.
Wednesday's ruling cannot be appealed. Calls to the attorneys representing the plaintiffs were not returned.
SUWA staff attorney Dave Garbett commended the ruling.
"We intend to vigorously defend Secretary Salazar's decision," he said, "because sensitive and spectacular lands were put at risk."
The 2009 suit claims Salazar broke the law when he set aside the 77 leases after a federal judge issued an ongoing restraining order, which bars the Interior Department from finalizing the sales.
The counties, along with Impact Energy Resources of Colorado, Peak Royalty of Utah and Questar Exploration and Development of Texas, alleged the BLM had to issue the leases within 60 days of the auction.
The Dec. 19, 2008, auction already was in federal court that very day because SUWA and several other conservation groups had sued to stop it. Ultimately, the groups successfully argued the BLM didn't properly follow environmental law when setting up the sale of 77 parcels on 103,000 acres of public land near Arches and Canyonlands national parks, Dinosaur National Monument and Nine Mile Canyon.
Soon after it commenced, the auction fell into disarray when then-University of Utah student Tim DeChristopher won 14 bids with no intention of paying for them as a protest against Bush administration drilling policies.
