Without the EPA putting the brakes on expansion of natural gas drilling, the more than 10,000 petroglyphs and ruins in the canyon were headed for almost certain irreparable damage or destruction from dust and chemicals kicked up by trucks and machinery.
Taking an action that is rare for the drilling-friendly Bush administration, the EPA - essentially doing its job - last week put a stop to further energy development on the West Tavaputs Plateau, which includes the canyon, until a more accurate environmental impact study is completed.
The Bureau of Land Management's study of the Bill Barrett Corp. project's effect on air quality is inadequate, the EPA ruled. Specifically, the agency took exception to the study's finding that the drilling of hundreds of new wells would cause only very small increases in ground-level ozone. That finding "is not technically defensible," the EPA wrote.
About 100 wells exist now on the plateau, requiring big rigs to make hundreds of trips up and down the narrow dirt road through the canyon. The dust and corrosive chemicals used to keep it under control are damaging the ancient Puebloan rock art.
Barrett's plan to drill more than 800 additional wells on 138,000 acres, and increase the canyon traffic accordingly, would almost certainly doom the irreplaceable cultural treasures.
Daniel B. Kuhn, a freight planner for the Utah Department of Transportation, prepared a report in 2006 on highway freight traffic associated with development of oil and gas wells in the Uinta Basin. Kuhn warned that construction and drilling, as well as maintenance and removal of drill rigs, create a need for hundreds to more than a thousand trips a day, involving large semi-trailer trucks, longer combination vehicles and oversize load-carrying trucks.
Kuhn estimates that between 375 and 1,375 truckloads of material, supplies and equipment are needed to establish each new well.
The gravel road through Nine Mile Canyon was not built for that kind of traffic, and the fragile rock art cannot survive the dust and chemical clouds it creates. The EPA must continue to monitor this project, protect the sites and refuse to knuckle under to the pressure of big developers.
