Your editorial ("Tar sands extraction unproven and risky," July 3) maligning U.S. Oil Sands' project in the East Tavaputs Plateau provides anything but a balanced view of the company's project and of the approvals granted by Utah regulatory agencies.
In addition to receiving approvals for large mining operations from the Utah Division of Oil Gas and Mining, U.S. Oil Sands has received a ground water discharge permit from the Utah Division of Water Quality for its operations. That permit was appealed by the same environmental group that is opposing the UDOGM's decision to approve U.S. Oil Sands' Notice of Intention to expand its currently DOGM-approved large mining operation. The appeal of the UDWQ's decision was rejected and the permit upheld following a hearing before an administrative law judge. The judge's ruling and the transcripts of the hearing are a matter of public record. University of Utah Geology Professor Bill Johnson was an expert for the appellant in the ground water discharge permit appeal and I was an expert for U.S. Oil Sands in that matter.
The staff in the Ground Water Section of UDWQ are highly qualified hydrogeologists, engineers and environmental scientists. UDWQ's authority in effect supersedes, by statute and rule, that of UDOGM as regards ground water protection. Accordingly, UDOGM relies to a substantial degree upon the interpretations and decisions of UDWQ in the assessment of impacts to ground water.
Each agency's regulatory program is bound by the state statutes and implementing regulations that guide those programs. While no permitting program is perfect, rest assured that neither agency would let pass "trickery" on the part of any applicant. As a past two-term member of the Utah Board of Oil Gas and Mining and as a geoscientist who has prepared numerous permit applications on behalf of clients for both agencies, I will stake my personal integrity and reputation on that statement.
U.S. Oil Sands is a former client of mine. I have known and worked with their management for more than seven years and served as a consultant to them for five of those years until the company hired their own Utah-based engineering and environmental staff. Having been in the environmental consulting business for 30 years, I have encountered many mining companies and worked as a consultant in permitting for many of them. Over those years I have never known a management team with better professionalism, integrity and capability than that of U.S. Oil Sands — regardless of company size. They have developed a brand new extraction technology designed to be as environmentally benign as they could make it. The company has water rights for the relatively modest amount of water to be used in its operations, most of which will be used for non-process-related activities such as dust control. This water comes from a well completed in the only identified water supply aquifer in the area at a depth of 2,000 feet.
The USOS team, including its consultants, working closely with the technical staffs of two state agencies, has identified and evaluated the potential effects of its operations on water quality. Those evaluations are documented to the satisfaction of both agencies in the various permit application documents and the agencies have concluded that water quality will not be impacted by the proposed operation.
The statements by Johnson, as cited in the Tribune, are one person's opinion. Those statements should not be held in such esteem that the work of highly qualified regulatory staff is effectively dismissed by the Tribune's implication that these scientists and engineers would be fooled by an applicant's trickery, let alone stand for it.
Robert J. Bayer is a professional geologist and environmental consultant, the former CEO of JBR Environmental Consultants, Inc., and a former member of the Utah Board of Oil Gas and Mining.
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