Opinion ID: 221481
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The San Juan Basin and the Forest Plan

Text: Words cannot adequately convey what makes the San Juan Basin so special. We will not even attempt an approximation. The Basin occupies about 26,000 square miles in northwestern New Mexico and southwestern Colorado. Its topography includes plateaus, mesas, mountains, rolling uplands, canyons, and valleys. It is interspersed with transient and permanent streams, and four rivers. Humans have made their homes in the Basin for millenia. The Basin also provides valuable habitat and migration routes for many species of wildlife, including big game and a number of bird species. The Basin offers extensive recreational and cultural resources. Of particular relevance to this appeal, the Basin has the second-largest natural-gas field in the United States. That natural gas includes coal-bed methane (CBM), a byproduct of the evolution of organic matter into coal. It forms from organic debris buried beneath thousands of feet of sediment. The gas remains contained in and adsorbed to the coal until it is liberated by removing the surrounding groundwater, a process that reduces the pressure within the coal bed. The first CBM wells were drilled in the San Juan Basin in 1948, and widespread CBM development in the area began in the mid-1980s. By 1999 there were some 1,000 CBM wells in the Colorado portion of the Basin. The San Juan Forest occupies more than one million acres within the San Juan Basin. It is governed by the Forest Plan, which was adopted in 1983 and amended in 1992. The Plan establishes management standards and guidelines for the Forest. Lessees' Supp.App., Vol.1 at 3. It identifies several management areas consisting of different types of terrain and resources. For each area the Plan sets forth specific management requirements, which set the baseline conditions that must be maintained... in carrying out th[e] Forest Plan. They establish the environmental quality requirements, natural and depletable resource requirements, and mitigating measures that apply to all areas of the Forest. Aplts. App., Vol. I at 232. Any occupancy or use of lands in the Forest, including the development of gas resources, must be consistent with these requirements.