Ruling May Force Stricter Environmental Reviews Of Fracking Lease Sales

摘要

Environmentalists are calling on federal resource agencies to strengthen their reviews of potential contamination from hydraulic fracturing when approving lease sales after a first-time federal court ruling found that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) violated review rules when it failed to assess the effects of fracking from a sale in the resource-rich Monterey Shale formation in California. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled March 31 in Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and Sierra Club v. BLM and Ken Salazar, Secretary of the Department of Interior that BLM violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) when it declined to assess the potential contamination from fracking in approving the sale of oil and gas leases on approximately 2,700 acres of federal land in Monterey and Fresno counties.