Major Utah oil-shale project clears ‘tremendous milestone,’ but at what cost to the environment?

orth America’s first commercial oil-shale operation cleared perhaps its biggest hurdle when the federal government authorized a 14-mile corridor across public land in eastern Utah’s Uinta Basin to service a proposed strip mine and processing plant that could produce 50,000 barrels of crude a day — but also deplete the Green River.The Bureau of Land Management issued the decision last week after a six-year environmental review that dodged studying impacts associated with the controversial South Project, proposed by Estonia-based Enefit American Oil on private land 40 miles southeast of Vernal.Environmental activists argue that this omission renders the decision suspect because the 9,000-acre mine’s impacts to air quality, groundwater, the Green and White rivers and the landscape remain unknown.“The utility project’s reason for existence is to service and facilitate the South Project development,” said Michael Toll, a staff attorney with the Grand Canyon Trust. “Because they are so related, the BLM cannot simply analyze the impacts of the utility project without fully analyzing the South Project.”The BLM contends the oil-shale mine could operate without a right of way; and the project’s impacts would be worse, given the vast amount of trucking that would be needed to get water to the mine and processing plant and crude to transportation hubs.