Mesquite Heads Off BLM Oil And Gas Leases

By AMY DAVIS

Moapa Valley Progress

The communities of the Virgin and Moapa Valleys have dodged a bullet. That is what Mesquite Mayor Allan Litman told a gathering of about 50 people during a press conference/rally in front of Mesquite City Hall on Friday Nov. 8, 2019.

At the event, Litman announced that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) had withdrawn the option for lease on 574,075 acres of land in the Ely District. Included in this was more than 100,000 acres in the East Mormon Mountains, just north of Mesquite, Bunkerville, Moapa and Moapa Valley.

By law, the BLM is required to offer quarterly oil and gas lease sales of available federal lands. Recently, the BLM had considered leasing the land (parcel 222) for oil and gas development.

Under some pressure from a coalition including the City of Mesquite, Moapa Band of Paiutes, the Sierra Club, the Virgin Valley Water District, Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak and Senator Catherine Cortez-Masto, the BLM field office in Ely pulled the option to lease the land earlier on the morning of the press conference.

The lease options were put on hold until the situation could be furthered reviewed, Litman said.
“It appears that we are out of the woods on this issue, at least for the moment,” Litman said. “But we must remain very vigilant because, rest assured, it will come up again.”

Fracking is the process of creating a well by fracturing deeply imbedded rock to release natural gas and petroleum through fissures that didn’t exist previously. The process of breaking rock deep inside the earth involves the high pressurized injection of sand, water and potentially dangerous chemicals.

Proponents of fracking say that the process extracts resources at an extreme depth far below the water table and so it has no effect on drinking water sources.

But Litman said he had done his own research into the matter. He said that his sources indicated that each time a well is fracked, the chances of chemical leakage into soil and local water sources increase.

“I am not an environmentalist,” Litman said. “I am not even an outdoorsy kind of guy. But I am a protectionist of our land and a protectionist of our city. As an elected official it is my duty to do what I can to protect this community. Period.”

In a statement at the press conference, Sierra Club Organizing Representative Christian Gerlach explained that the areas in and around the Mormon Mountain range being targeted by the BLM for oil and gas leasing are up-gradient of the municipal water resources for both the Virgin Valley and Moapa Valley. In addition, those same waters flow eventually into Lake Mead where they could have a much broader effect, Gerlach said.

Other speakers at the press conference expressed similar concerns about the environmental hazards of fracking in the Nevada desert.
“I feel the development of gas and oil would lead to mowing down the desert that we know and love,” said Justin McAffee, owner of Most Media in Las Vegas.

“I am here to stand against this gas and oil drilling,” said former Chairman of the Moapa Band of Paiutes, Greg Anderson. “This is our land and our water and we need to protect it. These oil companies need to stay out of our sacred land.”

“We call on the Bureau of Land Management to listen to the outcry of our state and not offer these lands for oil and gas. We must protect these lands, our communities, our historic sites, outdoor recreation, cultural sites of Nevada’s indigenous people and drinking water from this proposed destruction.”