NRECA filed suit in Wyoming federal court on July 12 against the Department of the Interior, challenging a rule the association says will jeopardize electric cooperatives’ ability to operate on federally managed public lands across the West.
The lawsuit asks the court to vacate the Bureau of Land Management’s Conservation and Landscape Health Rule, which was finalized in April. A broad coalition of 11 other stakeholder industries, including agriculture groups and energy and mineral developers, joined NRECA in the legal challenge.
“This unlawful conservation rule creates further regulatory and operational hurdles for cooperatives and jeopardizes their ability to continue to affordably and reliably serve some areas,” NRECA Senior Vice President of Government Relations Louis Finkel said.
“It compounds the complex, slow, and inconsistent BLM bureaucratic processes that co-ops must navigate to operate on public lands. It curtails grid expansion and hardening projects; and delays vegetation management and maintenance activities that ensure reliability of the grid and reduce risks for adverse events like wildfire.”
NRECA members operate tens of thousands of miles of electric transmission and distribution lines across BLM-managed public lands, much of which are in rural parts of the West. To access and use those lands, co-ops must obtain rights of way from BLM. Prior to the BLM rule, these co-op activities were prioritized as a principal use of public lands.
BLM’s new rule, however, will make obtaining, operating and accessing those rights of way even more difficult as it elevates conservation as a priority use of public lands and requires all agency actions to be compatible with conservation moving forward.
That will create challenges for co-ops operating on BLM lands. The rule creates a conservation lease program that could enable nongovernmental groups and other parties to block energy projects and other development. The regulation also unlawfully expands BLM’s authority to designate large “areas of critical environmental concern,” in which cooperative operations may be prohibited or severely curtailed across vast swaths of land, the lawsuit says.
“Under the existing regulatory framework, BLM is already incapable of making timely and effective approvals for cooperative wildfire mitigation activities, regular operation and maintenance activities and more,” Finkel said. “This further jeopardizes safety and the reliability of the electric grid by severely reducing the amount of public lands available for utility use, and by restricting cooperatives’ ability to access and operate on those limited lands that are remaining.”
The other groups challenging the BLM rule alongside NRECA are the American Farm Bureau Federation, the Wyoming Farm Bureau Federation, the Natrona County Farm and Ranch Bureau, the American Exploration and Mining Association, the American Forest Resource Council, the American Petroleum Institute, the American Sheep Industry Association, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, the National Mining Association, the Public Lands Council and the Western Energy Alliance.
Molly Christian is a staff writer for NRECA.