Statement on Oil and Gas Leasing review

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

North Fork group praises Interior Department for undergoing comprehensive program review

Paonia, CO (March 9, 2021) - As an organization with its origins in the North Fork Valley's ongoing decade-long resistance to oil and gas leasing on public lands and in vital water supply areas there, the Colorado Farm & Food Alliance applauds the announcement today from the Interior Department to conduct a comprehensive review of its oil and gas leasing program.

Some places are too important for their other resource values, uses and ecological services to be put at risk from fracking, or reckless speculation. Public lands should be managed to provide a long-term public benefit, not an immediate pay-out to one industry. This is especially so given the climate crisis and the threat it poses to Colorado's agriculture and food systems, and for our water supplies. Western Colorado is at particular high risk, and with it headwaters to millions of Americans, so our concerns are not ours alone.

The current public lands oil and gas leasing system is broken as the North Fork Valley is well aware. For too long, oil and gas companies have taken advantage of an outdated system to boost profits at a price to taxpayers, to public lands and water supplies, to  wildlife, and to the future. 

The Colorado Farm & Food Alliance looks forward to providing input during this review, and to help ensure that front-line communities are centered in those conversations. We support the new direction being charted by the Interior Department to review and update oil and gas leasing on public lands. We believe given the threat posed to our farms and food systems, we must act boldly to address the climate crisis and that our public lands must be core to any plan to rapidly curb our climate pollution. 

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