The federal government still contends it has the authority to regulate hydraulic fracturing on federal and Native American lands. So does the Sierra Club. The two went this week to the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, hoping the judges will overturn a Wyoming federal judge’s ruling that went against the Bureau of Land Management’s regulations on the land.
The BLM and the Sierra Club say the rule is within the BLM’s authority. In the lawsuit filed in early 2015, the Wyoming Attorney General successfully argued “The BLM’s rule, which regulates underground injections in the fracturing process, exceeds the agency’s statutory jurisdiction, conflicts with the Safe Drinking Water act, and unlawfully interferes with the State of Wyoming’s hydraulic fracturing regulations.”
The lawsuit said the Federal Land Policy and Management Act did not authorize the BLM to create a separate program to regulation underground injections outside the Safe Drinking Water Act. The suit also noted that in the 2005 Energy Policy Act, Congress “prohibited the regulation of hydraulic fracturing under the UIC program.”
It was in June of this year when the judge ruled the Bureau of Land Management’s policy on fracking was “deemed unlawful.”
