Green groups sue Trump administration over California drilling plan
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[October 31, 2019]
(Reuters) - Two environmental groups
sued the Trump administration on Wednesday over its plan to open up more
than 720,000 acres (291,370 hectares) of federal land in California for
oil and gas development.
The lawsuit filed by the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological
Diversity comes nearly four weeks after the U.S. Department of
Interior's Bureau of Land Management (BLM) approved a plan that would
allow oil and gas leasing in 11 counties in the Central California
coastal region.
The move ended a five-year moratorium on leases in the state that were
prompted by a legal challenge.
In court papers filed in federal court in San Francisco, the
conservation groups argued that the bureau broke the law by failing to
analyze the harm drilling would cause to groundwater supplies, climate
change, and the potential for earthquakes caused by hydraulic
fracturing, or fracking.
BLM spokeswoman Sarah Webster said in an emailed statement that the
agency was reviewing the lawsuit.
The Oct. 4 decision "strikes a balance between resource conservation and
energy development consistent with BLM's mission for managing the lands
for multiple use and sustained yield," Webster added.
The BLM has not held a lease sale in California since 2013, when a judge
ruled that the agency illegally issued leases without analyzing the
environmental impact of fracking. The agency issued a new environmental
study and resource management plan earlier this month.
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President Donald Trump makes a statement at the White House
following reports that U.S. forces attacked Islamic State leader Abu
Bakr al-Baghdadi in northern Syria, in Washington, U.S., October 27,
2019. REUTERS/Jim Bourg
The plan is one of many ways in which U.S. President Donald Trump
has moved to expand oil and gas production on federal lands.
Several counties in the area covered by the BLM plan, including
Monterey and Santa Cruz, have passed legislation to ban new oil and
gas wells.
(Reporting by Nichola Groom; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Bill
Berkrot)
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