Poll: Environment beats drilling for voters in Western states

The Uintah basin in southern Utah. (Ray Bloxham/Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance)

Voters from western states are more concerned about preserving public land than drilling on it, according to a new poll that bucks the conventional wisdom about the public’s view of energy development in the region.

The survey, conducted by Hart Research Associates for the liberal Center for American Progress, found that permanently protecting and conserving public lands for future generations is a top priority for voters in nine western states, 65 percent of whom said that was “very important.” By contrast, only 30 percent of those surveyed said it was a very important priority for the federal government to ensure oil and natural gas resources on public lands are available for development.

The survey included 993 voters from Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming.

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“The bottom line of this research is that there is a real commitment to protecting public lands in the West and there is a real conviction among western voters that protection of public lands ought to be put back on equal footing with energy development on those lands,” said Geoff Garin, president of Hart Research Associates. “The public believes it is possible — not just possible, but important — to preserve and protect and conserve public lands at the same time we develop domestic energy sources for our country.”

John Podesta, chair of the Center for American Progress, said the survey shows a clash between an “ongoing drill baby drill approach” to public lands in Washington, D.C., “and how westerners themselves would like to see their public lands managed.”

“Washington’s policies and rhetoric are still locked in a drilling-first mindset,” Podesta added, “but Westerners want the protection of public lands to be put on equal ground.”

The survey results were released as the Wilderness Society, the Center for American Progress and other groups announce a new campaign — complete with advertising and policy proposals — aimed at encouraging lawmakers and the Obama administration to balance energy development on federal lands with measures aimed at protecting parks and wilderness.

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One possibility is a proposal for directing more money from energy development on public lands to restoring damage from oil drilling, said Melyssa Watson, vice president for conservation at the Wilderness Society. Seventy-eight percent of the voters surveyed in the poll strongly favored using some money collected from oil and gas activities on public lands “to repair damage caused by drilling to land, fish and wildlife habitat.”

Watson said the “equal ground” campaign also will be pushing the Obama administration to wall off drilling in back country areas, while keeping them open to hunting and fishing. Another big goal is getting “permanent protection of wild public lands, either through congressional action or executive action through the president if Congress doesn’t act,” Watson said.

Watson said the coalition will be highlighting some places that are “just too special” to drill and will “actively work to guide development away from those areas toward lands with fewer conflicts.”

Duane Zavadil, vice president of government and regulatory affairs for Denver-based Bill Barrett Corp., said current leasing practices and policies “throw the conservation community and energy development into conflict.”

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Some lands offered up for oil and gas leasing have special characteristics, prompting lawsuits and litigation aiming to protect the areas. But Zavadil said, “what the public gets is less of both.”

Interior Department officials say steps they have taken have slashed the number of lease sales that have been protested.

Some of those steps include limiting the areas on the auction block in the first place. For instance, in February, the Bureau of Land Management decided not to sell leases to drill in about 20,000 acres of western Colorado land after the state bureau director said they heeded the public’s concerns.

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