Beyond the familiar apocalytic boilerplate: About that drilling near Labyrinth Canyon

UPDATE

As expected, the Bureau of Land Management approved the Twin Bridges Bowknot helium project yesterday. Specifically, Roger Bankert, field-office boss in Vernal, authorized:

• Access-road improvements
• Well pad construction
• Construction of an underground well bore to reach Twin Bridges’ SITLA lease
• Pipeline construction

The day before, federal district court Judge Rudolph Contreras of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia enjoined the project adjacent to what could be described as one of the United States’ last really big undisturbed regions from proceeding until at least January 6. The judge was responding to a lawsuit filed by four environmental groups: Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, Center for Biological Diversity, Natural Resources Defense Council and Living Waters. They want the whole thing shut down.

The resource to be tapped, helium, is scarce, at least on planet Earth. The non-renewable gas is not a greenhouse gas but critical in scientific research, medical technology, high-tech manufacturing, space exploration and national defense, according to the BLM. It’s lighter than air; if released, it just floats into space. The universe brims with it.

About 10 percent of commercial helium is used to fill and propel party balloons into the atmosphere. The balloons eventually burst and fall to the ground — becoming just another way to trash the planet.

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A FEW UNREPORTED DETAILS

Despite the standard apocalyptic boilerplate of environmentalists and their lawyers — “denuded and disturbed lands and industrial infrastructure,” “irreversibly industrialize,” and “obscene, purposeful attack” — the lawsuit charges, less breathlessly, BLM dodged the National Environmental Policy Act’s requirement to take a “hard look” at “reasonably foreseeable” impacts, specifically, of climate change.