Mountain States Legal Foundation v. Andrus

Citation499 F. Supp. 383
Decision Date14 October 1980
Docket NumberNo. C78-165B.,C78-165B.
PartiesMOUNTAIN STATES LEGAL FOUNDATION, a non-profit Colorado corporation, on behalf of its members, Plaintiff, v. Cecil D. ANDRUS, Secretary of the United States Department of the Interior; and Robert W. Bergland, Secretary of the United States Department of Agriculture, Defendants.
CourtU.S. District Court — District of Wyoming

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Kea Bardeen and James G. Watt, Mountain States Legal Foundation, Denver, Colo., David B. Kennedy, Kennedy, Connor & Healy, Sheridan, Wyo., for plaintiff.

Gerald S. Fish, Dept. of Justice, Washington, D. C., Charles E. Graves, U. S. Atty., D. Wyoming, Cheyenne, Wyo., for defendant.

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER GRANTING PLAINTIFF'S MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT

BRIMMER, District Judge.

This case involves areas of over one million acres in the Western Overthrust Belt in non-wilderness portions of United States forests in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana, on which oil and gas lease applications have been pending several years without action by the Secretary of the Interior who referred the applications to the Secretary of Agriculture for a recommendation on issuance, which has never been made. Plaintiff, as a non-profit corporation, represents interests of the public and its members in eight mountain states who it claims are irreparably injured by the delay or prevention of development of energy resources through the acts of the Defendants. Plaintiff claims that such persons' employment and quality of life depend on development of the nation's energy resources and that the acts of the Defendants will have serious secondary impacts, such as increased unemployment, possible energy shortages and an increasing balance of trade deficit, which it suggests affects the public's individual rights including the right of economic choice. The parties have stipulated to the facts, and both parties now seek a summary judgment, declaring the rights of the parties.

The Plaintiff asks the Court to hold that the Secretaries of Interior and Agriculture by their actions have in fact withdrawn those lands from entry, without reporting the withdrawal to Congress as required by the 1976 Federal Land Policy and Management Act, 43 U.S.C. §§ 1702(j), 1714(c), and to order them either to report the withdrawal to Congress, or to cease withholding the lands from leasing. The Defendants, admitting that the applications for leases have been filed with the Bureau of Land Management of the Interior Department and referred to the Forest Service of the Agriculture Department for its recommendations, assert that the latter has been making an administrative evaluation of those land areas for possible inclusion in the wilderness system and therefore have not acted in order to preserve the status quo of the lands. They admit that they have "proceeded slowly", but urge that such matters are committed to their uncontrolled administrative discretion.

The principal issue before the Court is whether or not the intent of Congress with respect to public lands has been threatened by an unauthorized de facto withdrawal from entry of these lands.

The Western Overthrust Belt is a geological formation extending from Alaska into Mexico and which crosses the states of Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming in which the lands in question are located. It is an active area of new onshore oil and gas exploration and production which has attracted considerable attention and interest from the oil and gas industry because of its geological favorability for the generation and entrapment of oil and gas.

Estimates of the potential of the Idaho-Wyoming-Utah portion of the Overthrust Belt for undiscovered recoverable oil and gas resources have been as high as 15 billion barrels of oil and 75 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Estimates of the potential of the northern extension of the Overthrust Belt through western Montana for undiscovered recoverable oil and gas resources have been as high as 10 billion barrels of oil and 100 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

The two specific areas within the Overthrust Belt of concern to this lawsuit are areas of 247,090 acres and 758,479 acres contained within RARE II Area No. 4-613 and RARE II Area No. 1-485 respectively. The Rocky Mountain Oil and Gas Association (RMOGA) has estimated that RARE II Area No. 4-613 has the potential of producing as much as 155 million barrels of oil and 1,759 billion cubic feet of natural gas and that RARE II Area No. 1-485 has the potential of producing as much as 54 million barrels of oil and 4,650 billion cubic feet of natural gas. Although there has been no exploratory drilling in RARE II Area No. 1-485 or in the relevant portion of RARE II Area No. 4-613 which would tend to either confirm or to refute any estimates as to potential oil and gas production in the areas, the interest of oil and gas producers in the areas in question, including the members of the Plaintiff organization, is readily apparent.

Because the Secretary of Interior's failure to act on oil and gas lease applications within the above areas is to a large degree a result of the Roadless Area Review and Evaluation (RARE) program conducted by the United States Forest Service, it will be helpful to review the history of the RARE programs. RARE I was initiated administratively in 1971 at the direction of Edward P. Cliff, Chief of the Forest Service, for the purpose of identifying those roadless and undeveloped areas within the National Forest System which should be further evaluated for addition to the National Wilderness Preservation System established by § 2(a) of the Wilderness Act of 1964, 16 U.S.C. § 1131(a) (1976), as well as those areas which should continue to be managed for their other resource values pursuant to the Multiple Use-Sustained Yield Act of 1960, 16 U.S.C. §§ 528-531 (1976).

RARE I resulted in an inventory of approximately 56 million acres of National Forest System lands in 1,449 separately identified areas to determine which lands were roadless and undeveloped and 5,000 acres or more in size or otherwise eligible for consideration as wilderness because of their proximity to existing wilderness or primitive areas. In October 1973 the Chief of the Forest Service selected two hundred seventy-four (274) areas totalling 12.3 million acres as lands which were to receive intensive wilderness study to determine whether they should be recommended to Congress for inclusion in the National Wilderness Preservation System. Completion of the RARE I program was never accomplished for reasons unrelated to the issues before us.

In 1977 Assistant Secretary of Agriculture Rupert Cutler initiated the RARE II program with purposes similar to those of the RARE I program. The Secretary of Agriculture claims the present RARE II study to be "part of the broad planning direction for all Forest Service activities laid out by Congress in the Forest and Rangeland Renewable Resources Planning Act of 1976 and the National Forest Management Act of 1976." Final Environmental Impact Statement, RARE II, Jan. 1979, p. iii. The RARE II program differed most significantly from the RARE I program in that RARE II resulted in immediate wilderness recommendations whereas RARE I resulted simply in the selection of areas to be studied further for possible wilderness classification. All RARE II lands were allocated to one of three categories:

(1) Areas to be recommended for wilderness designation by Congress (wilderness);
(2) Areas to be used for purposes other than wilderness (non-wilderness); or
(3) Areas to be studied further to determine their wilderness or non-wilderness suitability (further planning).

In the RARE II Final Environmental Statement (FES) issued on January 4, 1979, the list of RARE II inventory lands contained 2,919 roadless areas encompassing more than 62 million acres.

Approximately 45 million acres of National Forest System lands included in the original RARE I inventory were also included in the RARE II inventory. On the basis of the RARE II FES, the Administration recommended to Congress that 631 inventoried roadless areas, totalling 15.5 million gross acres, be designated as components of the National Wilderness Preservation System; that 1965 inventoried roadless areas, totalling 36.7 million gross acres, be managed non-wilderness; and that 322 inventoried roadless areas, totalling 10.8 million gross acres, be studied further to determine their suitability for wilderness designation. On May 2, 1979 the Administration's recommendations were sent to Congress and the RARE II program was completed.

The importance of the Forest Service's RARE programs with relation to the Secretary of the Interior's failure to act on the oil and gas lease applications within the two areas in question is seen by an examination of the oil and gas leasing practices of the Secretary of the Interior. Under the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920, 30 U.S.C. § 181 et seq. the Secretary of the Interior is given the authority to lease all public lands which are known or believed to contain oil and gas deposits. 30 U.S.C. § 226(a). The statute gives to the Secretary of the Interior broad power to issue oil and gas leases on public lands within known structures of producing oil and gas fields, Udall v. Tallman, 380 U.S. 1, 85 S.Ct. 792, 13 L.Ed.2d 616 (1965), and to accept or reject oil and gas lease offers. McTiernan v. Franklin, 508 F.2d 885 (10th Cir. 1975).

On April 13, 1945, the Assistant Secretary of Agriculture, Charles F. Brannan, sent a letter to the Secretary of Interior requesting the Department of Interior to appraise the Department of Agriculture of all pending applications, entries, filings, withdrawals, and so forth under the Federal Mineral Leasing Act, which if granted or approved would affect the status or the subsequent use and occupancy of the National Forest lands, and to allow the Department of Agriculture to determine and advise the...

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12 cases
  • Southeast Conference v. Vilsack
    • United States
    • U.S. District Court — District of Columbia
    • February 17, 2010
    ...must, as a practical matter, be withdrawals under 16 U.S.C. § 3213(a). For this argument, plaintiffs rely on Mountain States Legal Found. v. Andrus, 499 F.Supp. 383 (D.Wyo.1980). At issue there was whether the Secretary of the Interior's failure to act on applications for mineral leases tha......
  • Pacific Legal Foundation v. Watt
    • United States
    • U.S. District Court — District of Montana
    • January 19, 1982
    ...v. Tallman demonstrates that an Executive Order could validly withdraw lands from mineral leasing. Id. at 3. Mountain States Legal Foundation v. Andrus, 499 F.Supp. 383 (D.Wyo.1980), specifically considered the FLPMA definition of withdrawal. The court held that the "plain meaning of Congre......
  • Mountain States Legal Foundation v. Hodel, C86-022-K.
    • United States
    • U.S. District Court — District of Wyoming
    • August 19, 1987
    ...in violation of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, 43 U.S.C. § 1740, and the Court Order issued in Mountain States Legal Foundation v. Andrus, 499 F.Supp. 383 (Wyo.1980); (5) issue a writ of mandamus directing the Secretary of Agriculture to promulgate rules and regulations in acco......
  • Wyoming v. U.S. Dept. of Agri.
    • United States
    • U.S. District Court — District of Wyoming
    • July 14, 2003
    ...and undeveloped areas which could be designated as "wilderness areas" pursuant to the Wilderness Act. Mountain States Legal Foundation v. Andrus, 499 F.Supp. 383, 387 (D.Wyo. 1980). The RARE II inventory culminated in 1979 with the Forest Service identifying approximately 62 million Nationa......
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14 books & journal articles
  • Chapter 20 HOW DO I GET THERE? ACCESS TO AND ACROSS MINING CLAIMS AND MINERAL LEASES
    • United States
    • FNREL - Annual Institute Vol. 45 Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Institute (FNREL)
    • Invalid date
    ...[181] See United States v. Collord, 128 IBLA 266, 291, GFS(MIN) 17(1994) (mining claim); Mountain States Legal Found. v. Andrus, 499 F. Supp. 383, 393 (D. Wyo. 1980) (lease). [182] See 43 C.F.R. § 8560.4-3 (1998); 36 C.F.R. §§ 228.15, 293.13 (1998). [183] See 43 C.F.R. § 8560.4-6(j) (1998);......
  • Chapter 12 NON-ENDANGERED WILDLIFE AND MINERAL OPERATIONS-OPPORTUNITIES AND OBLIGATIONS
    • United States
    • FNREL - Annual Institute Vol. 42 Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Institute (FNREL)
    • Invalid date
    ...(1994). [240] Mountain States Legal Found. v. Hodel, 668 F. Supp. 1466 (D. Wyo. 1987); Mountain States Legal Found. v. Andrus, 499 F. Supp. 383 (D. Wyo. 1980). However, one court of appeals has criticized these holdings. See Bob Marshall Alliance v. Hodel, 852 F.2d 1223, 1229-30 (9th Cir. 1......
  • Chapter 1 REGULATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES USE AND DEVELOPMENT IN LIGHT OF THE "NEW" TAKINGS CLAUSE
    • United States
    • FNREL - Annual Institute Vol. 34 Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Institute (FNREL)
    • Invalid date
    ...668 F. Supp. 1466 (D. Wyo. 1987); Pacific Legal Found. v. Watt, 529 F. Supp. 982 (D. Mt. 1981); Mtn. States Legal Found. v. Andrus, 499 F. Supp. 383 (D. Wyo. 1980). [27] 30 U.S.C. § 1272(e) (1982). [28] Ainsley v. United States, 8 Cl. Ct. 394 (1985). [29] 33 U.S.C. § 1344 (1982). [30] Unite......
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    • United States
    • FNREL - Annual Institute Vol. 29 Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Institute (FNREL)
    • Invalid date
    ...for example, to force BLM and the FS to spell out exactly how the process would work. See Mountain States Legal Foundation v. Andrus 499 F. Supp. 383 (D. Wyo. 1980) where Judge Brimmer ordered the BLM and the FS to "each promulgate rules ... governing the standard policies ... on which oil ......
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