Coalbed Methane
Wyoming is the nation’s third-leading producer of coalbed methane, a form of natural gas. Much of the state’s production happens in the Powder River Basin in northeast Wyoming. As in most states, the State of Wyoming has authority to enforce the federal Clean Water Act within the State of Wyoming. This authority, referred to as “primacy,” is granted to the State Department of Environmental Quality once the Environmental Protection Agency reviews Wyoming’s statutory and regulatory authority and determines that the state’s regulations are at least as stringent as the federal statute and regulations.
The Wyoming Outdoor Council monitors many aspects of the Clean Water Act, but we focus on the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination Program under Section 402 of the Clean Water Act. The EPA has granted Wyoming authority to handle the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination Program since the 1970s. But often, gas companies will push the DEQ to accommodate their needs—to bend the rules, in effect. This can put the DEQ’s regulatory and enforcement decisions at odds with federal requirements. The Wyoming Outdoor Council keeps tabs on how the DEQ enforces its own regulations and how its revisions to its regulations conform to federal requirements.
Putting a stop to an illegal shortcut
The Wyoming Outdoor Council achieved a significant victory for Wyoming’s environment when First District Court Judge Thomas Campbell ruled in November 2011 that the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality’s two general pollution permits for entire watersheds are “void.”
These two so-called “watershed general permits" were the first of their kind issued by the Wyoming DEQ. The general permits as written were touted as a “streamlining” of the permitting process, but in practice they were lax and permissive and likely to negatively affect the two watersheds they were purporting to protect: the Willow Creek and Pumpkin Creek watersheds in the Powder River Basin.
The DEQ tried to take an ill-advised shortcut to expedite the approval of discharges of coalbed methane water throughout these two watersheds, rather than requiring that companies and the state go through the necessary process of carefully considering and permitting each instance of pollution.
This district court victory was the culmination of more than five years of work by the Outdoor Council. We argued all along that the law requires the issuing of individual permits, which provides citizens and landowners the chance to appeal any individual permits that might affect them. If the DEQ wants to create a new general rule, it must go through the more painstaking rulemaking process.
By attempting to treat these watershed-wide general permits just like smaller individual permits--in effect creating a new rule for entire landscapes under the guise of one simple permit—the DEQ had much greater carte blanche to act without the checks and balances that are built into the normal, and necessarily more careful, rule promulgation process.
The DEQ overreached. Now, the public will be afforded much greater involvement before such permissive regulations can go forward.