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E TI NONE <br />Backgroundand Introduction <br />alternative, would not amend land use plans to identify lands as available for application for <br />lease. Alternative C, which is similar to the BLM Preferred Alternative, would amend land <br />use plans to identify areas available for application for lease but would make approximately <br />830,000 acres containing oil shale resources available for application for commercial leasing <br />and approximately 230,000 acres available for tar sands. The Draft PEIS addressed the <br />direct, indirect, and cumulative environmental, cultural, and socioeconomic impacts of the <br />three alternatives. While the BLM has determined that there are no environmental impacts <br />associated with the actual amendment of land use plans, it intends to establish a commercial <br />leasing program to facilitate future development and has included a programmatic-level <br />analysis of the potential impact of oil shale and tar sand development technologies as they <br />are currently known. One of the limitations of the Draft PEIS is that it does not provide an <br />assessment of the cumulative impacts of multiple types of energy development in other <br />sectors and therefore does not quantify the resulting water demands (BLM 2007b). The <br />BLM Draft PEIS did not specifically forecast production levels but did provide analyses of <br />the effects associated with 50,000 barrels per day (bpd) production from surface and <br />underground mining as well as 200,000 bpd from in-situ. <br />• The Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB) is conducting the Colorado River Water <br />Availability Study in an effort to estimate the amount of water available to Colorado under <br />the 1922 and 1948 Compacts. This study is ongoing and will be able to use information <br />gleaned from the Energy Development Water Needs Assessment for further refinement of <br />water demands as they relate to energy development for natural gas, coal, uranium, <br />thermoelectric power generation, and oil shale in northwest Colorado. <br />• The Colorado DOLA and AGNC retained BBC Research & Consulting (BBC) to develop a <br />predictive economic projection model that would capture the complex interplay of <br />socioeconomic forces in northwest Colorado and provide projections of employment, <br />population, and community ~ scal impacts under varying assumptions about economic <br />expansion in the area's basic industries (BBC 2008). The model used in this study was <br />custom built, incorporating IMPLAN, an economic input-output originally developed for the <br />U.S. Forest Service and now maintained by Minnesota IMPLAN Group, to estimate <br />secondary economic impacts from direct activities in the energy industries and other <br />~~ 1-4 <br />