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CONSERVATION GROUPS’ COMMENTS <br />UNCOMPAHGRE FIELD OFFICE RMP AND DEIS <br />102 <br />improved data become available. Specifically, BLM must consider Best Management Practices <br />(BMPs) to ensure that human health and the environment are protected from oil and gas drilling <br />over the life of the new RMP—as detailed below in Section IV.B.10. <br />3. Ozone Impacts <br /> <br />Background concentrations of ozone in the Uncompahgre RMP planning area are already <br />at or exceed the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (“NAAQS”), leaving virtually no room <br />for growth in emissions as contemplated by the Uncompahgre RMP. The DEIS discloses: “The <br />2008 Base Case indicates that there are areas within the Uncompahgre planning area that are <br />above the 70 parts per billion NAAQS, with the maximum ozone concentrations in the range of <br />73-76 parts per billion estimated in southeast Mesa County, central Montrose County, northeast <br />Delta County and along the Delta and Gunnison County border.” DEIS at 4-50; see also DEIS at <br />4-49.283 Moreover, the DEIS does not include wintertime ozone monitoring information within <br />the Uncompahgre RMP planning area. Spikes in ozone levels have been documented to occur in <br />oil and gas producing basins in the Western United States during cold, snowy periods when <br />wintertime “inversions” concentrate air pollutants from oil and gas activities.284 Indeed, it is well <br />known that the communities of Somerset, Paonia, Hotchkiss and Crawford (the North Fork <br />Valley) experience inversions during the winter months, similar to the winter inversions <br />experienced in the Upper Green River basin of Wyoming, which has been declared to be in <br />nonattainment for ozone because of oil and gas development in the basin. Thus, the ozone data <br />included in the DEIS likely underestimates wintertime levels. Adding hundreds of additional oil <br />and wells to the area, as the Uncompahgre RMP DEIS contemplates, will add hundreds of tons <br />of additional ozone precursors to the region, threatening considerable exceedances of the ozone <br />NAAQS—especially in wintertime in the region’s valleys. See id. <br /> <br />BLM may not avoid including winter ozone modeling, even if information about winter <br />ozone levels is incomplete. According to NEPA regulation, if an estimation of reasonably <br />foreseeable significant adverse impacts cannot be obtained because, among other things, the <br />means to obtain it are “not known,” BLM has an obligation to include an evaluation “based upon <br />theoretical approaches or research methods generally accepted in the scientific community,” <br />provided that “the analysis of the impacts is supported by credible scientific evidence, is not <br />based on pure conjecture, and is within the rule of reason.” 40 C.F.R. § 1502.22. These methods <br />of dealing with incomplete information are required under NEPA and must be thoroughly <br />exercised before drawing the conclusion that a wintertime ozone analysis cannot be included in <br />the RMP/EIS. See id. <br /> <br />BLM has, in fact, modeled winter ozone concentrations for other recent NEPA actions. <br />Even though BLM did not perform a winter ozone modeling analysis of the proposed <br />development, modeling results for wintertime ozone concentrations were included as part of the <br />base case modeling performance evaluation for the Continental Divide-Creston (CD-C) DEIS in <br /> <br />283 See also American Lung Association, Report Card: Colorado, http://www.lung.org/our- <br />initiatives/healthy-air/sota/city-rankings/states/colorado/. 284 Peter M. Edwards et al., High Winter Ozone Pollution from Carbonyl Photolysis in an Oil <br />and Gas Basin, 514 Nature 351 (October 16, 2014).