Unrealistic and there is too little time to respond. Those are just two of the complaints some local government officials are leveling at the Bureau of Land Management regarding its draft report on the possible impacts of a commercial oil shale industry. The BLM’s draft Oil Shale and Tar Sands Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, issued in late December, paints a scenario of a radically changed Western Slope in the face of widespread commercial oil shale development in the Piceance Basin. However, the effects are possibly still decades away. The report says oil shale would supplant all other uses of public land, have a dramatic impact on air and water quality and urbanize small towns, while bringing many thousands of new workers to the region.

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