• watch a 10-minute video on YouTube - "The Drill Man Cometh"
The HD Mountains (named for a 19th-century cattle brand) offer  the
last, best opportunity to preserve the undeveloped foothills of the
San Juan Mountains in southwest Colorado. This 40,000-acre roadless
area on the San Juan National Forest contains many of the last remaining
stands of unlogged, 300-year-old ancient ponderosa pine forests in
the Southern Rockies. Ignacio Creek is perhaps the most pristine,
low-elevation watershed in the entire San Juans.
The San Juan Basin is one of the most intensively-drilled areas
in Colorado and New Mexico, with over 40,000 total wells, 18,000
of which are currently producing. The HD Mountains are one of the
last undrilled areas left in the San Juan Basin, and is in the
upper right-hand corner of the map.
- Download the complete map of
drilling in the San Juan Basin [pdf]
- Download maps specific to
the proposed HD drilling [pdf]
The preferred alternative proposes to authorize about 40 new coalbed
methane wells within 1.5 miles of the Fruitland Formation outcrop,
nearly all of which are located in Archuleta County. As is well
documented from recent history with drilling near the outcrop in
La Plata County, expected consequences include methane seeps that
could contaminate homes and water wells and drying up springs and
water wells from the groundwater drawdown associated with CBM extraction.
The preferred alternative does not respond
to the overwhelming public comment about the serious, irreversible
impacts from drilling near the outcrop. Five local governments
-- La Plata and Archuleta county commissions, and town councils
of Bayfield, Ignacio, and Durango -- unanimously passed resolutions
calling for no new wells near the outcrop. The BLM’s Southwest
Resource Advisory Council raised similar concerns. Thousands
of individual comments made the same point. For more information
go to www.savehdmountains.org.
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the roadless area in the following ways. Compare maps of the
draft and final preferred alternatives to see changes.
coalbed methane drilling because
of concerns about landslide hazards, slope stability, erosion,
and watershed impacts, although this restriction could be lifted
at some future date if industry demonstrates an ability to construct
roads and well pads without impacts. The FEIS leaves the entire
Ignacio Creek watershed undeveloped (good news!), for the time
being, and also precludes development across portions of the top
of the HD Mountains. The change reduces the impact to the roadless
area from 13,000 acres down to 5,000 acres (out of 27,000 acres
the USFS considers roadless).