Editor:

Our family has lived in Saratoga for more than 70 years. We and the other citizens of this valley now face the greatest threat to our way of life seen in all that time. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is planning to lease thousands of our acres, upstream and downstream of Saratoga, for coal-bed methane development. They are doing this without providing an opportunity for us to weigh in on whether we want this or not. Unless we force the issue before Nov. 19th, the leasing process is set to go forward on Dec. 4.

The BLM knows that under the National Environmental Policy Act they are required to evaluate the potential environmental impacts of such an action. If pressed, they will tell us that they do not know enough about the details of the development yet to do a proper assessment of those impacts. That will come after the leasing process when the developers present their detailed plans. Then the public will get its chance to comment.

What they are not telling us is that by that time the public will have lost its right to influence whether or not the development should go on at all, because industry has already bought the "right" to develop by paying for the leases!

By NEPA, this is a violation of the law. There must be no irretrievable commitment of resources before a full environmental assessment is done and we have exercised our right to have a say in the process. Nonetheless, many thousands of acres of Wyoming mineral rights have been leased and the land surface severely damaged throughout Wyoming in just this way.

If people want a say in whether or not this development should proceed, they need to do it now, before Nov. 19. This automatic leasing process by the BLM has been stopped elsewhere, but only through a huge public outcry by those most affected. We implore readers to join us and many others who are alarmed about this development to write or call their local, state and congressional representatives asking them to insist to Bob Bennett, the state BLM director, that he pull these leases until an Environmental Impact Statement has been prepared.

It's good that our governor has already made this request, but that won't be enough. Only a ground swell of local support behind the governor's request will ensure that we, the citizens of this valley, are listened to by federal decision-makers.

JIM and CAROL STATES, Saratoga