BLM should not limit our options

Dear Editor:

I have tried to e-mail comments for this second comment period but have been unable to use e-mail address the BLM has made public. I called the help number provided and was told by a very helpful and friendly lady that only Internet Explorer would work now or at anytime during the comment period.

You have to be kidding. There are many other programs being used and with something as important as this leasing proposal the BLM should have the ability to receive all of our e-mails. This seems to be another example of the complete indifference of the local BLM office to the concerns of those of us living here as the BLM considers leasing the pristine land that surrounds us for gas drilling.

The FONSI reasoning that there is no significant impact to leasing because the only impacts possible come from drilling, not leasing, is distorted and faulty. It is like saying that there is no significant impact from jumping off a tall building, it is only when you hit the ground that an impact is created. Or that there is no significant impact from lighting the fuse on a stick of dynamite, it is only when the fire hits the stick that impact occurs.

The BLM has already leased the 200,000 acres behind this thin 30,000-acre protective rim of land separating all of us from future mineral development on the previously leased land. And the BLM finding is that there is no significant impact to leasing the rest of the land. Then BLM limits input by choosing Internet Explorer as the only electronic method of communicating comments. This is after BLM requested that the preferred method of communicating comments was electronically.

BLM should either set up their computers so that all e-mails can be submitted or extend the comment period until we all have the opportunity to send an e-mail whether we have Internet Explorer or one of the numerous other popular and widely used programs. To limit people's commenting options is a disgrace and not the way a government agency should deal with the public.

Michael McCarthy

Hotchkiss

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