Tagged: Citizens for a Healthy Community

For the past 20 years, Brent Helleckson and his family have been building a wine business on Garvin Mesa. They’ve constructed a home, a wine cellar a tasting room, and added to the vineyard. In those two decades, they also became a part of the North Fork community. When the Bureau of Land Management proposed 30,000 acres of leases for gas development in the North Fork Valley, Helleckson felt the threat to his winery as well as all agriculture and tourism-based industries.

In a press release sent out early this morning, the BLM Colorado Office announced that all 20 North Fork Valley parcels have been removed from the Feb. 14th oil and gas lease sale. 

“We’ve listened to concerns raised in numerous comments and public meetings and we are responding by deferring the North Fork Valley parcels at this time,” said Colorado State Director Helen Hankins.  “We are addressing the deferred parcels through continued dialogue with the local community and with ongoing planning efforts in the Uncompahgre Field Office.  

KVNF’s Marty Durlin interviewed BLM spokesperson Steven Hall, a Hotchkiss native, about the decision. He was speaking on his cell phone from an airport, and began by stressing that the parcels were not deferred because the the agency’s 20-year-old Resource Management Plan is inadequate. Hear that interview below:

Last week the local advocacy group Citizens for a Healthy Community announced it would file a lawsuit against the Bureau of Land Management if the agency does not withdraw the remaining 20,000 acres in the North Fork from its February 14 lease sale. Along with other citizens’ groups and individuals, CHC has been fighting the proposed sale since it was announced in December of 2011, saying it jeopardizes the North Fork’s economy, its organic farms, orchards, ranches, wineries and way of life. KVNF’s Marty Durlin spoke with CHC director Jim Ramey.

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