Watershed Plan History

In February, 2006, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) conducted a federal oil and gas lease sale/auction that included tracts of federal oil and gas estate in Mesa County, and specifically within the recognized and mapped watersheds of the Town of Palisade (Palisade) and the City of Grand Junction (Grand Junction), Colorado. Decisions in the January, 1987, Grand Junction Resource Management Plan and Record of Decision (RMP) made these tracts available for leasing. Within and adjacent to the subject watersheds, the subsurface oil and gas tracts in the February, 2006 sale overlapped surface estate owned or managed by private individuals, the BLM, the US Forest Service (USFS), and Palisade and Grand Junction.

On August 3, 2006, the BLM issued leases for the federal oil and gas tracts within the watersheds to Genesis Gas & Oil LLC, a company headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri. The leased oil and gas tracts include a total of approximately 765 acres within Grand Junction’s watershed and 11,280 acres within Palisade’s watershed. The lands encompassing these municipal watersheds lie within the southern Piceance Basin geologic province, and have a subsurface geologic framework suspected to hold significant natural gas resources.