The Powder River Basin in Wyoming is one of the hottest energy plays in the United States and the industry says production helps make the United States less dependent on imported energy.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Montana, accuses the U.S. Department of Interior of failing in Wyoming and in neighboring Montana to carry out its obligations under the Clean Air Act to protect national parks and wildernesses from harmful air pollution.
The pollution ends up cloaking in haze more than a dozen national parks such as Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Theodore Roosevelt and Wind Cave National Parks,the lawsuit claims.
The problem is that coalbed methane mining brings with it extensive construction equipment that discharges high levels of air pollution, Environmental Defense senior attorney Vickie Patton said.
Other groups in the lawsuit are the Montana Environmental Information Center, National Parks Conservation Association and the National Wildlife Federation.
The suit said the federal government has the duty to limit air pollution from some 100,000 oil and gas wells and 23,000 miles of new roads authorized in a 33 million acre zone in Montana and Wyoming.
The Powder River Basin, mostly in Wyoming and spilling over into Montana, is one of the largest coalbed methane deposits in the United States and is estimated to have 25 trillion cubic feet of recoverable reserves, John Robitaille, vice president of the Petroleum Association of Wyoming said.
"That is exceptional for one basin. It's a world class play," he said. The United States uses about 23 trillion cubic feet of natural gas a year, he said.
He said the industry controls dust on roads and compressors are run on natural gas or electricity.
The importance of the Powder River Basin is what makes environmental groups nervous.
"One of the claims in the complaint is that the secretary of the Interior (Gale Norton) has a duty to protect these national parks from air pollution," Patton said. But at the same time the Bureau of Land Management, an agency of Interior, approves leases on federally owned land, she added.
The Interior Department has not seen the lawsuit, spokesman John Wright said. "But before a permit to drill is issued we do an environmental assessment and evaluate the effects and impact on air quality and water quality before we go about the business of developing oil and natural gas," Interior spokesman John Wright said.
"It's a standard, predictable plan of litigation tactic by these groups to stop gas development in the Rocky Mountains," Greg Schnacke, executive vice president of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, a trade group, said.
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