Climate activists collective Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) is again rallying support for Citizens Allied for Integrity and Accountability (CAIA) and especially citizens of Payette County, southern Idaho, one of the few Columbia Basin communities directly suffering the impacts of fossil fuels extraction.  We encourage you to comment by the deadline of 5 pm MDT on Friday, April 17, against the second application for a methane gas well drilling permit in 2026, filed in late March by Snake River Oil and Gas (SROG) and posted for public review on April 3 by the Idaho Department of Lands (IDL) and Idaho Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (IOGCC), as required by Idaho Code §47-316(1)(c) [1, 2].  These state agencies have opened the comment period for only ten business days.  Please send your written opposition to this egregious drilling plan to comments@idl.idaho.gov or through the online contact form, with a subject line mentioning the SROG Miller 1-15 drilling application and permit [3].

Our regional allies organizing in the Treasure Valley urgently need your support to help stop this dangerous, impending, oil and gas well drilling located incredibly close to Fruitland residents, whom the state is forcing to lease their privately owned mineral resources to SROG.  Although IDL and IOGCC have yet to respond to any public comments sent by citizens and groups about past permits, the current situation requires immediate, vigorous, legal pressure and broad participation in this public process, to halt this deceitful invasion of Idahoans’ rights and properties.  CAIA raised concerns among organizational members of the Stop Northwest Gas Expansion coalition on March 29: Please read this enclosed call to action written by CAIA board of directors president Shelley Brock, and email CAIA at info@integrityandaccountability.org to receive further, vital comment suggestions.  We also invite you to revisit our previous forced pooling comment alert and listen to testimony provided by Fruitland area citizens, at a packed, IDL, public hearing on the SROG application to force hundreds of property owners to lease their gas and allow nearby drilling against their will.  WIRT recorded their passionate input and aired it on the December 24, 2025, Climate Justice Forum program broadcast at 90.3 FM and online by progressive, volunteer, community station KRFP Radio Free Moscow [4, 5].

Although actively offering solidarity to courageous, fossil fuels frontline communities of resistance should motivate and elevate all of our shared work, this proposed, SROG, Miller 1-15 methane well could not only drill in close proximity to crucial Fruitland infrastructure, but could also supply the nearby Northwest gas pipeline system that Williams Companies is attempting to expand with new pipes in the Columbia River Gorge and central Washington, toward an envisioned, water- and energy-intensive data center in Quincy [6].  TC Energy’s connected Gas Transmission Northwest (GTN) pipeline network has already experienced three major compressor station snafus, mostly in Idaho, since its GTN Xpress project increased methane volumes and pressures in mid-December 2024.  In all of these related issues, the potential for illegal harms imposed by SROG, state permitters, and pipeline owners on local people and their air, water, and places necessary for life loom too large to ignore.  Please assist CAIA in building a case against this force pooled methane well, by responding with your comments and loading the public record with documents challenging a permit for this recklessly located methane well.

Well Drilling Permit Background

From Citizens Allied for Integrity and Accountability (CAIA)

“CAIA is an Idaho, all-volunteer, nonpartisan nonprofit formed in 2015 primarily to protect citizens from irresponsible oil and gas development in residential areas and near our iconic rivers and sensitive wildlife areas.  Since then, our mission has expanded to include several other issues involving the privatization of public water systems, the discharge of recycled municipal wastewater containing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and other contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) into our irrigation systems and consequently into our drinking water aquifers, and the injection of ‘processed’ landfill methane gas that has not been tested for PFAS into natural gas pipelines for distribution into homes and businesses.

In 2015, we won a precedent-setting, federal lawsuit based on the constitutional rights of citizens to receive just and reasonable terms in oil and ‘natural’ gas integration (forced pooling) contracts.  It took us nearly three years of exhaustive outreach and fundraising to see that lawsuit through to a successful conclusion.  That success somewhat leveled the playing field for objecting landowners for several years, by influencing regulators to establish better terms on subsequent integration orders, which included no hydraulic fracturing (‘fracking’) treatments of wells, shorter term leases, no surface or subsurface use on integrated properties, etc. Continue reading →