The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Resource Management Plan (RMP) is a very formalized process of deciding what activities may or not take place on public lands for a specific parcel or parcels of publicly owned land that the BLM manages.
Most often a RMP takes several years to develop and is done when an existing plan is no longer thought to be adequate to be useful in detailing the activities allowed on a parcel of BLM land.
The RMP for the Pio Puerco parcels that include the 3,000 acres just north of Placitas has been undergoing the RMP process for about 12 years now. A very extraordinary length of time for this process. It seems that our 3,000 acres is the piece of the plan that has caused the length of the RMP to expand.
More than 10,000 comments were submitted by the public concerning the 3,000 acres abutting our community. That is thousands more comments than usually received. All comments received must be evaluated and plugged into several BLM categories from recreational to mining and fracking uses so that the experts at the BLM can assess all possible uses and decide on how to use the land to both provide some income to the Interior Department and satisfy the demands of the public.
We have been told to expect the RMP draft plan this fall. There is another public comment period following the release of the draft plan and then the Environmental studies begin to verify that any use the BLM plans to make of the parcels resources are environmentally sound before the plan is put into place.