For months, residents concerned about the impacts of oil and gas development have begged Santa Fe County to slow down as it writes new regulations, to consult experts and to perform base-line studies.

During this time, the county has maintained County Attorney Steve Ross and other staff could write good regulations in a matter of months without extensive study.

Now, in the wake of Gov. Bill Richardson's six-month ban on oil and gas drilling in the Galisteo Basin, the county appears to be doing exactly what citizens groups have sought.

It has hired an expert land-use attorney to help rewrite county development codes — particularly those that apply to oil and gas production — and is considering an ordinance that would ban oil and gas development in the Galisteo Basin area for at least a year.

Two more public hearings will be held on the ordinance, which, if passed, could be extended to ban oil and gas activity for a maximum of 18 months.

The county began rewriting its oil and gas rules last fall after Houston-based Tecton Energy announced plans to drill for oil in the basin. A three-month moratorium on oil and gas development that the County Commission passed in November is set to expire at the end of this month.

The county's new oil and gas attorney, Robert H. Freilich — who prefers to be called "Dr. Bob" — appears to be significantly different from Ross, who, until now, has been the main author of the county's developing oil and gas regulations.

Where Ross tends to be a man of few words, especially during public meetings, Freilich appeared wordy and outgoing when introducing himself to the crowd at the County Commission chambers Tuesday night.

According to an informational pamphlet Freilich provided, he is "one of the nation's leading experts in real estate and land use law" and has developed land-use plans for more than 250 governmental entities.

"I've been involved in developing these for over 30 years," said Freilich, a partner in the Los Angeles-based firm Miller Barondess.

Freilich said he'll work on an hourly basis — at a rate he declined to disclose — to develop five main land-use "products" for the county.

Those products will include general plan amendments that will address a variety of growth issues including "sprawl," which Freilich said the county's existing general plan doesn't address sufficiently.

Freilich will also write detailed plans for the future development of the Galisteo Basin area and amendments to the land development code that will address the fiscal, archaeological and environmental impacts of geothermal extraction in the Galisteo Basin area.

Part of the process of developing these plans will be to conduct studies of these issues. Freilich said he will also use the draft ordinance already created by Ross, and results from studies of the Galisteo Basin area ordered by Richardson, to inform his own plans. He hopes to have a draft by November.

Freilich promised stakeholders would be included in every step of the planning process.

Johnny Micou, founder of the anti-drilling activist group Drilling Santa Fe, said he was "pleasantly surprised" by Freilich's hiring and the county's plan to slow down. "It's what we've been calling for (for) a long time," Micou said.

Eric Jantz, a staff attorney at the New Mexico Environmental Law Center, said the public's role in getting the county to change course cannot be overstated.

Contact Phaedra Haywood at 986-3068 or phaywood@sfnewmexican.com.