The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday voted to kill a federal rule that gives Americans more of a voice in large-scale planning for projects using public land, including 8.4 million acres in Colorado.

The action launched by House Republicans, including sponsors Rep. Scott Tipton of Colorado and Liz Cheney of Wyoming, would nullify the Bureau of Land Management’s “Planning 2.0” rule that took effect in December. That rule governs all planning for future uses of 250 million acres of federal public land that is concentrated in the West.

It was the third time in a week that lawmakers invoked the Congressional Review Act to strike at Obama administration environmental rules.The act lets them roll back executive action taken during the past 60 legislative work days — if the rule imposes excessive costs, exceeds agency authority or is redundant. On Friday, House lawmakers voted to zap the federal methane rule that requires oil and gas companies using public lands to control air pollution.

The BLM and methane-flaring measures now move to the Senate. If the rollbacks are approved, the rules would be eliminated and the BLM banned indefinitely from developing similar rules.

Last week, Congress killed the Stream Protection Act that required efforts to protect waterways near coal mines.

For Colorado, the impact of a rollback of the BLM planning rule is potentially huge. BLM officials developed the rule saying it would increase public involvement and incorporate the most current data and technology to decide whether and where drilling, mining and logging will happen on public land.

Park County’s commissioners, all Republicans, strongly supported the planning rule, calling it essential for taking better care of sensitive wildlife-rich areas such as South Park, the main watershed for metro Denver.

They wrote last year to BLM director Neil Kornze saying they wanted “additional opportunities for public involvement earlier in the planning process, including the chance to review preliminary resources management alternatives and preliminary rationales for those alternatives.”

“The current BLM planning methodology lacks adequate opportunities for public involvement, particularly early in the process,” they wrote. “It also lacks transparency. It often results in a range of alternatives that fails to address the concerns of all stakeholders.”

The “Eastern Colorado Resource Management Plan,” which encompasses South Park, emerged as one of three BLM pilot projects in the nation where the best planning methods were to be applied — emphasizing broad scope, rather than focusing on individual parcels.

The impact of a rollback of the federal methane rule also could be significant because energy operations in neighboring states could produce more pollution that likely would drift into the state. Colorado already has a state-level air quality rule requiring companies drilling on public lands to control their emissions of methane, a heat-trapping gas linked to climate change. Oil and gas companies helped write the state rule, working with the Environmental Defense Fund.

On Tuesday, House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, argued that the BLM’s planning rule “dilutes local and state voices and centralizes power here in Washington D.C. … This puts special interest groups above local elected officials, which is not the way it was ever intended.”

Tipton made a similar argument in a prepared statement. He could not be reached to discuss his position.

Conservationists mobilized Tuesday, launching a lobbying blitz targeting senators and rallying their constituents.

“This is the modern way we do land-use planning. It provides for more of a public voice that we do not have now,” said Phil Hanceford, the Denver-based assistant director of the Wilderness Society’s BLM Action Center.

“These are our public lands. People should have more of a say in how they are managed. Otherwise, the wrong decisions can be made,” Hanceford said. “BLM land management plans control, for decades, how oil and gas is developed, conservation, and grazing – how every use of our public land is managed. The public should have more of a say in the process.”