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Environmentalists, feds face off over wilderness lawsuit
Judith Kohler Associated Press Writer
The clash over expanding oil and gas drilling in the West will play out in federal court beginning Jan. 12 when environmentalists challenge a deal between Utah and the Interior Department on proposed wilderness areas that critics argue sacrifices the region’s pristine areas for unbridled development.
The case before the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver stems from a 2003 agreement that settled a lawsuit by the state of Utah. That state opposed protecting federal land proposed by the public for wilderness designation.
The deal, though, reaches far beyond Utah; it applies to millions of acres throughout the West previously shielded from development while advocates lobbied for permanent protection.
“This affects millions of acres of our most pristine, remote wild lands in very fundamental ways for years to come,” said Jim Angell, a lawyer with the Denver office of Earthjustice, which will represent several environmental groups in a hearing Jan. 12 in the federal appeals court. Environmentalists argue deal an end-run Environmentalists argue that the agreement signed by former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt and Interior Secretary Gale Norton was an end-run around federal laws and left the public out of the discussion.
“It’s undemocratic. It’s not how public lands should be managed,” said Heidi McIntosh, conservation director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.
Since the deal was struck, oil and gas companies have leased some of the tracts overseen by the Bureau of Land Management in Utah and western Colorado. Land proposed as wilderness by various groups and Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., sit atop some of the largest natural gas reserves in the country.
Areas in dispute include red rock canyon country near the Colorado River in western Colorado and eastern Utah.
“I think that everyone understands that the Department of Interior’s No. 1 priority is development of oil and gas, no matter the cost,” McIntosh said. Federal officials say Clinton administration overstepped authority Federal officials, however, insist that BLM is charged with managing the public land for multiple uses. They say the Utah settlement is in line with federal law and the Clinton administration overstepped its authority when it declared that some land should be managed as wilderness until Congress made a decision.
Industry representatives have expressed frustration with the issue, saying they get caught in the middle.
“For us, minerals are where they are. We can’t move them to where they don’t overlay any other resource,” said Drew Bower, vice president of the Petroleum Association of Wyoming, a trade group.
She noted that the lands environmentalists are trying to protect were passed over when Congress in the 1970s gave BLM 15 years to inventory its land and recommend parcels that should be federal wilderness, which is off-limits to roads, development and motorized vehicles.
In 1991, BLM recommended that Congress designate 9.6 million acres of 22.8 million acres it assessed as wilderness; another 15.5 million acres were classified as wilderness study areas, which protects them until Congress acts. Issue when inventory period ended The Bush administration argues that the 15-year inventory period ended in 1991. Officials said setting aside more potential wilderness areas would violate the Federal Land Policy and Management Act.
Interior Secretary Norton wrote in an April 11, 2003, letter to Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, that wilderness areas are managed for a single use “and that any administrative decision to manage other lands as ‘wilderness areas’ outside of the 1964 Wilderness Act violates clear congressional direction.”
Interior Department spokesman John Wright said BLM can still evaluate land and manage it to maintain wilderness characteristics through its planning process, which includes public input.
Angell of Earthjustice said the Bush administration’s interpretation of the law is significantly different from other administrations — Republican and Democratic. He will argue in court that resolving the issue through a court-sanctioned settlement is unconstitutional because it’s binding on future administrations.
Angell added that the 15-year period for the BLM inventory was intended simply as a deadline, not “the close of a window.”
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