Imperial Irrigation District pitches Salton Sea plan

A plan to increase renewable energy production in and around the Salton Sea — and have utilities help finance the ailing lake’s ultimate restoration — was touted on Capitol Hill this week. (Photo: Omar Ornelas/The Desert Sun)

Raju Chebium
The Desert Sun

WASHINGTON – A plan to increase renewable energy production in and around the Salton Sea — and have utilities help finance the ailing lake's ultimate restoration — was touted on Capitol Hill this week.

Bruce Wilcox, a Salton Sea expert at the Imperial Irrigation District, said the agency's plan would generate about $3 billion over 30 years.

It won't be enough on its own to restore the 376-square-mile lake. But the plan, building momentum since last fall, represents a workable funding solution that has long eluded state and local officials.

Wilcox said it also gives Southern California's congressional delegation and local officials involved in the restoration more ammunition when they ask for the Obama administration's endorsement.

Since 1985, the federal government has contributed about $52 million to Salton Sea restoration, mostly for experimental projects, water-quality and salinity studies and ecosystem monitoring that experts say has helped them understand the science behind the lake's problems.

"What I think (federal officials) should be providing now is money to build things there," Wilcox said after speaking at an event organized by The Wilderness Society to highlight the need for more renewable energy projects on public lands nationwide.

"We're at a point now where we need to start a field laboratory approach – build a 1,000 acres, see how it works and adjust it accordingly," he added. "This is an attempt to get us started in small increments moving toward that bigger restoration."

U.S. Rep. Raul Ruiz said he is pushing the Obama administration to create a renewable-energy zone in the Salton Sea. That would be a preliminary step in making the IID project a reality.

In a brief interview after The Wilderness Society's event, where Ruiz was honored for his efforts to promote renewable energy projects on federal land, Ruiz said saving the Salton Sea requires widespread support.

"This is an all-hands-on-deck project," said the Palm Desert Democrat, who is a member of the House Natural Resources Committee.

"We need the federal government, state government, local government; we need private business. We need the tribes and we need the philanthropists."

State, local and federal leaders for years have debated how to save the dying Salton Sea, only to shelve the plans because of the huge costs associated with the project.

A $9 billion restoration plan unveiled by state leaders in 2007 never got an the California Legislature's endorsement or financing.

The sea's future has become a more pressing issue as time passes. A massive agriculture-to-urban water transfer scheduled for 2017 will further shrink the sea, expose potentially hazardous lake bed and cause widespread air quality and environmental woes.

The IID plan has yet to win state or federal blessings.

In an interview from California, IID General Manager Kevin Kelley said the plan does have the backing of the Riverside County Board of Supervisors.

The IID still awaits a response to a request to the Interior Department, made in February, to commit to allowing renewable energy projects on 80,000 acres it owns in the Salton Sea, he said.

The IID has already pledged to expand clean energy production on 120,000 acres it owns.

Much of that land is now under water, but is expected to become dry after 2017 as the Salton Sea recedes.

"I'd like to have a meaningful expression of support. I'd like a partner," Kelley said. "Getting the land commitment is a start. I'd like to add the 80,000 acres to the available inventory."

The Wilderness Society, or TWS, is backing House and Senate bills filed last year that would expand renewable energy on federal lands and use some of the money to shore up conservation efforts like in the Salton Sea.

But those measures haven't advanced and are unlikely to gain traction before the November elections.

Joshua Mantell, a government relations official at TWS, said he's optimistic Congress will pass the proposal after the election but before the end of this year.

Grand Canyon Watershed National Monument Proposed by Conservation Groups

by Morgan Skinner
KCSG News

St. George, UT - A proposed Grand Canyon Watershed National Monument submitted to the US Bureau of Land Management by the Center for Biological Diversity based in Tucson, Arizona, Grand Canyon Wildlands Council and The Wilderness Society, both headquartered in Flagstaff, Arizona, has prompted strong local reaction by public officials. Washington County Commissioner Allan Gardner told KCSG News "the proposal is another effort to permanently shutdown all uranium mining on the Arizona Strip that will cost millions in lost tax revenue to the counties involved."

Rachel Tueller, Public Affairs Officer for the BLM Arizona Strip District told KCSG News, "BLM did not solicit nor does it advocate the proposed national monument designation." When asked about the status of this proposal, she said, "It had been referred for review as are all citizen proposals."

The proposed monument has six priorities; (1) Stop old-growth ponderosa pine logging, (2) Protect cultural and archaeological sites, (3) Manage native wildlife and wildlife migration, (4) Reduce road density, (5) Provide voluntary retirement of grazing permits, and (6) Prevent new uranium mines.

Grand Canyon Watershed National Monument Executive Summary

• Total public land - 1.7-million acres
• Total privately held - 7,000 acres
• Number of tribes for whom the land holds significance - 6; Kaibab Paiute, Hopi, Zuni, Hualapi, Havasupai and Navajo
• Number of archeological sites - more than 3,000
• Number of acres containing ancient trees and old-growth forest - approximately 300,000
• Number of wildlife species on the federal
• Endangered Species - 4
• Number of wildlife species on the Arizona
• Species of greatest conservation need list - 22
• Number of creeks, springs and seeps - more than 125

Headwaters Economics, an independent nonprofit research group based in Bozeman, Montana, prepared a series of reports on the economic performance of western communities near national monuments. Each in-depth report shows important data and trends on demographics, jobs, income, and the performance of specific economic sectors. The research shows that the monument designations help to safeguard and highlight amenities that draw new residents, tourists and businesses to surrounding communities.

Western counties with protected public lands, like national monuments, were found to be more successful at attracting fast-growing economic sectors and as a result grew more quickly, on average, than counties without protected public lands. In addition, protected natural amenities, such as the pristine scenery found at Grand Staircase-Escalante also helped sustain property values and attract new investment.

The Reports:

• Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument
• Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument
• Vermilion National Monument

The conservation groups are networking to encourage a national monument designation even though they have encountered opposition in Congress among the representatives from western states where much of the federal land is located. Washington lawmakers, have introduced legislation to limit the president's use of the Antiquities Act without state and local community input. Thus far the various bills introduced are still pending in committees.

On March 23, Utah Governor Gary R. Herbert signed House Bill 148 that demands the federal government make good on the promises made in the 1894 Enabling Act to extinguish title to federal lands in Utah. The Governor was joined by US Senators Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee, Congressman Rob Bishop, Utah Representatives Ken Ivory and Roger Barrus and other stakeholders in a show of unity for the effort to return public lands to state control even though the legislation may be ruled unconstitutional. The legislation creates a principle-driven framework for a structured public dialogue, a potential legal challenge and path forward to re-balance Utah's relationship with the federal government, the Governor said.

The Antiquities Act

Since its passage by Congress in 1906, the Antiquities Act has been used for the preservation of public lands managed by government. Sixteen presidents have declared 132 national monuments under the act; eight Republican presidents, eight Democratic presidents. National park units such as the Grand Canyon, Statue of Liberty, Joshua Tree, Olympic, Zion, and Chesapeake and Ohio Canal were all established originally by presidential monument designation.

Bill Clinton created the most monuments, nineteen, and expanded three others. Arizona has the largest number of national monuments with eighteen followed by New Mexico with twelve and California with ten.

There are five National Monuments in Utah:

• Natural Bridges designated by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1908
• Timpanogos Cave designated by President Harding in 1922
• Hovenweep designated in 1923 by President Harding
• Cedar Breaks designated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933
• Grand Staircase-Escalante designated by President Clinton in 1996

Six federal agencies in four departments manage the 101 current National Monuments. A single agency, the National Park Service manages 96 monuments, while five are co-managed by two agencies. The Bureau of Land Managment manages sixteen National Monuments, two with the National Park Service and one with the US Forest Service. Only 75 of the NPS's 76 National Monuments are official units because the Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument overlaps with Lake Mead National Recreation Area.

Environmentalists feeling burned by rush to build solar projects

Local activists say national groups, focused on renewable energy, ignore projects' threat to the Mojave.

By Julie Cart
Los Angeles Times

AMARGOSA VALLEY, Calif. — April Sall gazed out at the Mojave Desert flashing past the car window and unreeled a story of frustration and backroom dealings.

Her small California group, the Wildlands Conservancy, wanted to preserve 600,000 acres of the Mojave. The group raised $45 million, bought the land and deeded it to the federal government.

The conservancy intended that the land be protected forever. Instead, 12 years after accepting the largest land gift in American history, the federal government is on the verge of opening 50,000 acres of that bequest to solar development.

Even worse, in Sall's view, the nation's largest environmental organizations are scarcely voicing opposition. Their silence leaves the conservancy and a smattering of other small environmental organizations nearly alone in opposing energy development across 33,000 square miles of desert land.

"We got dragged into this because the big groups were standing on the sidelines and we were watching this big conservation legacy practically go under a bulldozer," said Sall, the organization's conservation director. "We said, 'We can't be silent anymore.' "

Similar stories can be heard across the desert Southwest. Small environmental groups are fighting utility-scale solar projects without the support of what they refer to as "Gang Green," the nation's big environmental players.

Local activists accuse the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Defenders of Wildlife, the Wilderness Society and other venerable environmental groups of acquiescing to the industrialization of the desert because they believe large-scale solar power is essential to slowing climate change.

Janine Blaeloch, director of the Western Lands Project, a small public lands watchdog group, said Gang Green's members are compliant in order to make themselves more inviting to major foundations. In recent years, grants for projects focusing on climate change and energy have become the two top-funded issues in environmental philanthropy. Foundations have awarded tens of millions of dollars in grants to environmental groups that make renewable energy a top priority.

"It's not that they solely and directly make decisions based on funding, but they keep their eyes open to what foundations want," Blaeloch said.

As a result, "you've got enviros exactly where industry wanted them to be," she said.

Big environmental organizations say they have agonized over how to approach the issue. They acknowledge that development can have irreversible effects on ecosystems. But they are reluctant to stand in the way of renewable energy projects they regard as a vital response to climate change, which they consider the nation's most serious environmental challenge.

The Sierra Club, NRDC and Defenders of Wildlife filed suit last week to stop the troubled Calico solar project northeast of Los Angeles. But for the most part the big players have embraced solar development.

Instead of following the old adversarial formula of saying no to everything, they have adopted an approach they call, "Getting to yes."

'Green halo' effect

Grass-roots groups say that strategy has failed to protect the desert. What's worse, they say, is that the imprimatur of such groups as the Sierra Club has provided a '"green halo" to energy companies and the government — making it easy for them to ignore local environmental concerns.

Two major projects underway in the Mojave illustrate the divide between local and national groups.

Desert activists vigorously oppose the BrightSource Energy project in the east Mojave's Ivanpah Valley and NextEra's Genesis solar plant 20 miles west of Blythe. National groups have not mounted a strong challenge to either project.

When BrightSource was planning the Ivanpah installation, the big environmental players urged the firm to move the bulk of the project closer to Interstate 5 to avoid prime habitat for the desert tortoise, a protected species. The company responded by reducing its total footprint by 12%, which didn't solve the problem.

After construction began, large numbers of desert tortoises were discovered. According to federal biologists, BrightSource is now responsible for relocating and caring for 95% of all the tortoises expected to be found on all solar project sites in the Mojave.

Some rank-and-file Sierra Club members had wanted to sue to stop the project altogether, but the group's national board of directors vetoed that proposal in favor of a more neutral approach.

Separately, the Sierra Club has scolded some in the Southern California desert chapters for opposing solar projects. The national office issued a 42-page directive laying out the organization's policy regarding renewable energy and instructed local chapters to fall in line.

"It was pretty clear that the national club policy was to foster large-scale solar," said longtime Sierra Club member Joan Taylor. "I don't know how many times I've heard that building solar in the desert is going to save the world."

The NRDC's involvement at Ivanpah was constrained by a conflict of interest: NRDC senior attorneyRobert F. KennedyJr. is a BrightSource investor.

Abandonment urged

On the Genesis project, the Sierra Club and others met with NextEra executives and urged the company to abandon its plans for the site out of concern that

it is too close to a wilderness area. In addition, local groups warned the developer that the site contained sensitive cultural resources.

The project went ahead, only to become embroiled in controversy over the discovery of Native American cultural artifacts that halted construction on one-fifth of the site.

The Interior Department's plan to open a vast swath of desert to solar energy is another instance local activists say demonstrates the ineffectiveness of Big Green's approach.

In late 2010, environmental groups worked with energy companies and the government on a policy that restricted development to 677,000 acres in designated solar zones. Environmentalists left the table believing Interior would refine the agreement to even further reduce the land open to development.

Instead, not long after that compromise, Interior said 21 million acres would be available for development through a variance process, a change that no one in the environmental community supported. If the plan is approved as expected, the nation's leading environmental groups will have been outflanked by solar developers.

"The Sierra Club and the NRDC — their mission is to work on climate change" above all else, Sall said. "We refuse to compromise on that level."

The smaller groups have formed their own alliance, Solar Done Right, that supports renewable energy in previously disturbed or low-conflict lands. "We can have renewable energy — we can have tons of it — and we can do it in all the right ways," Sall said.

The Sierra Club's Barbara Boyle, senior lead for energy issues, said she understands the frustration of smaller groups. "I can appreciate that it doesn't seem that we have gotten what we want out of the process yet," she said.

Asked if the big players had been outmaneuvered by solar developers, Boyle said, "That's always possible."

But she said her 30 years of working for environmental causes have taught her that "the way that we win is through incremental progress."

"I have faith that we are going to get this right in the end," Boyle said. "We have made some mistakes, and that's really difficult. But it's not just any kind of development that we are working on here. We feel the urgency of getting as much renewable energy in California as soon as we can."

Leading environmental organizations fiercely dispute suggestions that they are influenced by major donors. But on solar development, they are fending off perceptions.

'Big Solar' proposal

Four years ago, the director of the Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies in Sacramento wrote a document called "Big Solar." The proposal by V. John White was a pitch for solar developers to hire his company to help roll out projects.

White is a former lobbyist for the Sierra Club and the NRDC. He also lobbies and consults for energy companies.

White wrote that developers could get cooperation from environmental groups by creating a $500,000 grant-making fund. The money ostensibly was for campaigns to tout the virtues of solar power, but the implication was unmistakable:

Give money to co-opt Big Green.

In the memo, White singled out two organizations — the Sierra Club and the NRDC — for grants. White says the fund was never created. But the strategy, coming from a former environmental lobbyist, raised the antennae of critics and invited scrutiny of funding sources.

The Energy Foundation is among the major funders of environmental groups today. It receives its money from large endowments, although not from the energy industry, and makes grants to further the goal of renewable energy. Over the last five years, the foundation has made $150 million in grants for renewable energy efforts, including $8.5 million to the NRDC and $6.2 million to the Sierra Club.

The Sierra Club's zeal to eliminate coal-fired power plants led it to praise natural gas as an acceptable "bridge fuel." Club officials rewrote their gift acceptance policy when it was discovered that from 2007 to 2010 the organization accepted $26 million from individuals with or subsidiaries of Chesapeake Energy, one of the country's largest natural gas companies.

At the NRDC, public lands attorney Johanna Wald bristled at the suggestion that she or the organization has taken it easy on solar projects in return for grant money.

"It's ridiculous," Wald said. "I'm working around the clock on these issues. I couldn't be bought off, I haven't been bought off and I won't be bought off."

White has become something of a kingmaker in California on renewable energy, deciding who will represent environmental interests on various planning groups overseeing renewable energy development.

Every appointee he has chosen came from a major environmental group that supports most solar development.

As insiders in the process, Gang Green has framed the issues, Sall said, "basically saying we have to pave over huge areas of the West with solar or we are all going to burn up with climate change."

"That set a tone that we still have not overcome."

Los Angeles Times researcher Maloy Moore contributed to this report.

Obama Administration Backs Away From Wilderness Plan

Wilderness Society president "deeply disappointed" at the decision

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar at left as Bureau of Land Management Director Bob Abbey speaks about an initiative that would allow the BLM to designate and protect wilderness areas on Thursday, Dec. 23, 2010 outside of REI in Denver. (AP)

FoxNews.com

Washington, D.C. -- The Obama administration is dropping a controversial plan to restore eligibility for federal wilderness protection to millions of acres of undeveloped land in the West after the GOP-led House put up a strong fight.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a memo Wednesday that his agency will not designate any of those public lands as "wild lands." Instead Salazar said officials will work with members of Congress to develop recommendations for managing millions of acres of undeveloped land in the West. A copy of the memo was obtained by The Associated Press.

Salazar's decision reverses an order issued in December to reverse a Bush-era policy that opened some Western lands to commercial development.

A budget deal approved by Congress prevented the Interior Department from spending money to implement the wilderness policy. GOP lawmakers complained that the plan would circumvent Congress' authority and could be used to declare a vast swath of public land off-limits to oil-and-gas drilling.

Republican governors in Utah, Alaska and Wyoming, filed suit to block the plan, saying it would hurt their state's economies by taking federal lands off the table for mineral production and other uses.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, hailed Salazar's reversal of what he called a "misguided" policy that would have harmed Utah's economy.

"Since the majority of land in Utah is owned by the federal government, it is critically important to strike a balance between the needs of our local communities and the protection of public lands that truly do have wilderness characteristics rather than pandering to environmental extremists," Hatch said. "Today's announcement is a positive step toward restoring that balance."

Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Colo., a member of the House Natural Resources Committee, also cheered the announcement, calling it a "positive."

"I'm glad to see the administration move in the right direction on this," he said. "We all share the common bond of loving our public lands, and ensuring access to them is important. We will continue to be vigilant and make sure that future designations of public lands are made by consensus, not by executive fiat."

William Meadows, president of The Wilderness Society, said he was deeply disappointed at the decision, which he said ignores the Bureau of Land Management's obligation to protect wilderness values.

"Without strong and decisive action from the Department of Interior, wilderness will not be given the protection it is due, putting millions of acres of public lands at risk," Meadows said.

Bob Abbey, director of the land management bureau, said the December directive would not have required protection for any particular areas. Designation as wild land could only be made after public comments and review and would not necessarily prohibit motor vehicle use or the staking of new mining claims, Abbey said.

The measure blocking implementation of the wild lands policy was included in a budget bill for the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30.

U.S. works to speed solar energy development in the West

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar signs an order that sets aside some 676,000 acres of federal land -- more than half in California -- for study and environmental reviews.

By Julie Cart
Los Angeles Times

The Obama administration on Monday announced that it would put solar energy development in the West on a fast track, with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar signing an order that sets aside more than 1,000 square miles of public land for two years of study and environmental reviews.

Although the clean-energy initiative identifies some 676,000 acres of federal land for study, more than half -- 351,000 acres in the Mojave Desert -- are in California. According to maps released by the Interior Department, the solar project areas abut the border of Joshua Tree National Park, the Mojave Preserve and two national wildlife refuges in the southeastern part of the state.

The proposed California solar-generating areas are projected to have the annual capacity to produce 39,000 to 70,000 megawatts of electricity at full development -- enough to serve millions of homes. There are three large solar projects undergoing environmental review in the state.

President Obama has promised to promote the use of federal land for the production of alternative energy and has set a goal of obtaining 10% of the nation's electricity from renewable sources by 2010. Salazar vowed to have 13 "commercial-scale" solar projects under construction by the end of 2010.

Federal land managers have already announced plans to establish areas of concentrated wind and geothermal energy harvesting. The Bureau of Land Management has gotten about 470 renewable energy project applications. Those include 158 active solar applications, covering 1.8 million acres.

Monday's announcement in Las Vegas opens up land in six Western states to leasing by private companies. "We are putting a bull's-eye on the development of solar energy on our public lands," Salazar said.

Conservation groups reacted to the announcement with praise but cautioned that even so-called green projects could conflict with protected lands and sensitive species.

"We support the identification of the best places for renewable energy on public lands," said Alex Daue of the Wilderness Society. "We can't have a repeat of the oil and gas industry, where it's spread wide across the landscape anywhere they want. We need a focused look at places where there's the least conflict and highest opportunity for success."

In California, the Mojave Desert is already the scene of intense interest from energy companies and a land rush to apply for solar leases. Environmentalists are monitoring maps so that leasing doesn't take place in wilderness, areas of importance for wildlife and other resources, and high-value recreation sites. The Mojave is home to all of that, including national parks, threatened and endangered species and one of the West's most popular off-road-vehicle recreation areas.

Salazar said federal agencies had already ruled out solar leasing on protected lands and would examine potential effects on wildlife before allowing projects to proceed. The two-year environmental study will cost $22 million, he said.

Lost In An Energy Wilderness

Energy Policy: The House approves a Senate-passed omnibus bill that puts 2 million more acres of energy-rich land off-limits. We need a government that leads us out of the energy wilderness and not into it.

Opinion
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

Last Wednesday, the House of Representatives passed on a 285-148 vote the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 (S.22), which confirms our theory that no good comes from legislation labeled "comprehensive" or "omnibus."

S.22 is a smorgasbord of 160 bills totaling more than 1,300 pages and, no, we're not sure how many who voted for it actually read it. A stimulus bill it is not, for it locks up an additional 2 million acres to the 107 million acres of federally owned wilderness areas. That total is more than the area of Montana and Wyoming combined.

Speaking of Wyoming, 1.1 million of these newly restricted acres are in that state. This bill, which also provides $1 billion for a water project designed to save 500 salmon in California, takes about 8.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 300 million barrels of oil out of production in that state, according to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

The energy resources walled off by this bill would nearly match the annual production levels of our two natural gas production states — Texas and Alaska. As Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., points out: "We are not suffering from a lack of wilderness areas in the United States. According to the Census Bureau, we have 106 million acres of developed land and 107 million acres of (officially declared) wilderness land."

Earlier this year, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar canceled 77 Utah oil and gas leases that had gone through seven years of studies, negotiations and land-use planning. They were rejected because temporary drilling operations might be "visible" from several national parks more than a mile away. We are not making this up.

Some of these parcels are in or near the Green River Formation, an oil-rich region in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming that's been called the "Persia of the West."

This formation has the largest known oil shale deposits in the world, holding from 1.5 trillion to 1.8 trillion barrels of crude. The Energy Department's Argonne National Laboratory indicates 800 billion of these barrels are recoverable with current technology.

In comparison with Saudi Arabia's oil resources, America's recoverable oil shale resources are nearly three times as large, according to a 2008 report by the Utah Mining Association. As the report notes, the West's oil shale provides America with the "potential to be completely energy self-sufficient with no demands on external sources."

According to the BLM, 16% of the 607 million acres of land owned by the federal government is designated as wilderness in the form of 708 National Wilderness Areas located in the U.S. This bill adds over 80 new wilderness designations or additions to federal lands.

Paul Spitler of the Wilderness Society told CNSNews this is just dandy. "There are some landscapes that are simply more important for their scenic, natural, recreational and ecological values than they are for oil and gas development," he said.

We beg to differ. You can see the sun setting on America's energy and economic future over these landscapes.

Most of the locked-up lands are in Western states where there's enough oil shale to satisfy America's needs for the next 200 years. Modern technology can extract these vast resources from the earth with a minimal footprint.

Technology for shale-oil extraction is certainly further along than getting energy from switch grass or producing cellulosic ethanol. If we're going to stimulate anything, let's stimulate shale-oil production.

It took Moses 40 years to lead his people out of their wilderness to the Promised Land. The green lobby and its friends in Congress are leading the American people in the opposite direction.

Not so dead on arrival

The unlikely success of the Clinton Roadless Rule

by Rob Inglis
High Country News

The Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which Bill Clinton signed into law eight days before he left office, protected 58.5 million acres of national forest land from logging and energy development. It was one of the boldest conservation measures in the history of federal land management, but it seemed doomed to a very short lifespan. Because it was only an administrative rule, it could be overturned by the next administration, which strongly opposed it.

But nearly eight years later, the Clinton Roadless Rule remains in effect for 35.6 million acres of national forest in seven Western states. Idaho has adopted, and Colorado is about to adopt, state-specific roadless regulations that fall short of the Clinton rule but still provide protection for large swaths of land. (Roadless lands in Wyoming and Utah are currently unprotected.) The Clinton rule's survival still hangs on the outcome of two ongoing court cases, but even if it were to succumb, it is likely that Democrats in Washington would replace it with either a new administrative rule or legislative protection for roadless areas. Thanks to the incompetence of the Bush administration and the tenacity of some never-say-die environmental lawyers, the long-shot maneuver might have worked.

The Forest Service first inventoried its roadless areas in the 1970s, after the 1964 Wilderness Act directed it to determine which of its lands were eligible for wilderness protection. Some of this land was preserved in a piecemeal fashion, through state-specific bills. But much of it stayed unprotected. The goal of the Clinton Roadless Rule was to systematically protect these remaining road-free lands without going through the arduous wilderness-designation process. More than 1.5 million people commented on the proposed rule, and over 95 percent of them were in favor.

The Bush administration at first thought it could get rid of the rule quietly, simply by not defending it against lawsuits from timber companies. "They didn't go about it very directly, at least not at the outset," says Mike Anderson of The Wilderness Society. "It was more of a subterranean strategy of trying to get the courts to take down the rule." It wasn't until 2005 that the administration launched a frontal assault, issuing a weaker replacement rule that required governors to petition the Forest Service to protect their states' roadless land. But the administration had done only a cursory environmental assessment of the new rule, leaving it vulnerable to legal challenge. In 2006, 9th Circuit District Court Judge Elizabeth LaPorte ruled that the administration had violated the National Environmental Policy Act in establishing the new rule. She overturned it and reinstated the original Roadless Rule. Her reinstatement stood until August of this year, when 10th Circuit District Court Judge Clarence Brimmer issued an injunction against the 2001 rule, saying, as he had in a previous injunction, that it also violated NEPA.

This left the nation's roadless areas in a curious legal position, with one judge saying that the 2001 rule was the law of the land and another judge of equal rank, but in a different judicial circuit, saying that it wasn't. To ease this tension, LaPorte has reduced the scope of her 2006 decision, limiting it to the 9th Circuit plus New Mexico until a randomly selected panel of three appeals judges rules on the validity of the decision. The three judges are all Republican appointees -- two of them appointed by George W. Bush -- so they may well reverse LaPorte's decision and reinstate the Bush rule. Even if LaPorte's 2006 decision withstands the appeal, Judge Brimmer's latest decision -- which is currently being appealed to the 10th Circuit -- could still undo the Roadless Rule.

But even if the Clinton Roadless Rule ultimately goes down in the courts, it has effectively protected the nation's roadless areas -- in which only seven miles of new roads have been constructed -- for the past eight years. "The Bush administration has basically blown it," says Craig Allin, professor of political science at Cornell College. "They have spent eight years trying to abolish the rule, and they have been so incompetent in their efforts that it's going to be left for the next administration."

Obama, who has expressed support for roadless preservation, could craft another administrative rule protecting most or all of the nation's roadless areas. The more difficult -- but more permanent -- way to protect roadless lands is through legislation. Even with Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, however, any bill would have to deal with the threat of filibuster. "If there are 60 votes in the Senate, a statute like that might very well pass," says Allin. "Without sixty votes, its chances are poor."

If such a bill does pass, the Clinton Roadless Rule will be remembered not just for buying time but also for changing the terms of the roadless debate. "It's completely changed the context of how we talk about these undeveloped areas," says Franz Matzner of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "Ten years ago, these places were just the places we were going to log next. Now, if someone wants to log a roadless area, they've got a fight on their hands, and they know it. People are recognizing that their forests have more to offer than just board feet."

Federal energy-corridor plan criticized

By Stephen Speckman
Deseret News

Critics last week flayed a new federal plan for about 6,000 miles of energy corridors on nearly 3 million acres in 11 states, saying the strategy fails to protect "treasured" public lands.

In the meantime, state lawmakers endorsed a proposed bill Wednesday that seeks to create a task force to focus on where to site utility transmission corridors in Utah. Rocky Mountain Power's manager of government affairs, Kevin Boardman, told members of the Public Utilities and Technology Interim Committee that his company would like to be part of the task force.

"I think going forward this is going to be a primary issue before the state," Boardman said. He referred to the "challenges" his company recently encountered when Box Elder County residents, citing health concerns, objected to a $4.1 billion, 90-mile corridor running through the county into Idaho.

The bill to create the task force will be considered during the 2009 legislative general session, which begins in January.

The Wilderness Society said in a statement Thursday that a newly proposed federal plan plots a corridor a "stone's throw away" from the Paria Canyon-Vermillion Cliffs Wilderness Area. The group also pointed out that another corridor would cut through Moab and skirt within a few yards the boundary of Arches National Park.

Watchdogs also fear a corridor will be allowed to slice through Utah's Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. The new corridors in Utah would be used for oil and natural gas pipelines and electric transmission lines.

The Bureau of Land Management and Department of Energy were given some credit Thursday for moving certain "objectionable" corridors, imposing protective management conditions and clarifying that pipelines cannot be sited without an environmental review.

But the plans cannot be considered a success "because they inadequately address renewable energy, cut out the public's right to protest and will turn national monuments and wildlife refuges into industrialized energy corridors," said Wilderness Society senior counsel Nada Culver.

Bush administration pushing hard to open Utah lands to energy development

By Patty Henetz
The Salt Lake Tribune

The Bush administration is in its final push to open millions of acres in Utah and the West to energy development and along the way, critics warn, possibly destroy prospects for wilderness designation for thousands of acres of redrock desert.

On Friday, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management will release five of six long-range management plans that will open 80 percent of 11 million acres in southern and eastern Utah to oil and gas drilling and designate 20,000 miles of motorized recreation routes.

The actions of the lame-duck administration outrage conservationists, especially since the BLM's plans would have the force of statute for at least 10 years and would be difficult to alter.

"These [plans] are a very obvious attempt of the Bush administration to cement its legacy in Utah," said Steve Bloch, an attorney for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. "[They] are a road map to ruin for Utah's magnificent public lands."

And on Election Day, when citizens most likely will be focused elsewhere, the BLM will announce an oil- and gas-lease sale involving large swaths of public land considered worthy of wilderness status - including artifact-rich Nine Mile Canyon, Desolation Canyon and areas around Dinosaur National Monument.

The actual sale will be held the Friday before Christmas - "the bow atop the massive gift to the oil and gas industry we've seen for the last eight years," said Suzanne Jones, regional director of The Wilderness Society's Central Rockies office.

But the BLM is acting on order from Congress, which in 2001 decided the plans, some of them 30 years old, needed recrafting to reflect new priorities, including increased demand from oil and gas developers and explosive growth in off-road recreation.

In May, a Bush administration study re-emphasized policies established in 2005 that would speed carbon-based energy development with minimal restraints unless federal public-land managers found it "absolutely necessary" to preserve other resources. The directive urged the BLM to find ways around "obstacles" to drilling, which the administration identified as well-established environmental-protection law, municipal development, private-property concerns, wildlife and national parks.

The Moab, Kanab, Vernal, Richfield and Price district plans are now final. Only the Monticello plan remains pending, waiting for state officials to sign off.

In a Thursday announcement, the BLM called the achievement "a collaborative effort in balanced stewardship for the future" that included protections for environmentally sensitive areas while supporting energy resources.

The agency said 53 percent of the more than 8 million acres open to oil and gas leasing would be subject to stricter environmental controls than before the plans were drawn, with about 18 percent of the 11 million acres unavailable to leasing under any circumstances. Less than a half of 1 percent of the public lands would be protected for their special beauty and solitude.

The resource plans came in slightly past their Sept. 30 fiscal-year deadline and cost $35 million, said Don Ogaard, lead planner for the BLM's Utah office. Though 87 protests numbering several hundred pages were filed during a 30-day period, all of them were dismissed or resolved to the BLM's satisfaction, he said.

During public-comment periods, the plans drew fire from all sides. Oil-industry representatives complained of too many restrictions on exploration, and county officials agreed. Conservationists objected to drilling in sensitive lands and laying out so many trails for motorized recreation because OHV users represent a small minority of those who visit the area. Off-roaders disliked the new directive to close Utah's BLM lands to cross-country travel in favor of a trail system. The Environmental Protection Agency criticized the Price, Moab and Vernal plans for inadequate air-quality reviews, lack of analysis of OHV impacts and a failure to evaluate energy extraction's effects on global climate disruption.

Highlights from each area's plan

Monticello: Anasazi ruins in Cedar Mesa, Dark Canyon and Butler Wash will take a back seat to hikers, cyclists and off-roaders when the BLM eliminates protection associated with areas of critical environmental concern in favor of special-recreation designation.

Richfield: Nearly all of more than 2 million acres of public lands in six counties surrounding Richfield will be open to oil and gas drilling and off-highway recreation. OHVs will be allowed into areas of Factory Butte previously closed for endangered-species protection and wilderness-quality lands.

Price: Energy development is the top priority for 2.5 million acres in Carbon and Emery counties and that's fine with county officials who believe their share of the revenues will make possible a more diverse economy in the future. Nearly 1 million acres previously found to have wilderness traits likely won't ever be so designated.

Vernal: A public outcry about wildlife, wilderness and cultural resources in the Vernal area led federal officials to close 186,917 acres to drilling, nearly three times the amount of land the agency wanted off-limits when it released its draft plan for the Book Cliffs and the Uinta Basin a year ago.

Moab: Hiking, biking, grazing, drilling, hunting and off-roading advocates squared off over the plan for 1.8 million acres of red-rock desert near Moab, leaving the BLM to sort out solutions that satisfy few and anger many.

Kanab: The plan for 550,000 acres of public land in Kane and Garfield counties includes 1,462 miles of OHV trails. About 27,000 acres will be managed for wilderness qualities, but the fine print says the BLM would allow OHV travel across those acres, likely making them ineligible for future wilderness designation.

Pro-energy group seeks probe of environmental lobbyists

By Lee Davidson
Deseret News

A pro-energy development group is calling for Congress to investigate possible illegal coordination between an arm of the Interior Department and lobbyists for environmental groups.

Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, announced last week that Interior's inspector general is already conducting its own probe into whether environmental lobbyists improperly coordinated with officials at Interior's National Landscape Conservation System.

But Americans for American Energy President Greg Schnacke said Wednesday that "the congressional oversight process must be brought into play as well."

He added, "The Wilderness Society and the National Wildlife Federation spend millions of dollars pursuing an anti-American energy political agenda. The question we have is how far does this extend and is it more extensive than simply the NLCS?"

Bishop, ranking Republican on the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands, last week called for those NLCS employees being reviewed by the inspector general investigation to relinquish duties until the probe is completed.

Federal law generally prohibits federal employees from using appropriated funds or their official positions to lobby Congress. Americans for American Energy worries that some NLCS officials may have met at Wilderness Society offices to coordinate lobbying strategy and messages with environmental groups.

"You can't tell me this is an isolated incident," Schnacke said. "The political agenda of the NWF and the Wilderness Society is too broad and touches more in the Interior Department than just the NLCS."

He added, "If the (congressional) committees refuse to conduct such oversight (and look into the matter), it will be sending a message to the American people that it intends to turn a blind eye to such activities."

The NLCS was created in 2000 to protect nationally significant landscapes recognized for their cultural, ecological or scientific values, including several national monuments given to the Bureau of Land Management to manage. Among lands it oversees is Utah's Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

Americans for American Energy is a Denver-based group that says it is dedicated to promoting greater energy independence for America. Its web site says Utah Rep. Aaron Tilton, R-Springville, is its vice president.

Tilton was defeated at the GOP convention this year. He is an energy consultant looking into building a nuclear power plant in Utah, and was on a House committee that oversees nuclear power. He was criticized for not declaring a conflict of interest until his ties were later publicized by the media.

Of course, the latest probe comes after the Interior Department recently found that officials at its Minerals Management Service engaged in sexual relationships with energy industry representatives, and accepted gifts from them.

DOI IG investigating coordination by BLM and enviro groups

Noelle Straub, E&E Daily reporter
Environment & Energy Newsletter

The Interior inspector general is investigating possible illegal coordination between lobbyists for environmental groups and federal officials of the National Landscape Conservation System, Rep. Rob Bishop said yesterday.

Interior officials informed his office about the investigation into the NLCS, which is a division of the Bureau of Land Management, the Utah Republican said in a statement.

E-mails and other documents show extensive coordination between top NLCS officials and environmental lobbyists, said Bishop, the top Republican on the National Parks, Forests and Public Lands Subcommittee.

The main groups involved appear to be the Wilderness Society and the National Wildlife Federation, a House GOP aide said. At some point NLCS officials had weekly meetings with these and other groups, often at the Wilderness Society's office, to coordinate lobbying strategy and messaging, the aide said.

E-mails show that NLCS officials requested environmental groups to write budget language, the aide added. E-mails also talk about coordinating lobbying efforts, setting up NLCS events, sending out draft memorandums for each other to review and preparing for congressional hearing.

The federal and advocacy officials exchanged resumes and job announcements in their respective organizations and BLM, the aide said. Travel documents are still being collected and reviewed and will be part of the investigation, the aide added.

Federal law generally prohibits federal employees from using appropriated funds or their official positions to lobby Congress.

Kevin Mack, NLCS campaign director with the Wilderness Society, said he was unaware of the investigation. "I don't know what the investigation is about, have not been called by the IG, so I can't say anything more than that," Mack said.

Both his groups work on public lands issues and are in contact with many people related to their work, Mack added. "I don't know what 'there' is there."

NWF spokeswoman Jennifer Jones said the group has not been contacted by the
IG's office.

Interior spokeswoman Tina Kreisher said the department had no comment at this time. An inspector general spokesman could not be reached by press time.

Bishop said the Interior Department should act quickly to halt any improper activities involving advocacy groups and the NLCS. He also called on employees involved in the investigation to step aside from their positions until the inspector general finishes his work.

"The department must insist that any employee involved in violations of the
anti-lobbying law step aside until the inspector general or the Justice Department has reviewed his or her conduct," Bishop said. "Just as the employees of the royalty-in-kind program at MMS learned, we will not tolerate misconduct by public officials."

Bishop was referring to a sex, drugs and financial favors investigation of Minerals Management Service employees recently completed by the Interior inspector general, on which the full committee held a hearing Sept. 18.

Former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt established NLCS during the Clinton
administration to grant protections to ecologically and historically valuable lands controlled by BLM.

But Babbitt's designation did not codify the system, meaning a later Interior secretary could dissolve it. When the House approved a bill in April codifying it, Bishop complained the House Rules Committee blocked GOP amendments, including one by him that would have addressed the private property rights he said were threatened by what he called a "vague legislative entity."

Dispute over roads in Emery County heats up

By Aaron Falk
Deseret News




Link Flat, Emery County, Utah


The fight between the state and the Bureau of Land Management over a number of closed roads in wilderness areas continues, and a handful of environmental groups wants in the mix.

Attorneys for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, the Wilderness Society and the Sierra Club argued Tuesday in U.S. District Court the groups have the right to intervene in the state's 2005 lawsuit over control of seven dirt roads in Emery County's San Rafael Swell.

In the lawsuit, the state and Emery County lay claim to the roads under RS 2477, a statute that dates back to 1860 but was repealed in 1976. Though it was repealed, any route in use before then might come under RS 2477.

Federal officials and environmental activists, however, argue opening the roads will have a negative impact on the area. A BLM attorney said he doesn't want SUWA intervening, but an attorney for the environmental groups said neither the state nor federal government has the best interest of Utah's wildlands in mind.

"There's a long and historic disconnect" between SUWA and the BLM, attorney Edward Zukoski said. "Forgive us if we're a little skeptical."

Where the BLM has taken "baby steps" toward environmental protection, he said, SUWA would like to see greater strides. Whatever the case, the state's attempt to wrest control of the roads "drives a stake through the heart of that progress," Zukoski said.

Roger R. Fairbanks, the assistant attorney general in the suit, said the BLM has closed roads leading into wilderness-quality areas, in some instances placing boulders in the roadway. If the state is successful in winning control of the rights of way, the roads could be improved and widened to two lanes.

Zukoski said improved roads will mean increased traffic in the areas, but Fairbanks said the roads would not be improved beyond their condition in 1976.

"The notion that we want to go out and pave wilderness is fiction," he said.

Late last year, the state dropped a lawsuit against the BLM over control of roadways in six counties because the roads were already highly developed and the parties did not disagree over their use, Fairbanks said. State officials have continued to fight to open roads in Canyonlands National Park, Deep Creek and the San Rafael Swell.

A federal appellate court has already denied SUWA's attempt to intervene in the Canyonlands suit, saying the group's interests were already being represented by the BLM. Last week, however, a federal judge permitted SUWA to intervene in the lawsuit concerning Deep Creek.

U.S. District Judge Dee Benson will now decide if the activist group has the right to intervene in the Emery County suit.

Greens can enter case over roads in Juab

State and county are suing U.S. government over ownership of roads in wilderness study area

By Patty Henetz
The Salt Lake Tribune

Three conservation organizations will be allowed to intervene in a case in which Juab County and the state sued the federal government over who owns three roads in western Utah's Deep Creek Mountains.

U.S. District Judge Tena Campbell this week granted the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, the Sierra Club and The Wilderness Society the right to be defendants in the lawsuit in which the state and county seek ownership of the roads.

Campbell agreed with the conservationists' arguments that they cannot rely on federal land agencies to adequately represent their defense of wilderness in cases involving a Civil War-era law known as Revised Statute 2477.

"Conservationists now will have a seat at the table on these RS2477 claims," SUWA conservation director Heidi McIntosh said Thursday. "We will be in the courthouse instead of standing on the steps with the doors locked."

But the state doesn't believe the organizations should be allowed to intervene since they had no claim of ownership at all.

"We're disappointed in the ruling," said Assistant Utah Attorney General Roger Fairbanks.

Bureau of Land Management state office spokeswoman Mary Wilson declined to comment because the lawsuit remains active.

At issue is how federally designated wilderness-study areas ought to be managed so as to preserve the special qualities of beauty and remoteness that led the BLM to list them in the first place. Roads that cross wilderness or wilderness-quality lands have become flash points in an increasingly polarized dispute.

Key to wilderness status is whether the land is roadless, which does not mean literally unmarked. Rather, the BLM in its survey of potential wilderness tracts limited study areas to those where there were no "substantially noticeable" roads.

McIntosh said the BLM wouldn't have included Tom's Creek, Granite Canyon and Trout Creek canyon roads in wilderness-study areas had they been well-established. Further, she said, they are not part of the state's transportation highway network.

Fairbanks said SUWA was assigning a modern definition to a 19th-century highway statute. Back in 1866, he said, there were no paved roads.

"Highways were wagon trails," Fairbanks said. "These roads are part of Juab County's highway system."

The roads, he added, are definitely noticeable.

Utah doesn't want to pave them, Fairbanks said.

But they should remain open to Snake Valley residents who have used them for generations to reach favorite camping or picnicking areas.

What is RS2477?

Revised Statute 2477, part of an 1866 mining law, granted rights of way across public land until it was repealed by Congress in 1976. When that happened, existing rights of way were grandfathered in. The definition of "existing" was at the heart of a 2005 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that said the U.S. Bureau of Land Management must defer to state law when assessing counties' road-ownership claims. Under Utah law, existing roads are those that had 10 years of continuous use and county maintenance before 1976. Continuous-use claims now must be decided road by road in federal court.

Roadless rule is tossed out again

Western state set to rewrite rules on use of 9.3 million acres of public land

Associated Press

CHEYENNE, WYO. -- A federal judge in Wyoming has overturned a Clinton-era ban on road construction in nearly 60 million acres of national forest, extending a long-running dispute over U.S. Forest Service rules for large sections of undeveloped land.

U.S. District Judge Clarence Brimmer's ruling on Tuesday is the latest turn in a legal battle over the Clinton administration rule that limited logging and other development in roadless areas that make up nearly a third of national forest land.

Brimmer issued a permanent injunction against the so-called "roadless rule," saying that the ban was enacted in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act and the Wilderness Act.

"The Forest Service, in an attempt to bolster an outgoing President's environmental legacy, rammed through an environmental agenda that itself violates the country's well-established environmental laws," Brimmer wrote.

The ruling reflects a similar decision Brimmer issued in 2003 in response to a lawsuit filed by Wyoming challenging the roadless rule. Brimmer's 2003 ruling was rendered moot when the Bush administration decided not to appeal and instead issued its own rules for roadless areas.

Conservation groups and attorneys general from Oregon, Washington, California and New Mexico later challenged the Bush policy, which required governors to petition the federal government to protect roadless areas in their states.

In 2006, U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Laporte in San Francisco reinstated the 2001 rule created by the Clinton administration. That prompted Wyoming to renew its complaint in federal district court.

On Tuesday, environmentalists vowed to appeal Brimmer's ruling to the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, while also downplaying the scope of the decision.

Mike Anderson, an attorney with The Wilderness Society, said it was his opinion that the California decision was still in effect.

"It is not in any way overturned or compromised by Judge Brimmer's decision in Wyoming today," Anderson said. "What it does do is create two conflicting court decisions in different federal courts, different states, both issuing decisions with nationwide impact."

Wyoming Attorney General Bruce Salzburg praised Brimmer's ruling, saying the injunction was appropriate "in light of the potential harm the roadless rule poses to our national forests due to beetle infestation and forest fires."

"We anticipate an appeal by either the United States or one or more of the interveners," Salzburg said. "As such, we consider the matter still in litigation."

Attempts to reach the Forest Service for comment Tuesday evening were unsuccessful.

Observers said it was unclear whether Brimmer's ruling would have any effect on the two states -- Idaho and Colorado -- that are working their way through the Bush administration's policy for setting aside roadless areas. Neither state has completed the process.

"I would say it further clouds the legal background for those states' rule making," Anderson said.

In Idaho, federal officials said last month that they hoped to issue a final draft rule for the state's roadless backcountry in September and send it to President Bush for approval. Idaho is home to 9.3 million acres of roadless lands.

"My assumption is they will still proceed with rule making for Idaho," said Jonathan Oppenheimer, of the Boise-based Idaho Conservation League.

Wyoming Judge Again Blocks Roadless Area Conservation Rule

Environment News Service



WASHINGTON, DC (ENS) - The national nonprofit Wilderness Society said it will challenge Tuesday's decision by a federal judge in Wyoming to block the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule.

For the second time, U.S. District Judge Clarence Brimmer issued a permanent injunction against the Clinton era roadless rule, saying it violated the National Environmental Policy Act and the Wilderness Act.

The case was brought, for the second time, by the State of Wyoming against the U.S. Department of Agriculture and other federal agencies.

Environmentalists believe that Judge Brimmer's order conflicts with, but does not overturn, a 2006 decision by a California federal magistrate judge that upheld the Roadless Rule.

Judge Brimmer's injunction puts at risk 58.5 million acres of pristine national forest lands in 38 states that were protected from road building, logging and other development by a directive of President Bill Clinton to the U.S. Forest Service issued in 1999.

The public process initiated by that directive concluded with the promulgation of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule just eight days before the end of the Clinton administration.

More than two million public comments in favor of the roadless rule were received during the comment period, which included 187 public hearings across the country.

Yet, Judge Brimmer did not give weight to the 18 month-long public process and numerous public comments. He did give weight to then Wyoming Governor Jim Geringer's complaint that the public comment period was "extraordinarily short."

"The Forest Service, in an attempt to bolster an outgoing President's environmental legacy, rammed through an environmental agenda that itself violates the country's well-established environmental laws," Judge Brimmer wrote in his injunction order.

The judge wrote, "The Forest Service's preordained conception of what a roadless area would be, and its schedule for implementing the final rule, caused the Forest Service to drive the Roadless Rule through the administrative process without weighing the pros and cons of reasonable alternatives to the Roadless Rule. At no time did the Forest Service stop to consider whether Roadless Rule was the best idea for the greatest number of people."

Mike Anderson, an attorney with The Wilderness Society, said the group will appeal Judge Brimmer's order to the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver.

The Roadless Rule has been the subject of repeated lawsuits from both opponents and supporters.

• In July 2003, Judge Brimmer rejected the rule in a lawsuit brought by the state of Wyoming, which has about 3.5 million acres of national forests subject to protections set forth by the rule.


• In May 2005, the Bush administration replaced the Roadless Rule with the State Petitions Rule that required governors to petition the U.S. Department of Agriculture to protect national forests in their states.


• Environmentalists sued to reinstate the Roadless Rule. In September 2006, Judge Elizabeth Laporte, Magistrate for the U.S. District Court for Northern California, ruled that the administration had illegally repealed the roadless rule.


• The judge set aside 2005 State Petitions Rule and reinstated the Roadless Rule nationwide, except in Alaska's Tongass National Forest.


• On November 29, 2006, Judge Laporte issued an injunction halting all activities inconsistent with the Roadless Rule. In her injunction, Judge Laporte stated that because the 2001 rule had been repealed illegally, all projects in roadless areas inconsistent with that rule were also illegal and must be halted.


• On February 6, 2007 Judge Laporte issued a final injunction, clarifying that her November 2006 injunction extended to oil and gas drilling permits as well as leases issued since May 2005.

In his order issued Tuesday, Judge Brimmer wrote that Magistrate Judge Laporte's injunction had the effect of "surreptitiously" reinstituting the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule although he had previously decided it was illegal.

Anderson says he believes Laporte's decision is still in effect. "It is not in any way overturned or compromised by Judge Brimmer's decision in Wyoming today," Anderson told the Associated Press. "What it does do is create two conflicting court decisions in different federal courts, different states, both issuing decisions with nationwide impact."

Wyoming Attorney General Bruce Salzburg said the injunction was appropriate because roads might be needed in national forests to fight fires and insect infestations.

Conservation groups that intervened in the case in support of the federal agencies are the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, Defenders of Wildlife, National Audubon Society, Natural Resources Defense Council, Pacific Rivers Council, Sierra Club, Wilderness Society and the Wyoming Outdoor Council.

Read Judge Brimmer's 102 page order issued on August 12, 2008

Read the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule

Dissenting Views on H.R. 2016 - NLCSA

National Landscape Conservation System Act

Author: Congressman Bill Sali (R-ID)

We strongly oppose H.R. 2016. The true purpose of H.R. 2016 is to prevent many locally popular, wholesome family recreational opportunities and almost all economic activities from taking place on 26 million acres of BLM land. H.R. 2016 will create a two-tiered system within the BLM under which some BLM land can be carefully managed for multiple use while other vast tracts would be walled off from almost all human use and managed for "preservation" or in layman's terms, no use. While well-meaning, few supporters of this bill live in the areas most affected by the legislation and fewer still ever truly get know first hand the rural communities of farmers, ranchers, and others whose ability to provide for their families can be devastated by decisions we so cavalierly make from afar. More that one third of the land in the United States is federally managed, but in much of the West, that ratio is reversed and doubled. To those of us who live in the public land states, multiple use means having the opportunity to practice conservation as it was defined by Teddy Roosevelt's mentor, Gifford Pinchot, "conservation means the wise use of natural resources." It means having the opportunity to obtain the many compatible esthetic and economic benefits well managed resources can provide. Properly managed, public lands can simultaneously contribute to energy independence, timber for affordable housing, needed food and fiber, wildlife conservation, outdoor recreation and the advancement of science and technology. We can choose to remove land from multiple use, but that choice is not cost-free; indeed, it will be impossible to meet any of these vital needs domestically if more and more public land is locked up every year.

Rep. Grijalva has contended both during the hearing that took place in June of 2007 and during the March 12, 2008 markup session of H.R. 2016 that this legislation just codifies the existence of a division within the BLM that has already been administratively created. Putting aside for a moment our objections to "just," the language in H.R. 2016 goes well beyond a codification of what already exists. Section 3(c)(2) states the Secretary (of the Interior) shall manage the system (NLCS) "in a manner that protects the values for which the components of the system were designated". The term "values" is a wholly new concept to the BLM and this would be the first time legislation directing the management and operation of BLM interjects this nebulous, malleable term. This is not an accidental or trivial insertion of verbiage in the legislation; it was specifically plucked from the National Park Service's organic act in order to purposefully mandate broad and vague new management practices. What are some "values" to the National Park Service that allow the iron-fisted "no-impairment standard" of enforcement to protect them? They include such things as "viewscapes," "soundscapes," and "smellscapes." It happens that many times these wonderfully indefinable concepts are enforced laxly within the park but used with draconian severity against the park's neighbors. This is a particularly poor model for BLM lands which, unlike National Parks, are more often part of a mixed checkerboard of private, state and federal land.

When asked how the term "values" is defined, proponents point to the assortment of declarations made when the units were added to the NLCS system. What happens when it is unclear if the Secretary is managing the system in a manner that protects the values for which a component was designated? Many of the designations of units within the NLCS consist of wonderful prose and lofty platitudes but have very little in the way of management direction or substance. The Secretaries of the Interior who make these declarations range from Bruce Babbitt to James Watt and it may be noted that their values and the language they used to describe the ideal use of federal land have not always coincided exactly. Are we in Congress not then abdicating our responsibility as the policy setting branch of government if we simply punt this issue to whatever team is currently at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue? NLCS Director Elena Daly testified that today ninety percent of NLCS lands are potentially open to grazing with much currently taking place. How does grazing fit into the concept of "smellscapes"? Not too well we suspect, based on our observations of city folks experiencing their first encounter with the grand smellscape provided by cattle. How do shooting ranges and hunting activities, which are currently part of several NLCS units, fit into the concept of "soundscapes"? How does OHV use, mining, oil exploration, horseback riding, camping, and numerous other activities that are currently part of most NLCS units square with the new concept of "values"? The fact that this is even debatable shows that the ultimate arbiter will be the Courts. Far-fetched? Not hardly. Take for example one of the strongest advocates of this bill, The Wilderness Society, who testified in support of H.R. 2016 and has a history of using litigation to stop activities on federal lands. The Wilderness Society in its 18 page packet in support of the NLCS lists road building, energy exploration and mining, recreational use, off road vehicle use and boundary adjustments as "immediate threats to the units of the NLCS" that must be stopped. The Wilderness Society and their contingent of special interest allies, who are disdainful of people who work outdoors, and have sued federal land management agencies several times before to stop such activities on federal lands and this vague new management directive of "values" is a perfect entree for more lawsuits. Not to just single out The Wilderness Society, numerous other supporters of H.R. 2016 such as the Center for Biological Diversity, National Parks Conservation Association and the Defenders of Wildlife have used the courts to drive off ranchers and destroy the livelihood of timber workers in the United States. We also view the inclusion of Wilderness Study Areas (WSA) in H.R. 2016 as a way to congressionally lock in the administratively created and released WSA, turning them into de facto wilderness areas. This is especially problematic given the fact that over half of BLM's WSA's do not meet even the minimum acreage requirement and should be released immediately.

H.R. 2016 at best would codify a division of BLM (NLCS) that performs work that can better be performed by other agency officials and creates a duplicative agency without a clear mission or structure. H.R. 2016 would also bestow Congressional recognition on over a dozen BLM monuments that we still cannot identify as having met the three criteria that must be met in the Antiquities Act. We remain unsatisfied and troubled with the Administration's answers when asked about the scope, structure and powers of the NLCS and specifically its Washington, D.C. office. It is even fair to say that something mischievous is afoot when one compares what has been said before the Committee with what has been reported in the press and proclaimed in BLM's own documents. In testifying before the Committee (in two separate hearings) NLCS Director Daly and Deputy Director (BLM) Henri Bisson gave the impression that the NLCS had no binding authority, no ability to supersede or interfere with the longstanding BLM organizational structure at any level, and had no real way to implement policy or management changes or recommendations and ability to appoint staff. "The NLCS is more or less a policy office, is what it is. It doesn't exactly manage the system," is what Deputy Director Bison stated during a budget hearing. Yet according to the BLM's own organizational structure chart located on their website the NLCS office is one of four departments directly underneath the Director and above the state offices.

Former Secretary of the Interior Babbitt was forthright from the beginning when he by fiat created the NLCS and set forth what he envisioned it to be: a new way of managing BLM lands (he estimated up to 100 million acres someday) through the NLCS system so that "the old bureaucratic mule will awaken to a new future as an environmental steward right up there with the National Park Service and the National Wildlife Refuge System. The day is coming, I believe, when the BLM so often stereotyped and dismissed as the Bureau of Livestock and Mining will be better known as the Bureau of Landscape and Monuments." Rep. Grijalva, when asked if H.R. 2016 would lead to NLCS lands receiving more regulation stated candidly, ''You've got to establish the system...and then you go to step 2." NLCS Director Daly, not exactly invoking images of a policy shop, was quoted in the Arizona Republic stating, "This is like being part of a birthing. I think we are all about to witness the next major conservation system in the United States." BLM's 2007 "National Landscape Conservation System Science Strategy" clearly sets up a system for the NLCS apart from the rest of the BLM. Despite assurances that the field offices (overseen by BLM State Directors) will continue to operate freely and will only get guidance from the NLCS, the Science Strategy document directs the NLCS to develop and implement (using "leverage" i.e. the millions in subactivity budget accounts the Administration is proposing the NLCS control). NLCS official Jeff Jarvis outlined very clearly in a report titled "National Landscape Conservation System: A New Approach to Conservation" that the purpose behind the NLCS is to shed the old, burdensome role of "developing commodities" that Congress gave the BLM and to move into conservation, assuming the two concepts were incompatible. We find this troublesome given how much and how irreplaceably BLM lands contribute to our nation's economy and security. Many of us have districts whose viability is dependent on ongoing multiple uses of BLM land. And the country as a whole has a continuing vital need to ensure that our local and national economies grow stronger, more resilient and have access to vital resources from secure domestic sources, One thing is certain: there are no more zealous and knowledgeable guardians of environmental and recreational "values" of these lands than the local people who hunt, fish, ride, hike, camp, raise their kids and, yes, try to earn a living on and around these lands.

Many and imperfect are the federal laws that set the course for the management of our public land. But they are duly enacted laws passed by Congress and signed by a President and they can be changed the same way they were adopted. For us to pass legislation delegating to the Secretary of the Interior of the moment and unelected bureaucrats within a federal land management agency a mandate to create a management regime to enforce legislatively undefined "values" on a vast, resource rich part of the country is an unacceptable abdication of our responsibility as the policy setting branch of the government.

(signed)

DON YOUNG. ROB BISHOP. STEVE PEARCE. CATHY McMORRIS RODGERS. HENRY BROWN. BILL SALI. JEFF FLAKE. DOUG LAMBORN. LOUIE GOHMERT. JIMMY DUNCAN. ADRIAN SMITH. TOM TANCREDO. CHRIS CANNON. MARY FALLIN. TOM COLE. LUIS FORTUNA. ELTON GALLEGLY. BILL SHUSTER.

No Sun Intended

Alternative Energy: Washington has placed a moratorium on solar power projects on federal land.
Is this the work of evil oil companies?
No, it's the fault of environmentalists.

EDITORIALS & OPINION
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

The Bureau of Land Management quietly decided in May that the development of solar plants in 119 million sun-soaked, federally owned acres in the western states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah would have to wait at least two years while bureaucrats sorted out their environmental impact.

For decades environmental groups have been pushing the government and private sector to develop more alternative sources of energy. But that campaign is beginning to look like a sham to cover the groups' BANANA — Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything — activism.

To be fair, it appears the BLM acted without being forced by an environmentalist-filed lawsuit or activist pressure. And so far, the media are reporting that only a single group — the Wilderness Society — has expressed support for the moratorium.

Make no mistake, though. The environmental groups are the reason the BLM made its decision. Had they not spent the past 30 years rabidly crusading against development, reflexively defending wildlife habitats from minor and imaginary threats and demonizing economic progress, the solar projects would not have been interrupted.

Washington has become so overly sensitive to the possibility of vocal opposition on anything that has an environmental impact that it feels it must inoculate itself from the radicals — even when the project is one they should support without reservation.

Environmental groups at one time served a noble purpose. We are a cleaner nation and world now than we were in the groups' formative years because they helped the West understand that it needed to clean up the mess from the Industrial Revolution.

But now they have become BANANA's and CAVE — Citizens Against Virtually Everything — people. They are more interested in choking capitalism and imposing on the world a future without energy than they are with a clean planet.

Though a great deal of land has been set aside, it would take only about 1% of the total area now off-limits to generate through solar plants enough energy to power more than 20 million homes.

We have no particular affinity for solar power, but blocking an energy source for 20 million homes seems significant to us, especially when the price of our primary source continues to climb.

What's more, we don't like to see business opportunities shut down by government decree. There are companies that have sunk capital into solar power projects on federal land that will now have to wait at least two years, perhaps more, before they can begin to recoup their investments. Turning a profit will take even longer.

The moratorium conceivably could kill businesses and the jobs that go with them. It will have the same economic effect as the Kyoto Treaty on global warming but on a smaller scale.

Some on the left, Democratic Rep. John Hall being a prominent example, are attacking the moratorium as the Bush administration's favoritism toward the president's oil buddies. This sort of obfuscation is to be expected. The environmentalists' political partners can't afford to let the groups' real objective — wounding our free market system — be revealed.

Federal fight brewing on regulating ORV use

By Suzanne Struglinski
Deseret News

WASHINGTON — The Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management need better plans for off-road vehicle use on public lands, but the government, ORV users and conservationists all have their own ideas of what they should include, based on a Senate hearing Thursday.

The government is adjusting how it handles ORVs as the number of users increase each year, but Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said there is a disconnect between what the different departments know and what they are doing.

"The BLM has identified travel management on its lands as 'one of the greatest management challenges' it faces," Bingaman said. "Likewise, the Forest Service has identified unmanaged recreation — including ORV use — as one of the top four threats to the management and health of the National Forest system. Despite these statements, it seems to me that neither agency has been able to successfully manage off-road use."

Bingaman said off-road or off-highway vehicle plans are not enforced or agencies are ignoring unregulated use "with significant consequences for the health of our public lands and communities, and adverse effects on other authorized public land uses." Bingaman suggests more resources for the agencies could help the problem.

Henri Bisson, Bureau of Land Management deputy director, said that balancing the needs of everyone who uses public lands "is a continuing challenge" for the federal land managers.

"This challenge has been building over time," Bisson said. "What was once the vast and spacious public land of the West that few knew about and fewer actively used for recreational purposes has now become something quite different."

Bisson said BLM lands will have 58 million recreation visits this year, a number that has nearly doubled in the last 25 years.

"The combined effect of population increase in the West, unauthorized user-created roads, explosive growth in the use of OHVs, advances in motorized technology, and intense industry marketing have generated increased social conflicts and resource impacts on the public land," Bisson said.

Groups at the witness table Thursday illustrated the conflicts with Trout Unlimited and the Wilderness Society wanting tighter controls on ORVs while the American Motorcyclist Association and the Blue Ribbon Coalition, a recreational vehicle advocacy organization, emphasized that its users are responsible and want to obey the rules but active management needs to be in place.

"BRC fully encourages and supports reasonable and responsible management prescriptions for this type of recreational activity," said BRC executive director George Mumm, who used the Paiute Trail System in Utah as a "successful application of active management for OHV recreation."

"Properly managed motorized recreation presents both a service to citizens and a source of revenue," Mumm said. "Such revenue is vital to rural counties who welcome recreation in lieu of other activities that no longer provide predictable or meaningful revenue, particularly for counties with significant federal public lands."

Edward Moreland, vice president for government relations for the American Motorcyclist Association, said the off-road community supports stiffer fines and penalties for those who knowingly damage public lands but do not want to see unfunded mandates or artificial deadlines put in place that end up hurting users instead of helping them.

"An inventory system that fails to provide adequate time and funding to do the job right is destined to fail," Moreland said.

Bradley Powell, the Western Energy and ORV coordinator for Trout Unlimited, a group that focuses on protecting coldwater fisheries, insisted that he was not at the hearing to oppose ORV use on public lands, "but to ensure that their use is compatible with the land's capability (particularly fish and wildlife habitats) and the needs of sportsmen/women, recreational users and others who rely on America's public lands for their enjoyment."

Powell said that many ORV users ride responsibly but those that travel off trails and create "unauthorized routes" create problems.

Judge orders Kane County to remove road signs in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

By Judy Fahys and Joe Baird
The Salt Lake Tribune




Cottonwood Canyon Road in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

Kane County's ongoing bid to claim ownership of roads in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and surrounding federal lands suffered a serious, and perhaps fatal, blow today.

U.S. District Court Judge Tena Campbell ruled that the placement of 39 county road signs in the monument is illegal because it violates the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution - which declares that federal law trumps state and local law. She ordered the county to remove the signs in the next 20 days.

"By placing signs within the monument, the county has encouraged, sanctioned and facilitated public motor vehicle use of federal lands that [the Bureau of Land Management] officially closed to protect the monument's values," Campbell wrote in her 33-page decision, issued late this afternoon. " . . . the county's signs create a direct conflict with federal land management directions, in violation of the Supremacy Clause."

At least for now, the case settles a five-year-old tussle between conservation groups and the county, which basically invited off-road traffic on trails in protected areas of the monument, the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, the Moquith Mountain Wilderness Study Area and the Paria Canyon-Vermillion Cliffs Wilderness Area.

Campbell said the county must first prove in court that it has rights-of-way in those areas before directing vehicles over wildlands controlled by federal agencies, including the BLM and the National Park Service.

"Certainly, the county correctly notes that federal land management agencies must manage the land without disturbing 'valid existing rights,' " Campbell wrote. "But this truism does not help the county, as the court has already found that the county has not established any valid existing rights."

Kane County claimed the roads under RS 2477, a Civil War-era mining law that granted rights-of-way across public land. The law was repealed by Congress in 1976, but existing claims were grandfathered in, leading to numerous disputes.

A landmark 2005 ruling by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals declared that state law - in Utah, 10 years of continuous use prior to 1976 - is now the standard for counties to claim ownership of roads. But Campbell ruled that Kane County must first prove its claims meet the continuous use standard.

Kane County's attorney, Shawn Welch, said county officials will need to analyze the ruling before deciding how to proceed.

"We're reviewing the decision and considering our options," Welch said. But the county, he added, "believes it is complying with the law."

Efforts to reach Kane County Commissioner Mark Habbeshaw, who has spearheaded the road ownership fight, were unsuccessful.

The Wilderness Society and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, the groups that filed suit over the Kane County roads, applauded the ruling.

SUWA attorney Steve Bloch said it "confirms a basic point of law that continues to escape the county" that federal law trumps state and county law on federal public lands.

"You can't go out and rip up federal signs contrary to the Supremacy Clause," he said. "Saying you have a right of way doesn't make it true. You have to prove [a claim to a road]; you have to prove it in court."