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Show 1 Page A14 Thursday, February 25, 1982 The Newspaper Let the Lodestar be your THAYNES CANYON EXEC. HOME ...A private retreat on the 1 Oth hole of Park C it golf course. This-) MM) square foot home is hewn from rustic logs and beams and contains -" bedrooms and 4Vs baths, -3 car garage (vl!)8() Subaru stationuagon!). private homeowner's tennis courts KM) yards away. PRICE $542,000.00 CASA MAGNIFICA PARA VACACIONES ...Situada en el hoyo No. 10 de el campo de golf de Park City. I hawies Canyon cancha de tenis privada a 100 metros Y tan solo a 3 minutos df las canchas de ski de Park City. -5,100 pies cuadrados con -1 recamaras grandes, 4'2 banos. garage par 3 coches (con 1 i)80 Subaru!) PRECIO $542,000.00 0 HOLIDAY VILLAGE MALL. PARK CITY, UT - 649-6541 $1 MORGAN FAIRCHILD Daily: 5:30, 7:30.9 30 Sat, Sun: 1 :30. 3:30, 5:30, EndsThur: Wir.dwalker. I .ID 0ff Terrified...Trapped like an animal. -""ti ESTATE COALITION 649-4400 Toll Free (800) 443-278 1 Ext. 00 FAMILY NIGHT WEDNESDAY ALL SEATS ONLY ONE DOLLAR Nominated for three Academy A wards ABSENCE OF MALICE Nominated best actor 1:10 PAUL NEWMAN SALLY FIELD This school is our home. TAPS GEORGE C. SCOTT TIMOTHY HGTTON r MICHAEL SARRAZIN 7:30, 9 30 5:15. 7:15. 9:10 - guide 1 R-98 N $1) Daily 5:30 7:409:50 Sat-Sun 3:20 5:30 7:40 9:50 Starts Friday Daily 5 35.7 45.9 50 Sat Sun 1.15.3.25.5.35.7 45 9 50 Ends Thursday: Ragtime 5 15.8 00 What does Watt's surprise announcement mean for Utah? by Frank Erickson Secretary of the Interior James Watt surprised both conservationists and federal land managers when he announced last Sunday a proposal to ban drilling for oil and gas and mining for hardrock minerals in the nation's existing and potential poten-tial wilderness areas until the year 2000. On NBC's "Meet the Press," Watt called for Congress to pass an 18-year moratorium on mining and drilling in the wilderness except in cases of urgent national need. According to the Associated Press, there are currently 1.000 pending oil and gas applications in 200 wilderness areas in 25 states. Watt had earlier been pushing to allow oil and gas exploration in the wilderness. wilder-ness. Under current law, the privilege of exploring for minerals in designated wilderness wil-derness areas expires Dec. 31, 1983. Watt also called for a deadline for reviewing additional ad-ditional areas to be added to the wilderness system. A leaked copy of the bill placed the deadlines at Dec. 31, 1984 for Forest Service areas and Dec. 31, 1988 for BLM areas. Presently, if an area is proposed by one of the land management agencies the Forest Service, Park Service or Bureau of Land Management Manage-ment (BLM) as a wilderness wilder-ness area, it remains in a sort of protective custody until Congress acts on it, however long that may take. The announcement sent land managers scrambling for official direction. At first, spokesmen at both the BLM and Forest Service offices in Utah believed the Watt proposal, if passed by Congress, Con-gress, would apply only to existing wilderness areas, of which there is only one in Park Nearing completion and really looking good. Stop by the SKI TEAM CONDOMINIUMS 1435 Park Avenue Open house weekends, 10-4 $173,500-$178,000 Custom improvements Tilt1 floor Extra large whirlpool tubs Oak Tiled steam showers Quality everyuhi'ie Di$count for ca$h "That real estate company on Park Avenue. " 1160 Park Avenue 649-4041 i Attractive owner-assisted financing Utah. Later, clarification came down from Washington that proposed wilderness areas and wilderness study areas would be included as well. Conservationists reacted with skepticism to Watt's announcement. Dick Carter, director of the Utah Wilderness Wilder-ness Association, stated flatly. flat-ly. "Watt is trying to deceive the public. It is clear he does not intend to protect the wilderness and intends to dismember the wilderness system by the end of the 1980s. He is saying that by 1988, what is not designated wilderness can never be designated wilderness. After the end of the moratorium in 2000, the safeguards that now protect wilderness would be completely dropped." Utah's only Congression-ally-designated wilderness area is Lone Peak. 29.576 acres perched between Little Cottonwood and American Fork canyons on the Wasatch Was-atch and Uinta National Forests. Although potential for oil and gas in the Lone Peak area is virtually nonexistent, non-existent, lease applications are pending on the Uinta National Forest portion. Dwarfing Lone Peak are several million acres of proposed wilderness and wilderness study areas in Utah. The Forest Service has proposed that 780,000 acres be designated wilderness throughout the state, a large chunk being a 511,715-acre High Uintas Wilderness Area. The Park Service is proposing another 1.4 million acres of wilderness in Utah's National Parks, Monuments and Recreation Areas. The Utah Wilderness Association (UWA) advocates that 1.6 million acres in the National Forests and 1.7 million acres of Park Service-adminis City Complete Winter Service Batteries, Snow Tires Jump Starts, Service calls. 649-933 ( North Park Avenue tered lands be designated wilderness. So far, congress has not acted on any of these proposals. The BLM got a later start on its wilderness study and is not as far along. They have identified 2.6 million acres as wilderness study areas. The UWA has challenged challen-ged the BLM in court, stating that some 3.5 million acres of BLM lands in Utah are worthy of consideration as wilderness. The BLM is in the midst of its wilderness review and targets completing complet-ing it in 1984. Current policy allows oil and gas leasing in some proposed wilderness and wilderness study areas. John Baxa, public information infor-mation officer for the Utah BLM, explained that of the 23,000,000 acres of public land administered by the BLM in Utah, 21,000,000 are under lease for oil and gas leases. Baxa was quick to add that actual drilling will occur on very few of these acres and that when such drilling is proposed it is regulated by stipulations to protect the environment. In areas of known oil and gas potential the leases are offered on a competitive bid. In areas of no known oil and gas potential where leases have never been issued before, people may simply go in and purchase the leases over-the-counter. The leases are for a maximum of 10 years. On these noncompetitive noncompeti-tive leases the rent is one dollar per acre per year for the first five years, then three dollars per acre per year the sixth through tenth years The third type of leases are the infamous "Government Oil and Gas Lottery," officially of-ficially known as simultaneous simul-taneous filing. These are the available R'hm w inch have expu rti or otherwise been terminated which are available for releasing. Anyone wanting a chance at one of these files with the BLM, and the filing fee is $25, going up to $75 next month. Lately the BLM in Utah has been receiving as many as 100,000 applications applica-tions for the lottery, which is held every other month. For the latest drawing, held Friday, 55,800 applicants put in for a chance on 142 parcels of varying size. The filing fee is not refundable, and the revenue generated goes to the U.S. Treasury. There is a controversy over leasing in the wilderness study areas. The BLM policy divides the leases into two categories: those issued before be-fore October 1976, and those issued after. In October, 1976 the Federal Land Policy Management Act was passed by Congress. This gave, among many other things, the BLM the authority to study lands for their wilderness wilder-ness potential. On the leases issued before October 1976, the BLM requires leasees to take reasonable precautions to protect the environment, but does not stipulate that wilderness wil-derness values not be impaired. im-paired. Leases issued after October 1976 have the further fur-ther requirement that the wilderness values cannot be damaged so as to change the character of the area and prejudice the decision on whether or not it should become a wilderness. The Utah Wilderness Association As-sociation does not agree with BLM on this, and says that any drilling in proposed wilderness areas should be done in such a way to protect the wilderness values. The BLM and UWA are going to court over this one. One other oddity of the oil and gas situation is that the BLM issues leases for Forest Service lands, but the Forest Service has responsibility for protecting surface resources. re-sources. So, on the National Forests, the Forest Service recommends to the BLM what stipulations should .be, included in the least to' protect the environment. To date, this relationship has been very cordial with the BLM essentially always taking tak-ing the Forest Service recommendations. Then, if oil or gas is discovered, the U.S. Geological Geo-logical Survey takes over administration of the production. pro-duction. This situation has not been altogether satisfactory satisfac-tory as the oil companies have been on the honor system to report their production, pro-duction, but have not always been altogether honorable. Snow camping course at Kimball Art Center A snow camping course will be taught at the Kimball Art Center March 8 and 10 from 7 to 9 p.m. The course will be taught by Entery George, a former Air Force survival instructor. instruc-tor. Mr. George, currently with the Airborne Special Forces of the Utah National Guard, has had extensive experience in the art of survival. He has hiked through Europe, led two scout expeditions on the Appalachian Trail, conducted survival courses at Treasure Valley Community College in Oregon, and for five years, taught sea and jungle survival survi-val for the U.S. Air Force at Langly Air Force Base in Virginia. He spent the PARK CITY ROTARY Meets Tuesday 12:15 Holiday Inn Since the government receives re-ceives royalties for oil produced, pro-duced, each barrel of oil taken but not reported is a loss to the government, and the amount not reported has amounted to millions of dollars annually. Recently Secretary Watt announced a tightening up of reporting procedures. On Jan. 8, the Forest Service released its environmental environ-mental impact statement on oil and gas leasing on the west and north slope of the Uinta mountains. That document states that all oil and gas lease applications applica-tions within the proposed High Uintas Wilderness are in areas of low mineral potential and high surface values, and it was recommended recom-mended that there would be no leases issued, or leases issued with no surface occupancy oc-cupancy in this area. "No lease" means exactly that. The parcel of land is simply not available for oil and gas exploration, and this is applied to isolated tracts far from existing roads within the wilderness area. "Lease with no surface occupancy" means that the drilling will not be allowed on the land directly above leased parcel, but off-site slant drilling is allowed. This is used for leases within the wilderness area that are very close to the boundary. The drilling pad is outside the boundary but by slant drilling, the oil may be extracted from beneath the wildreness. The practical limit on slant drilling is about one mile horizontally. In parts of the Uintas outside the proposed wilderness wilder-ness area, the decision to lease and what stipulations would apply to each lease was determined by weighing the potential for oil and gas against the potential for damaging the surface resources. re-sources. If the potential for gas damaging the land in a particular area were great and the potential for oil and gas were low, no lease or a lease with restrictions would be issued. On the other hand; if an area were determined to have high potential for oil and gas and low surface values, a lease would be issued with fewer restrictions. restric-tions. Naturally, the tough ones to decide are where there is high potential for oil and gas and high potential for surface sur-face damage. The nearly 200 page environmental assessment assess-ment deals with each parcel to be leased and make specific recommendations. It was prepared in response to the fact that over 100 lease applications have been filed. entire winter of 1980 in a small lean-to in the Uinta Mountains. The survival course, to include lecture, demonstra-, tion and exhibit, will cover a variety of topics. George will discuss camping with the family, living in and under the snow, cooking out in the snow, cold-weather clothing and equipment, winter travel, human physiology in winter, storms and avalanches, ava-lanches, and emergencies and accidents. Cost for the course is $15 for Kimball Art Center members, $20 for nonmem-bers nonmem-bers and $5 for children under 16. For further information, call 649-8882. |