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Show Burr Trail Allegations Untrue, Declares State BLM Director James M. Parker, Utah State Director of the Bureau of Land Management, called allegations of impropriety made in a recent press release by environmental groups trying to stop development of the Burr Trail, "Totally out of line. The BLM completed the work in line with requirements from the courts. We have absolutely nothing noth-ing to hide." "This is simply another delay tactic being used by these groups whose apparent motive is to take away Garfield County's right to develop de-velop the Burr Trail," said Parker. "The environmentalists have offended of-fended the Bureau of Land Management Manage-ment in Utah with their totally unfounded un-founded charges against the agency," agen-cy," said Garfield County Commission Chairman, Tom Hatch, on Tuesday. "We agree wholeheartedly with the BLM's response re-sponse to the environmentalist charge of impropriety." The environmentalists quote an affidavit issued by a private contractor who was paid some $90,000 to prepare a Draft Environmental Envi-ronmental Assessment. "He was apparently disappointed he couldn't expand the study into a full Environmental Envi-ronmental Impact Statement (EIS)," added Parker. The contractor alleges that a BLM employee told him they reached a Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) on the Burr Trail environmental analysis, due to "external pressures," but Dave Everett, Ev-erett, environmental coordinator for the Cedar City BLM District and the BLM official referred to in the affidavit, said that the allegation is simply not true. "The district manager made a Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) because it was the only finding that could be substantiated, given the scope of the court order requiring the study." Everett also pointed out that the finding as it applied to the 14 miles of road currently before the district court, has already been upheld by the Interior Board of Land Appeals. "I can see the contractor's frustration," said Everett. "He developed de-veloped a study that had absolutely no restrictions. Then the BLM was obligated by the court order to reach a decision based on a more narrow scope of analysis. But, it is certainly cer-tainly out of line to say that the decision was based on external pressures." BLM officials point out that they decided to complete the final Environmental Assessment themselves them-selves for two reasons. First, comments on the Draft Environmental Assessment noted that the National Park Service had completed a study on the same area in 1985. The BLM knew, of the earlier study, but was not aware that it was ever signed off as final by the Park Service. Upon investiga tion, however, they obtained a signed copy from the NPS regional office in Denver. "We saw no reason to require Garfield County to pay a contractor to complete studies that had already been completed by a sister agency," said Everett. The contractor was paid a substantial sub-stantial sum of money to complete (See BURR TRAIL, On 2-A) BURR TRAIL (Continued From 1-A) the Draft Environmental Assessment Assess-ment and conversely, lost the opportunity op-portunity for an additional sum, when the BLM decided to complete the study themselves. The second reason the BLM cites for taking control of the study was the fact that extracting those elements ele-ments required by the court order from the totally unrestricted draft study, proved more difficult than expected. "Therefore, we completed the study ourselves, to be sure it would meet the requirements imposed im-posed by the court," added Everett. "The contractor and the environmental envi-ronmental groups are certainly free to disagree with our decision," noted not-ed Parker, "but they are entirely off base to accuse us of impropriety, simply because they disagree with the finding. Their rhetoric is inflammatory in-flammatory and serves only to cap-lure cap-lure headlines that will not be recalled re-called once the allegations are disproved." |
