| OCR Text |
Show So. Utah Rural Counties Challenge Babbitt's Re-inventory As Illegal TROPIC "It's a sad day when we must view our own federal government gov-ernment as the enemy," said Garfield Gar-field County Commissioner Clare Ramsay on Tuesday. Ramsay and the county's other commissioners met in Salt lake City on Monday at a meeting of the Utah Association of Counties attended by commissioners from Utah's rural counties those most affected by recent moves of the federal government. Foremost on their agenda was the on-going re-inventory ordered on July 24 by Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt after questions ques-tions were raised in Washington D.C. about how the Bureau of Land Management had conducted its original inventory. "Babbitt is throwing 10 years of work out the window," said Ramsay. "The BLM and the counties coun-ties affected by Wilderness Study Area designations worked hard on that inventory for many years and prepared a detailed study according to law." In late September, about a week after President Bill Clinton announced an-nounced his creation of a national monument out of nearly two million mil-lion acres of public lands in Garfield and Kane Counties, the UAC asked the Secretary to "do the honorable thing" and "voluntarily stop the re-inventory process." Mark Walsh, assistant director of the UAC, expressed disappointment disap-pointment at the state's refusal to sue to stop Babbitt's re-inventory, indicating that the UAC might go forward with litigation. Ramsay said that Secretary Babbitt is breaking federal law by failing to comply with the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) which calls for public hearings and citizen and local input. Ramsay said that the original inventory is all that the law stipulates. Federal wilderness law specifically speci-fically says that only federal lands can be studied for wilderness designation, desig-nation, the UAC claims, so the feds shouldn't even be looking at state lands surrounded by federal lands and other state lands. The organization comes back to one of its original complaints, that only "roadless" areas can be designated as wilderness according to the government's own criteria. Rural counties have claimed that most Wilderness Study Area's have had roads in them for years the RS2477 roads that Garfield County has been, and still is, fighting for the same roads that San Juan County finds itself battling the federal government over, and the same roads over which Kane County has similarly scrapped with federal officials about. (See Rural Counties Challenge Babbitt's Re-inventory, Page 7A) Rural Counties Challenge Babbitt's Re-inventory As Illegal Process (From Page 1 ) Garfield County Commissioner Louise Liston has expressed her concerns that Babbitt's re-inventory is "tightening" the government's definition of a "road." She sees this as an increased threat to rural counties. "They're calling them 'ways' now," she said. Frustrated himself, Ramsay said that rural counties are being hit from every direction so rapidly that it seems impossible to address each new move by the federal government. govern-ment. "We lock the doors and they come in the windows, lock the windows and they come through the cracks in the wall," said one equally frustrated Garfield County resident. On Monday, Rep. Bill Orton (D-UT) announced as rural county officials met in Salt Lake City, that Secretary Babbitt had decided to allow public input "once I (Babbitt) receive the results of the review now underway," an after-the-fact promise as the counties see it. In a Tuesday news release, the UAC addressed Babbitt's offer: Utah's counties today dismissed as "totally inadequate" the announcement an-nouncement by Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt that he would add an opportunity for public comment to the end of the BLM wilderness re-inventory re-inventory effort now underway in Utah. The counties have been highly critical of the re-inventory, concluding that it is being conducted con-ducted illegally. They have twice called on Babbitt to halt it and address the wide range of concerns they have raised. "What the Secretary is offering is totally inadequate and continues to violate the law requiring public involvement," said Mark Walsh, associate director of the Utah Association of Counties. "The Secretary knows that the current re-inventory re-inventory effort violates the clear requirements of law to include the public at the beginning of such an effort to help shape it and highlight its flaws. He still has not corrected that. "The re-inventory is so fatally flawed that even this early in the process we can already state categorically cate-gorically that whatever results it produces will be-virtually useless," Walsh continued. "Because it will identify millions of acres of BLM land as having 'wilderness characteristics' charac-teristics' which do not even come close to meeting the requirements of the Wilderness Act, the re- inventory will make it far more difficult to resolve the Utah wilderness wil-derness problem. The law requires early public involvement precisely to trv to prevent the kinds of problems prob-lems which fatally flaw this re-inventory." re-inventory." Walsh also noted that, in addition addi-tion to violating the public involvement in-volvement requirements of the basic law under which the BLM operates FLPMA, the re-inventory also violates the law's requirement that the agency coordinate these kinds of efforts with state, local and tribal officials. "The Secretary's announcement an-nouncement does not even address the requirements that the re-inventory re-inventory be coordinated with other levels of government," Walsh noted. "The only way for the Secretary to comply with the law is to halt the re-inventory immediately and start over again, this time following fol-lowing the requirements of the law." Walsh said. "What he is ll il offering is an autopsy as a cure for a terminally ill patient. "If there is any bright spot in the Secretary's announcement, it is that he may be starting to acknowledge ac-knowledge that he is violating the law," Walsh added. "But continuing with the re-inventory is simply wasting federal tax dollars It also means we will have to spend scarce state and local tax dollars to try to clean up the mess he is creating." San Juan County officials axe now dealing with some of the same problems Garfield County Commissioners Com-missioners have been confronted with for years, going back to the beginnings of the Burr Trail battle in the 1980's. San Juan County's road crew graded RS2477 roads on Bureau of Land Management public lands at Harts Point and had plans to grade similar roads on Cedar Mesa when the federal government came down on them. The particular road at Harts Point is a spur road off State Road 202 that leads to Squaw Flat Campground. San Juan County claimed, just as Garfield County has claimed for years, that such roads belong to the county, not the federal agency that oversees the land. Most, traditionally, have been used by county residents in particular since the rural counties were first settled. San Juan Commissioner Bill Redd and other county officials defied the government's order to "cease and desist." They agreed to temporarily stop work on the roads in question only when the county's attorney negotiated a verbal agreement agree-ment with U.S. Attorney for Utah, Scott Matheson, Jr. The same county is also in court seeking a preliminary injunction to prevent the federal government's attempt to release condors into the northern Arizona environment in the immediate future. They claim that the birds pose a problem to the environment; a threat, when feeding on road kills, to the driving public; a danger to low-flying aircraft; and a threat also to the area's electrical system that could be shorted out from landings on electrical poles. They are concerned also that the condor presence in the area could lead to restrictions on the number of visitors to the area. San Juan County, too, depend on tourism for much of its revenue. Garfield County Commissioner Louise Liston said, "There is no way I will sign a condor release agreement." |
