Divisions remain over public lands planning
A fierce debate over the future of the Red Cliffs and Beaver Dam Wash national conservation areas is about to turn into a waiting game.
The public comment period for the Bureau of Land Management’s draft management plans for the two areas ends Monday, after months of often contentious debates over whether the agency’s proposed changes offer too much environmental protection, or not enough.
BLM managers say they’ve received thousands of comments so far, each of which will be considered as they work to produce a final plan sometime next year.
In the meantime, local governments, environmental groups and others will be waiting anxiously, all armed with potential lawsuits if they don’t see the results they want.
The two conservation areas include about 108,000 acres, or a little more than 7 percent of the entire Washington County, and the draft plans have sparked intense debate over a slew of issues, from grazing permits to access to water, from open access for off-road vehicles to whether the endangered California Condor should be reintroduced to the area.
The draft plans are available on the BLM’s website.
Washington County has led a vocal charge by area governments to oppose most of the policy changes outlined in the draft plans, with commissioners posting on the front page of the Washington County website a link to a form letter that asks residents to “oppose excessive land regulations specified by BLM’s Draft Resource Management Plans.”
A longstanding argument over the idea of building a “Northern Corridor” highway across sensitive tortoise habitat in the Red Cliffs NCA has been especially combative — most of the alternatives outlined in the BLM’s draft plans suggest ditching the idea, while local transportation planners argue the roadway is essential to keeping up with the area’s growing traffic demands.
Arguments from all sides have been submitted to the agency for consideration, and BLM officials have been meeting regularly with stakeholders, but until a final plan is released there will be little certainty in what it actually proposes.
The draft plans don’t constitute any actual changes, instead offering different alternatives that cover a range of potential policies.
And Brian Tritle, the field manager for the BLM’s St. George Field Office, said the agency can pick and choose different pieces of each alternative as all the submitted comments and other analysis is reviewed.
“As we get new information that changes the analysis we have to take a fresh look at that,” he said in a meeting with members of the St. George City Council. “Negotiations continue with cooperating agencies.”
Tritle and others have been meeting with representatives from Washington County each week, and Eric Clarke, the deputy county attorney who has helped head the county’s efforts, said he thinks some headway is being made in finding at least some common ground, but it is impossible to know for sure until the final plans are released.
“I think we’re having productive conversations, but we can’t say whether we’re actually going to see any changes,” he said.
BLM representatives have argued that much of what is included in the plans has either been taken out of context or blown out of proportion, arguing that the intention of the plans shouldn’t warrant so much worry from area officials. The agency posted a Q & A that outlines some of its largest concerns with public sentiment.
County officials argue the plain language in the draft plans gives obvious reason for concern, posting its own rebuttal to the agency’s Q & A.
The BLM was tasked by Congress with drawing up management plans for the two conservation areas in the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009, a measure that at the time was largely celebrated as a work of compromise that took years of negotiation, preserving large chunks of the county with federal protections while setting aside other land for development.
The OPLMA defined the 53,500-acre Beaver Dam Wash National Conservation Area on the west side of the Beaver Dam mountains west of St. George and the 45,000-acre Red Cliffs National Conservation Area just north of the city, broadly along the same boundaries of the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve.
The agency’s task was always likely to be a difficult one, given the broad responsibility outlined in the act to “conserve, protect, and enhance for the benefit and enjoyment of present and future generations the ecological, scenic, wildlife, recreational, cultural, historical, natural, educational, and scientific resources” within the NCAs.
Trying to address all those concerns turned into a 6-year process, and the draft plans include more than 1,100 pages of documents.
The public still has an opportunity to comment on the Bureau of Land Management’s Draft Resource Management Plan for the Red Cliffs and Beaver Dam Wash conservation areas. The deadline is Monday. To access the plans and submit comments online, visit http://www.blm.gov/ut/st/en/fo/st__george.html. Copies are also made available for review at the St. George Field Office, 345 E. Riverside Drive in St. George.
Washington County has posted written comments in opposition to the BLM proposals and invited residents to comment as well by visiting washco.utah.gov.