PUBLIC LANDS: Utah roads dispute emerges in defense authorization bill
Greenwire: Ariel Wittenberg, E&E reporter
Friday, May 6, 2016
Environmentalists are up in arms about language in the House's defense authorization proposal that would give three Utah counties road access across federal lands.
The provision, offered by Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) as an amendment during a House Armed Services Committee markup, is nearly identical to Rep. Chris Stewart's (R-Utah) H.R. 4579.
Ostensibly meant to give the Air Force more room to fly F-35s at the Utah Test and Training Range (UTTR), the language would allow the stealth fighter jets to expand their training area to some Department of the Interior-owned land and also swaps out parcels of state-owned land within the federal land for other nearby areas.
Environmentalists are raising concerns with a third portion of the bill that would give the three counties bordering UTTR about 6,000 miles of rights-of-way claims across federal lands.
Utah has filed dozens of claims for road rights of way in court under R.S. 2477, an 1866 mining law that was repealed in 1976. At the time, Congress grandfathered in any valid existing right-of-way claims, something Utah is suing for some 35,000 miles of dirt trails and routes (Greenwire, May 4).
The House defense authorization language would allow Juab, Tooele and Box Elder counties to circumvent the litigation process to receive those rights, something many say could take decades.
"Basically, this is a way of saying, 'We are not sure if we will win all of these legal battles, so let's usurp the legal process and put it in a military bill,'" said Jen Ujifusa, legislative director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, which has been fighting the state's right-of-way claims in court.
While some of the roads in question are actual gravel roads, many others resemble hiking trails or cow paths, on which "no one is getting their kids to school," Ujifusa said.
Giving counties the rights of way would allow them to pave, and even expand, the paths.
Environmentalists like Ujifusa see the road issue as "the backdoor battle of the Sagebrush Rebellion" and say the rights of way could give states like Utah "literal inroads to owning federal land."
The UTTR language ultimately passed the House committee 35-26 last week, and environmental groups are now worried something similar could happen when the Senate Armed Services Committee marks up its bill next week.
Already, 25 environmental groups -- including Earthjustice, Defenders of Wildlife, Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club -- have written a letter to House and Senate Armed Services Committee leaders asking them to oppose the language.
"This is part of the State of Utah's broader effort to wrest control of tens of thousands of miles of R.S. 2477 rights-of-way and stymie protection of federal lands by creating 'wilderness' littered with roads," the letter says.
Bishop, who chairs the House Natural Resources Committee, defended the language during the defense authorization markup last week, saying some of the rights of way included in the bill do fall on the land the UTTR needs to fly over.
"Solving this problem would be a great benefit to any kind of potential encroachment," he said.
He also noted that a key difference between his language and Stewart's bill is that the defense authorization amendment would not give counties the rights of way that traverse federally designated wilderness or wilderness study areas.
"These environmental groups don't like it because the roads are in areas with wilderness potential," he said. "But everything can have wilderness potential -- the deck on my apartment has wilderness potential. If you don't touch these benches here, they will eventually become wilderness."
At the time, Rep. Niki Tsongas (D-Mass.) spoke in opposition to the amendment, saying it "contains several provisions that have nothing to do with military readiness."
