Utah Road Claim Unjustified, Conservationists Say

WASHINGTON, DC, May 11, 2004 (ENS) - Conservationists say a route Utah is claiming under a repealed 19th century mining law was built by and for the U.S. government, which would void it from a claim under the statute.

The dispute centers on the use of a repealed 1866 law - known as RS2477 - to establish rights of way across federal lands managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

In April 2003 Interior Secretary Gale Norton and then Utah Governor Michael Leavitt brokered a controversial settlement that codified an interpretation of the statute, which was intended to grant the right to construct and use highways across public lands that were not otherwise reserved or protected for other public use.

Although repealed in 1976, claims on rights of way prior to the repeal can still be made.

Administration officials say the policy only applies to existing publicly traveled and regularly maintained roads and would not apply to environmentally sensitive areas and national parks.

But conservationists are not convinced and the settlement has sparked an array of legal challenges.

The route of current concern is the 99 mile Weiss Highway in Utah's west desert region. If approved by the Interior Department, the Juab County claim would represent the first giveaway under the new disclaimer regulation.

Its importance lies in the fact that it is widely viewed as a national precedent for thousands of potential claims under RS-2477, covering thousands of square miles of federal lands, and other lands that now are private property or belong to the states or other entities.

Critics say it does not even meet the relaxed standards of the Utah/Interior Department memorandum - that the state or county "constructed" a "highway" across federal lands not set aside for some special use.

"Utah's application contains only some maps, present day pictures of the road, and a few stories from old timers," said Kristen Brengel of the Wilderness Society. "Now it turns out the United States built and owned this road all along."

Lawson LeGate of the Sierra Club says records show the route in question is "a federal road built by federal employees with federal funds to give federal livestock permitees access to their federal leases."

"Given this record, it is hard to see why the State of Utah thinks that this is a good example of a county right of way," Legate said.

In 2002, conservationists sued the BLM and the state of Utah to obtain a map of Utah's claims to proposed highways across the state.

As a result of the suit, the BLM released Utah's map, which showed the state claiming 100,000 miles of highways including every hiking trail in Zion National Park and numerous routes in the Wasatch Mountains.

"If the Interior Department gives away public land based on such an obviously defective claim as this, it would set a precedent for all the thousands of claims that now hang over our western lands," Brengel said. "The end result could be a spiderweb of roads across our national parks, national wildlife refuges, potential wilderness areas, and other public lands."

Critics of the Bush administration's RS-2477 settlement and policies received some good news in February when the General Accounting Office released a report that determined the memorandum of understanding signed by Norton and Leavitt last April was illegal.

The report by the investigative arm of the U.S. Congress has no legal or regulatory authority, but it could bolster the case of environmentalists challenging the settlement in federal court.