Environmental problems caused by Utah's oil boom drew the attention of lawmakers Wednesday, while in the next presentation they heard about industry's problems with environmentalists.

The scene was the Legislature's Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment Interim Committee, meeting in the Capitol complex. Rep. John G. Mathis, R-Vernal, introduced two ranchers from his area whose grazing areas are damaged by oil and gas development. Then two representatives of the oil and gas industry complained about what they see as unfair tactics by environmentalists.

Environmental problems:

Mathis showed photos of substantial oil and gas drilling pads and dirt roads carved through public land in the Uinta Basin. One view was of a dirt road used by the industry, a deeply rutted mass of mud because last winter was so wet.

The same parcels are leased to petroleum operations and under grazing permits issued to ranchers.

"There's a fair amount of (oil and gas) activity," Mathis said, showing a map of the region. It was peppered with red and black dots representing approved oil wells and places where permission to drill is pending.

Bill Stringer, manager of the Bureau of Land Management's field office in Vernal, said there were about 9,000 dots on the map, more than 6,000 of them approved and the rest pending. After the meeting, at the request of the Deseret Morning News, he estimated the area involved is about 1,800 square miles, counting both state and federal land.

In many places, an oil well has been drilled about every 40 acres, said Mathis. Besides well pads, there are pits, pipelines, roads and well services. Some impacts, according to Mathis, make it hard to restore the land so it can be grazed after the oil operation ends.

"We're seeing changes now we've never faced before," said Bill Robinson, a sheep rancher whose family has worked in eastern Utah and western Colorado for nearly 80 years.

"We are being terribly negatively impacted," he said. It happens "every time a bulldozer lowers its blade."

Impacts on his grazing operation may be as much as 20 percent to 25 percent, he said. Robinson noted that if he were to damage that much oil in a tank, he would be sued.

The topsoil is fragile, he said. "Once you disturb it, it doesn't come back the way it was. . . . Where do the sheep graze when they're done?"

Ranchers need economic protection, he added. Perhaps there could be an impact fund to help them if their grazing rights are reduced because of these operations. "So much of the range is bulldozed under," he said.

Burt Delambert, a cowboy whose cattle graze in the Book Cliffs area, noted that ranches were built based on grazing permits.