The National Trust for Historic Preservation, Friends of the Great Salt Lake, art enthusiasts, photographers, fans of the Spiral Jetty and environmentalists have sent 2,750 e-mails and letters and placed 190 phone calls as of Wednesday morning to the Governor's Public Lands Policy Coordination Office. Jonathan Jemming said reaction is coming from Paris, Germany, New Zealand, Australia, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and "all over the world."

Jemming's role will be to collect all of the comments toward helping his office make any technical or policy recommendations to the lead agency, the Utah Division of Oil, Gas & Mining.

Springer has been to see the Spiral Jetty four times and calls the work "fascinating" and interesting. He pointed out that when it was constructed in 1970 it was 400 yards from an existing, albeit dormant, oil facility and that naturally occurring oil "seeps" in the area can still be seen today. If having a serene, pure "viewshed" was part of Smithson's plan then, "then he chose the wrong place for the jetty," Springer said.

Some have debated Smithson's idea of entropy and its impact on Spiral Jetty. One dictionary definition of entropy describes a process of "degeneration marked variously by increasing degrees of uncertainty, disorder, fragmentation, chaos, etc.; ... such a process regarded as the inevitable, terminal stage in a life of a social system or structure."

Could human activity around his artwork have been part of the plan for Smithson, who died in 1973? Springer hasn't ruled out that possibility. Neither have people who have been leaving comments on blog sites.

Despite the idea of entropy, past industrial activity even when the jetty was built and the causeway's impact on the physical makeup of the north end of the lake, Dia is insisting that the "fragile balance of earth, salt lake, and local flora and fauna, symbolized in the form and structure of the artwork, must be maintained to preserve the experience of the Spiral Jetty in this unique landscape."

Raicovich said Smithson would not have wanted drilling to take place four miles from Spiral Jetty. "He accepted incursions of human activity as preexisting items," she said.

The soonest drilling could start would be in about 30 days, if Pearl meets all of the state's statutory and regulatory guidelines. During exploration a tower would be in place for about two or three weeks, Springer estimated. He said if there is a product worth pumping out, the facility needed to do that would be "barely" visible more than four miles away to the southwest of the Spiral Jetty.

Nevertheless, Springer's office will consider the outpouring of concern over the drilling and its potential impact on Spiral Jetty. But if Pearl meets all of the state's requirements, Springer said stopping or slowing it down after that would likely take a court process.

Raicovich said Dia is only currently trying to raise awareness about the issues with the help of other interested groups and that, even if test drilling takes place, there will be another public process before Pearl can start. However, Springer said that once Pearl has a permit to do exploratory drilling, they will be able to continue ahead with any pumping without further public review.

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E-mail: sspeckman@desnews.com