New roads worry Park Service

National Park Service officials worry that if the oil and gas industry is allowed to drill on land next to two national parks and a national monument in Utah, the companies may need new roads that will be unwanted leftovers once the oil and gas are gone.

The concern is that those roads will become new entry points into the parks, creating potential access and land-use headaches for park regulators.

"It's a huge issue you need to look at holistically," said Cordell Roy, coordinator for the park service in Utah. "It's not just an immediate impacts issue."

Park Service officials this week are studying areas surrounding Arches and Canyonlands national parks and Dinosaur National Monument, working with the BLM on a compromise that will protect sensitive areas from drilling.

"I can't say these leases are going to be deferred," Roy said. "I don't know what the outcome will be. We'll have to see."

In addition to the sight, sound and light disturbances that researching and drilling for oil and gas would have on a visitor's park experience, Roy said, the lasting problem is roads being created where there haven't been any. "The roads tend to stay there," he said.

A quarterly oil and gas lease sale set for November was postponed to Dec. 19, at which time parcels will be offered on about 360,000 acres around sensitive areas, including the national parks and a residential area of Moab.

The leasing decisions last week took the National Park Service by surprise. Before those decisions, Roy said the Park Service had been satisfied with the conclusion of its previous appeal to offer land for the upcoming lease sale that is seven miles east of Capitol Reef. At the time, that was the only known sensitive area that the Park Service was concerned about, Roy said.

So far, however, Utah BLM state director Selma Sierra isn't budging on a Park Service request to withdraw areas from around the parks and monument.

In an opinion article posted this week on the BLM's Web site, she criticized media reports about the issues surrounding the Dec. 19 lease sale. She urged people to find information and communicate with the BLM through its Web site, www.blm.gov/ut/st/en.html. Attempts to reach BLM officials Monday were unsuccessful, and Tuesday was a holiday for government workers.

Sierra said that the BLM is doing its "level best to fulfill its multiple-use mandate" while protecting sensitive lands.

"Recent articles regarding BLM's obligations in the oil and gas leasing process have confused the public rather than informing or clarifying the leasing process," Sierra wrote.

Roy said the BLM and the Park Service have a fundamental difference in their mandates. "When it gets down to it, I guess I would say the National Park Service would object to industrial development next to a national park," he said.

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E-mail: sspeckman@desnews.com