Environmentalists seeking data on state road claims

Environmentalists want to force state and federal officials to reveal to the public which roads Utah hopes to acquire under a settlement agreement.

"We're fighting on two fronts," said Heidi McIntosh, conservation director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.

On one hand, SUWA and The Wilderness Society lodged a formal appeal with the Interior Department against the Bureau of Land Management's Utah office for refusing to disclose which roads crisscrossing federal land the state is claiming ownership of under a Civil War law known as R.S. 2477.

On the other hand, the conservation group Save Our Canyons has filed a records request under the state's Government Records Access and Management Act, which compels local agencies to release certain public records. In this case, environmentalists want to know which roads the state and Salt Lake County are claiming ownership of because they are part of the state's highway system.

"If these are really public highways, why keep the public in the dark?" McIntosh said. "With the state and counties claiming barely visible hiking trails and all-terrain vehicle tracks through national parks and wilderness areas as 'highways,' the public has an even greater right to know."

Yet there's a good reason why BLM didn't provide environmentalists the information they were seeking, said Don Banks, spokesman for the BLM Utah office.

"The state has not submitted any applications to us," he said. "As soon as they do, we will begin the public information process. In the meantime, we have posted information, including an overview of the process and copies of internal memos, on BLM's Web site (www.ut.blm.gov)

At issue is a settlement agreement signed by former Gov. Mike Leavitt and Interior Secretary Gale Norton in April to resolve issues involving R.S. 2477 roads. R.S. 2477 refers to an old mining statute that allowed states and counties to claim rights-of-way across federal lands. The law was repealed in 1976, but any road in place prior to that time still qualifies as a local right-of-way under the old law.

Under the Leavitt-Norton agreement, the state agreed it would not claim any routes inside national parks, wildlife refuges or wilderness areas. In turn, the Interior Department agreed to recognize roads traveled by trucks and cars that existed in Utah prior to 1976.

Environmentalists want to find out which roads the state intends to claim before they are submitted to the BLM.