Road claim important milestone

The Weiss Highway is hardly a household name in Utah. Yet the lonely two-lane paved highway that extends west from Nephi to the Nevada border took on elevated significance this week when Gov. Olene Walker submitted to the Bureau of Land Management a formal claim for the road.

It was the first claim by the state for a so-called RS2477 road under a memorandum of understanding penned by Interior Secretary Gale Norton and then-Gov. Mike Leavitt last year. The state can gain title to a road if it can prove it existed before 1976; that cars and trucks can drive on it; and that the road is not in a national park, wilderness area, wilderness study area or Indian reservation.

There is no known opposition to giving the state legal title to the Weiss Highway, which winds through Juab County's western desert. It clearly meets the criteria set down by Leavitt and Norton and remains an important route for ranchers, miners, law enforcers and recreationalists.

It should also be understood that most of the early claims the Walker administration will seek involve roads where the state's claims are irrefutable. Satellite photography, digitized maps and legal affidavits from old-timers will form the foundation for the claims, which should expedite the process.

Other claims may prove to be more problematic. There has been no outcry concerning the Weiss Highway designation, but environmental groups, undoubtedly, will challenge some future claims, which could become incredibly costly to state and local governments.

For the time being, the negotiated process is appealing in that it helps maintain the state and federal government's costs in addressing these claims, many of which meet the agreed-upon standards to a "T."

The state's options to address these RS2477 claims are negotiation, litigation or federal legislation. At this point, claims under the negotiated process seem the most logical and expedient use of taxpayers' dollars to address an issue nearly as old as the West itself.