Three Rivers deal a sorry 'greenwash'

Interior Secretary Gale Norton was in Moab last week and took the opportunity to attend a ceremony in which she signed the Three Rivers Withdrawal. The withdrawal, initiated during the Clinton administration, is a new Bureau of Land Management administrative rule that protects 200 miles of the Colorado, Green and Delores river canyons from new hard rock mining claims (silver, gold, copper, etc).

Environmentalists held a protest during the event. In fact, the protesters outnumbered officials and other VIPs who attended the invite-only soiree.

It may seem a bit odd that those who generally champion public lands protections might protest a mining withdrawal. The fact is they were not protesting the withdrawal. They were protesting Norton and Utah BLM Director Sally Wisely's patent hypocrisy. Context is everything. By itself, the Three Rivers Withdrawal is a good thing, although nothing to get very excited about. But when looked at against the nightmarish background of the rest of Norton's land management policies, it is merely "greenwash."

(n. Greenwash — that which helps an individual or organization appear for political purposes to be environment-friendly in order to cover up their environment-unfriendly acts.)

Just three days prior to the Saturday signing ceremony, the BLM offered for sale a record number of Utah acres for oil and gas leases. The parcels offered at auction included approximately 38,000 acres of proposed wilderness; approximately 24,000 acres were lands that the BLM itself inventoried and determined possessed wilderness character.

But the height of the irony — and the thing that most angered the locals who turned out to protest — was that some of the oil and gas lease parcels auctioned off lie within the very same river corridors Norton claims she's protecting.

I call it greenwash.

First, the withdrawal does nothing to stop claimants from mining existing claims — they're grandfathered in. Second, according to the BLM, there have been few new mining claims along the rivers in question in recent years, mainly due to the fact that there are few economically viable deposits in those areas.

Although the Three Rivers Withdrawal is a step in the right direction, it is a very small step. And when set against the fact that just three days prior to the signing Wisely, at Norton's direction, oversaw the largest oil and gas lease sale in recent Utah history, the withdrawal looks like a cynical ploy.

Five steps backward, one step forward.

And the oil and gas lease sale is only the tip of the iceberg. The protesters' anger at Norton's land-use policies dates back to last April's infamous Leavitt/Norton backdoor no-more-wilderness deal. As she put an end to any future Wilderness Study Area designations and thus removed that tool from BLM's toolbox, she also promised that the BLM had many other tools it would use to accomplish the same goal. Problem is, we have yet to see even one of those tools put to use. Instead, we get record-setting oil and gas auctions on Wednesday, followed by a thin greenwash on Saturday.

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Franklin Seal is Southeast Utah outreach coordinator for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.