Kane, feds to meet soon to discuss roads issue

Lawsuits and bluster notwithstanding, Kane County and the federal government will soon enter into negotiations to resolve a 2 1/2-year feud over ownership of hundreds of miles of dirt roads in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. "Kane County has agreed to begin the consultation on Nov. 30, 2005," says a letter written by Gale Norton, secretary of the U.S. Interior Department.

In Kanab on Monday afternoon, Commissioner Mark Habbeshaw took a break from a County Commission meeting to confirm the upcoming session.

"I'm pretty optimistic about it," he said. "We're going to meet with Interior and the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) on Nov. 30 up there in Salt Lake, in the BLM offices, and try to see if we can't work something out."

Norton's comments came in a letter to Sen. Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat who demanded last June that Norton intervene in the dispute or he would hold up the confirmation of a top Norton deputy, Patricia Lynn Scarlett.

On Friday, the same day Durbin received the latest in a series of letters from Norton, Scarlett was confirmed as deputy director.

It was also the same day that Kane and Garfield counties filed a federal lawsuit challenging road closures and use restrictions in the monument's management plan. The lawsuit was described as a formality to protect the county's legal standing before the statute of limitations expired.

Durbin has been a harsh critic both of Kane County and what he saw as Interior Department inaction.

Last June he wrote, "This current situation is a direct consequence of the department's failure to take action against Kane County when the county removed over 30 BLM route signs nearly two years ago."

Norton responded Friday that she has appointed Larry Jensen, a federal regional solicitor, to negotiate with the county.

"While we cannot prejudge the outcome of this consultation, Mr. Jensen will articulate in this consultation the applicable and appropriate federal rights and responsibilities that apply in this situation," she wrote.

She also pledged that the department would follow guidelines set by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, which directed a "commendable spirit of mutual accommodation" and a recognition that "both levels of government have responsibility for, and a deep commitment to, the common good, which is better served by communication and cooperation than by unilateral action."

In August 2003, the BLM put up 31 signs closing off certain dirt roads in the monument. And that prompted Habbeshaw and Sheriff Lamont Smith to take the signs down, saying the county owned the routes under a 19th-century law known as RS2477.

The county then began putting up its own "road open" signs in areas the BLM had designated closed.