Lease accord for lake bed pleases all parties

A resource dispute often lands in court with environmentalists, lease-holders and the state battling it out, with some of those parties going away disgruntled when the judge finally rules.

Not this time.

Instead, a wide-ranging agreement was reached over oil and gas leasing of the bed of the Great Salt Lake that approved leasing some tracts and withdraws others from consideration for now.

Negotiations that began in January and concluded late last week resulted in smiles from all parties involved.

The agency is the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands; the lease-holders are MAB Resources LLC and W.G. Boonenberg; and the environmentalists are members of the Friends of Great Salt Lake, National Audubon Society, Great Salt Lake Audubon Society and the Utah Chapter of the Sierra Club.

Comments from the three parties were:

• "The state's happy that we came to an agreement and can move forward with the task at hand," which is managing the resources of the Great Salt Lake, said Dave Grierson, sovereign lands coordinator and planner for the division.

• "Certainly everybody is pleased with the agreement," said Sean Phelan, attorney with the public interest environmental law firm Western Resource Advocates, which negotiated for the environmental groups. "I think it's an important agreement" allowing the public to voice concerns about development of the lake bed.

• "Our clients . . . MAB and Mr. Boonenberg are pleased with it and we're happy that we were able to negotiate the agreement," said David E. Brody of the Denver law firm Patton Boggs LLP, representing lease-holders.

According to spokesman Jim Springer, the state manages what is called "sovereign lands," including the land beneath the Great Salt Lake, which are different from school trust lands, handled by another state agency.

Late last year, Forestry Fire and State Lands proposed to offer oil and gas leases in the lake's northern arm, including areas close to the famous man-made Spiral Jetty. Altogether, 52 tracts were offered covering 177,445 acres.

Environmentalists objected. Saying they did not know of the lease offerings in a timely manner, they petitioned the division to withhold, withdraw or delay the leases.

State officials felt the protests were too late. They could have played hard-ball and rolled over the protests. But they switched track.

"We're certainly interested in people having access to the process . . . making their desires known in the process," said Springer. "So we halted the process."

The upshot of the negotiations is that out of the amount challenged, about 55,000 acres will be subjected to oil and gas leases, including lake bed property near the Spiral Jetty. Some of the tract leases were signed Tuesday by the division.