Oil company will spend $5M to preserve archeological resources in Nine Mile Canyon

NINE MILE CANYON — What's already been described as unprecedented compromise between an oil and gas company and environmentalists took another leap toward cooperation Tuesday, with the company agreeing to spend up to $5 million to preserve archaeological resources in Nine Mile Canyon.

The announcement was made jointly amid the cliffs of the rock-art wonder by Bill Barrett Corp. and the executive director of the Colorado Plateau Archaeological Alliance.

"This creates a new paradigm where industry is saying, 'We think this is valuable,' " said Jerry Spangler of CPAA. "The state of Utah does not have the funding mechanism in place to preserve resources like this, and so you have industry stepping up to be a good corporate citizen."

An initial $250,000 is on the table now, available to museums, universities and conservation groups who want to apply for grant money to inventory archaeological resources in the canyon, preserve them or provide improvements to enhance visitor experience.

"This is new for us," explained Jim Felton, spokesman for Bill Barrett Corp. "We didn't know what we were getting into as far as the extent of the resources are concerned. We're just now beginning to realize the vast number of resources here."

Felton is hopeful that some of the work will enhance efforts already under way by the alliance to identify areas along the corridor that would be ideal settings for informational kiosks along the dirt road.

The grant money is on top of a "programmatic agreement" penned in January that was hailed as groundbreaking at the time, forging unlikely alliances between preservationists who at one time sought to retain the pristine nature of the canyon at all costs and an oil and gas company that had its sights on massive drilling operations.

"Four years ago they welcomed us to the table," Spangler said, adding that the result was the programmatic agreement. "No, not everybody is happy about everything, but some people are not happy with anything."

So instead of protracted litigation that could have held all players in limbo for years, seven signatories to the agreement gave up concessions, including BBC, which agreed to scale back its operation by 66 percent in surface area and 26 percent in the number of wells it tapped.

A component of the agreement is for BBC to train its employees in cultural sensitivity to minimize damage to artifacts such as rock art, pit houses, towers and granaries.