New study offers 'win-win' for Nine Mile

Heavy industrial trucks rumbling through Nine Mile Canyon in recent years have angered critics who say the traffic is causing damage to the canyon's massive collection of fragile American Indian rock-art panels.

Now the nonprofit group National Trust for Historic Preservation is touting a new report that offers a "win-win" solution for the canyon and Bill Barrett Corp., whose truck drivers routinely use the canyon as part of the company's natural-gas operations in the area. The solution would mean building new roads in some places, directing traffic away from at-risk art panels.

Barrett Corp. communications manager Jim Felton said Monday that his company's increased presence in the canyon can actually bring added protection to cultural resources there and improve safety for canyon visitors. Felton said constructing new roads would take years to build and impact cultural sites, wildlife habitat and air quality.

The report released this week comes from KPFF Consulting Engineers, a West Coast civil- and structural-engineering firm commissioned by the National Trust to study alternate routes that would ease traffic along the canyon's main road.

"This new information fundamentally alters the stalemate at Nine Mile Canyon by giving both sides what they want," said National Trust president Richard Moe.

KPFF concluded that "feasible alternative access routes exist that can eliminate or substantially reduce the need to use Nine Mile Canyon Road" to access the so-called West Tavaputs Plateau project area. Improving just one of the routes being suggested would cost almost $17 million for 21 miles of road that would be used year-round by Barrett Corp.

"Already, they're making millions of dollars a day off of that gas field," said Nine Mile Canyon Coalition chairwoman Pam Miller. She said the money Barrett Corp. would need to spend on improving alternate roads would amount to a "drop in the bucket."

The Colorado-based oil and gas company is in the approval stages of increasing its natural gas drilling by 800 wells on the Tavaputs Plateau above the canyon. Barrett Corp.'s proposed project will add hundreds of truck trips each week inside the canyon. The Bureau of Land Management's own draft environmental impact statement earlier this year concluded that dust is having an impact on the canyon art.

"I urge the BLM to take this new information into consideration as it weighs the future of Nine Mile Canyon," Moe said in a statement.