Congress OKs lands bill

After a long and twisted path through Congress, the House on Wednesday finally passed and sent to President Barack Obama a massive package of 170 public lands bills — including several affecting Utah — that would create 2 million acres of wilderness nationwide.

They include a major Utah bill to determine which areas of Washington County will be maintained as wild and pristine to help protect such endangered species as the desert tortoise, and which lands may be developed.

The overall package also includes several minor bills and land trades affecting Park City open space, a Bountiful gun range, a Utah Boy Scout camp, a ranch for troubled youths and trails used by Mormon pioneers.

The package had been blocked in the Senate for months by a filibuster before it finally passed there. The package was defeated previously in the House by two votes under a procedure that required a two-thirds majority. The Senate passed it a second time under a new title, and that allowed the House to pass it Wednesday with a simple majority on a 285-140 vote.

But Republicans, led in part by Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, howled about the process Wednesday that brought up the massive bill without allowing any possible amendments.

Even though two Bishop bills were in the package, he and others complained that it contained many wasteful bills or locked up too much public land to things such as oil exploration — and contended it won approval only by forcing members to vote for a bad overall package if they wanted their home-state bills that it contained.

"There are many provisions in this bill that would easily pass if they stood alone, and there are provisions in this bill that would not. There's no reason we need to lump all these things together," Bishop told the House.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, also opposed the bill. "The overall package locks up American-made energy, restricts private property rights, limits Second Amendment (right to bear arms) rights on public lands and limits disabled Americans' access to millions of acres of public land." (Wilderness designations largely prohibit development and vehicle use.)

Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, voted for the bill — as had Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett, both R-Utah — in large part for the Washington County lands bill it contains.

That bill, pushed mostly by Matheson and Bennett, would create two new national conservation areas to provide permanent protection for the endangered desert tortoise and other at-risk species near St. George while allowing development in other areas, where development has been blocked.

The measure would also create 256,338 acres of wilderness areas in the county and enlarge Zion National Park to include some of them.