Committee OKs Utah land trade

A Senate committee Tuesday endorsed a bill to preserve some scenic school trust lands in southeastern Utah by swapping them for less-beautiful federal lands where oil and gas development is possible — which could generate money for Utah schools.

With the passage by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, the bill is just one step away — via full Senate passage — from going to the desk of President Barack Obama.

The House passed the bill on a 423-0 vote last month.

The bill would authorize exchanging about 40,000 acres of school trust lands for similar acreage of U.S. Bureau of Land Management parcels. The school lands are scattered in checkerboard fashion amid federal land, complicating management by both the state and federal governments.

School lands the BLM would receive are in Grand, San Juan and Uintah counties. They include portions of several wilderness-study areas, the Westwater Canyon, the Kokopelli and Slickrock trails, several rock arches and other areas that environmental groups would like protected as wilderness.

In exchange, the Utah School Institutional Trust Land Administration would receive BLM lands with potential oil and natural-gas deposits that could be developed to produce money for schools.

School trust lands are, by state law, supposed to be managed in ways to maximize money they raise for schools from such things as mining or oil or livestock leases. But much of the land in the bill is in scenic areas that many would like to see preserved and not developed.

The bill has been pushed for years by Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, and Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, and has reached consensus support among environmental groups, local governments and the Obama administration.

"This bill represents more than five years of working with stakeholders to ensure a fair exchange that will benefit Utah's schoolchildren and our taxpayers while protecting unique treasured lands and habitats," Bennett said Tuesday.

e-mail: lee@desnews.com