On October 16, 2003, the House Resources Subcommittee on National Parks, Recreation and Public Lands held a hearing on the Utah Test and Training Range Protection Act (H.R. 2909). Those testifying included Deputy BLM Director Jim Hughes, representatives of the U.S. Air Force, Goshute Tribe and the State of Utah as well as Scott Groene, staff attorney for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA), who presented testimony on behalf of SUWA, The Wilderness Society, Campaign for America's Wilderness and the Natural Resources Defense Council. Reps. Mark Udall and Tom Udall were on hand to ask tough questions and point out some of the flaws in the current bill.
On July 25, 2003, Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT) introduced H.R. 2909, which -- among other provisions -- would designate some wilderness in Utah's West Desert. The measure also addresses Air Force training activities in the region and includes a provision that would prohibit the Bureau of Land Management from issuing a right-of-way permit for a 30-mile rail line across BLM lands that would be used to transport nuclear waste.
While the measure would designate some Wilderness, it currently includes a number of troubling provisions and lacks specifics. At the threshold, there is no map of the area to be designated as Wilderness so legislators do not know what the bill would or would not protect. As drafted, the legislation would allow new communications sites in the to-be-designated wilderness as well as the continuation of existing sites and maintenance of those sites by helicopter. The bill provides that new sites can be built inside wilderness study areas and dictates specific management of wilderness study areas in ways different from what the Congress prescribed in the Federal Land Management and Policy Act.
The bill would allow the Secretary of Interior to approve new communication sites when these, collectively, will create "a similar impact" that does not expand the "size or significantly expand the numbers of such systems" and doesn't require construction of a road. Finally, the bill as drafted would give the Secretary of the Air Force consultation authority over management decisions for designated wilderness.
The conservation groups' testimony before the subcommittee concluded as follows:
"We urge you to oppose this legislation unless these basic questions are addressed and the West Desert wilderness is given adequate protection.
We are willing to work with Mr. Bishop to address the concerns we have raised and it is our hope that such efforts will be fruitful. But we will vigorously oppose the bill if it fails to adequately address our concerns.
At the same time, we wish to underscore our ongoing concern with the potential public safety hazard that would be created by an above ground nuclear waste storage site near the urban core of Utah's population. We understand that one motivation behind the designation of wilderness in the legislation under consideration today is to prevent the development of the nuclear waste transportation corridor necessary for the proposed storage site. While we fully share the concern of this legislation's chief sponsor with the public safety issues raised by the creation of the proposed nuclear waste storage site, we urge the Utah Delegation to pursue simpler legislation that would effectively block nuclear waste without creating other concerns for the conservation community. We would also urge a consideration of how to compensate the Goshute Nation for lost economic opportunities if the nuclear waste site is blocked."
Background
Islands of high mountain ranges, set off by broad valleys, characterize the basin and range country of Utah's West Desert between the Great Salt Lake and the Nevada border. This desert is wilderness in the best sense of the word, solitary, remote, untouched. Citizens have identified vast areas of potential wilderness in the West Desert region and permanent wilderness protection for all of these areas is proposed in the Redrock Wilderness Act (H.R. 1796/ S. 639), which currently has 158 cosponsors in the House and 15 in the Senate.
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