New Bureau of Land Management rules threaten southeastern Utah's $5 million film industry, the Moab Film Commission says.

The agency announced Feb. 5 that filmmakers will be required to follow the land-use permit procedures imposed on other users whose plans may have an environmental impact. This means instead of the usual two- or three-day processing time, movie producers will have to wait at least 45 days for permission to shoot."Television commercials usually go from conception to air in three weeks, so this is completely incompatible with the time limits of the industry," Bego Gearhart of the Moab Film Commission told a Salt Lake newspaper.

The action came after the Utah Chapter of the Sierra Club and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance appealed a BLM decision to allow producers of "Slaughter of the Innocents" to drop a large wooden boat from a cliff.

The environmentalists contended the BLM was breaking its own rules by not waiting the required 30 days for the public to lodge formal appeals.

Interior Department lawyers decided that provisions requiring 15 days notice and a 30-day comment period must apply to filming.

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"The BLM is playing hardball on this in Utah, but we have found out BLM is not taking the same approach in other states," said Don Holyoak, president of the Moab Film Commission. "We're losing our film business to surrounding states."

In the past week, time-lapse photography for a Jeep commercial and a Korean climbing-shoe commercial were canceled in Grand County because of the new waiting period.

Ron Griffith, a Moab film-service entrepreneur, said he was able to reschedule the shoe commercial to the Navajo reservation in Monument Valley.

Gearhart says the new regulations mean "a person asking to take a photo for a calendar is treated the same way as someone who wants to dam the Grand Canyon."

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