WASHINGTON — It was not at all what he envisioned, but Rep. Rob Bishop did unite proponents and opponents of his bill designed both to protect the Utah Test and Training Range and to block a nuclear waste dump in Skull Valley.
The trouble was, they all testified against it Thursday before the House Resources Subcommittee on National Parks and Public Lands.
So Bishop, R-Utah, conceded that the bill needs more work — but at least extracted promises from all sides to work jointly to try to reach the sort of positive consensus he seeks.
"The UTTR is nothing short of an irreplaceable national defense asset. . . . It is the largest overland test and training range in the lower 48 states," Bishop said in explaining why he is trying to protect it. He also has said that its unfettered operation is a key to protecting Hill Air Force Base in the upcoming 2005 round of base closures.
Bishop's bill seeks to ensure that wilderness areas beneath the range do not restrict Air Force flights or ground facilities. It would also block a railroad needed to allow a nuclear waste dump on the nearby Goshute Reservation, which Bishop worries could force altering flight patterns to ensure planes do not crash into waste silos.
It would also create some wilderness areas beneath the UTTR in the Cedar Mountains.
However, environmental groups said the bill creates too little wilderness; the Interior Department said it may create too much; the Goshute tribe says it violates treaties; the Department of Indian Affairs says it cuts off all chances for Goshute economic development; and the Air Force says it doesn't allow enough management flexibility.
Only the state of Utah officially supported it — but even it said the bill needed changes to ensure it has access to proposed wilderness areas to maintain water "guzzlers" for wildlife and ensure that new water rights are not create for wilderness areas.
Scott Groene, attorney for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, complained the bill has yet to say how big the wilderness areas are that it will create in the Cedar Mountains, but it appears to be less than the 100,000 acres that wilderness groups want there.
But Deputy Bureau of Land Management Director Jim Hughes complained his agency determined in past studies that only about 50,000 acres there are worthy of wilderness protection, so it opposes creating more than that.
Hughes also dislikes a provision ordering the BLM not to issue any rights of way across lands beneath the UTTR until 2015. Not only would that block the railway to the proposed nuclear waste railway, Hughes said it could block renewal of rights of way for such things as the I-80 freeway and Union Pacific's Salt Lake to Sacramento line.
Leon Bear, chairman of the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians, charged that stopping the railway "is the latest in a series of efforts by Utah political leaders, led by Gov. Mike Leavitt, to deny Goshute treaty rights." Bishop said he hopes to help the tribe find other economic opportunities instead.
Still, Jeffrey Loman, acting director of trust services for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, said his agency opposes the bill because it might halt ongoing Nuclear Regulatory Commission review of whether the threat of plane crash into the proposed waste dump is too high — and it also hurts chances for Goshute economic development.
"There are very few opportunities for economic development opportunities considering that the land is surrounded by waste facilities — including radioactive disposal sites, and chemical and biological weapons depots," Loman said.
Gerald Pease, associate director for ranges and airspace for the Air Force, testified the Air Force worries that proposed wilderness could preclude it from adding communication and instrumentation sites at the UTTR, and reduce flexibility in land management. Groene said environmentalists worry the opposite is true.
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