NINE MILE CANYON — What's already been described as unprecedented compromise between an oil and gas company and environmentalists took another leap toward cooperation Tuesday, with the company agreeing to spend up to $5 million to preserve archaeological resources in Nine Mile Canyon.
The announcement was made jointly amid the cliffs of the rock-art wonder by Bill Barrett Corp. and the executive director of the Colorado Plateau Archaeological Alliance.
"This creates a new paradigm where industry is saying, 'We think this is valuable,' " said Jerry Spangler of CPAA. "The state of Utah does not have the funding mechanism in place to preserve resources like this, and so you have industry stepping up to be a good corporate citizen."
An initial $250,000 is on the table now, available to museums, universities and conservation groups who want to apply for grant money to inventory archaeological resources in the canyon, preserve them or provide improvements to enhance visitor experience.
"This is new for us," explained Jim Felton, spokesman for Bill Barrett Corp. "We didn't know what we were getting into as far as the extent of the resources are concerned. We're just now beginning to realize the vast number of resources here."
Felton is hopeful that some of the work will enhance efforts already under way by the alliance to identify areas along the corridor that would be ideal settings for informational kiosks along the dirt road.
The grant money is on top of a "programmatic agreement" penned in January that was hailed as groundbreaking at the time, forging unlikely alliances between preservationists who at one time sought to retain the pristine nature of the canyon at all costs and an oil and gas company that had its sights on massive drilling operations.
"Four years ago they welcomed us to the table," Spangler said, adding that the result was the programmatic agreement. "No, not everybody is happy about everything, but some people are not happy with anything."
So instead of protracted litigation that could have held all players in limbo for years, seven signatories to the agreement gave up concessions, including BBC, which agreed to scale back its operation by 66 percent in surface area and 26 percent in the number of wells it tapped.
A component of the agreement is for BBC to train its employees in cultural sensitivity to minimize damage to artifacts such as rock art, pit houses, towers and granaries.
It is also undertaking a concerted dust suppression plan that includes treating the road with pine sap that acts as a sort of glue. Eventually, BBC, the state and the impacted counties will chip in a total of $20 million to lay chip and seal down.
The impact of dust on particularly sensitive rock art panels has long been a concern of conservation groups, anthropologists and archaeologists in the field who say the dust erodes the work of Utah's earliest inhabitants etched thousands of years ago.
A study by Spangler's organization started three years ago has been inventorying the panels and other sites to show the dust's effects.
A photographic documentation over time demonstrates that the most vulnerable sites are those that are within 100 feet of the road and at a height of less than 150 feet, Spangler said.
"Despite all the money being spent on suppression," there are still impacts, Spangler said. "We can't say it is all industry. But the dust is having impacts."
Based on inventories done twice a year that are block "surveys" of 1 square mile, Spangler estimates that only 5 percent of the canyon's cultural resources have been documented.
The vast number of potential "unknowns" that potentially unveil mysteries of a people long ago drive the urgency to document them before they are possibly lost forever to vandalism or the elements, Spangler said.
At one site along a quick tour of the canyon, Spangler led a group of media up a rocky precipice that displayed some of those secrets. Perched somewhat indiscreetly on a cliff, the scrawlings were on a cliff face that overlooked a staging area for BBC's operation.
Several pickup trucks drove into the parking lot and then left.
One, a shiny maroon, had a license plate that caught the attention of anyone who happened to glance its way.
It simply said: "No dust."
e-mail: amyjoi@desnews.com