For much of the past two years, the Bush administration's quiet drive to open the public lands of Utah to energy development has gone remarkably unnoticed by the national media. That may all change, however, with Bush's nomination of Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt to be the next head of the Environmental Protection Agency.
"Clearly one of the places that's been caught in the crosshairs of the Bush energy policy is the inter-mountain West," says Larry Young, Executive Director of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA). "I think part of it is a historic conservative nature of politics in the inter-mountain West. I think another part of it is that the media has a limited scope of vision in terms of environmental issues, and they've focused on the Arctic Wildlife Refuge."
One of the places outside the media focus but squarely in the administration's sights is the Dome Plateau. Located less than two miles from Arches National Park, the Dome Plateau is more remote but equally striking, a landscape of sweeping red rock and high desert. But the 23,000-acre plateau is home to more than just amazing vistas. According to the Bureau of Land Management, which administers the area, the plateau contains reserves of both oil and natural gas. And in June of 2002, the BLM cleared the way for oil exploration to begin.
In southeastern Utah, Bob Burtman wrote in the July/August 2002 issue of Mother Jones, "the proposed drilling would do more than spoil scenic views -- it also threatens crucial habitat for desert bighorn sheep and cougars, as well as eagles and other raptors."
Environmentalists claim that the site, along with other portions of southern Utah's breathtaking landscape, should be protected. In 1985, citizen activists authored a proposal that was subsequently introduced in Congress as the American Red Rock Wilderness Act. The legislation aims to designate around 9 million acres of BLM as wilderness, protecting it from large-scale development. The bill currently has 152 co-sponsors in the House and 17 in the Senate. But that isn't about to stop the BLM from going ahead with its plans.
"As in so much of the West, the current Bush administration's oil and gas explorations and development policy is one of going after every last acre, regardless of other resource values that are at stake," Young says.
The Dome Plateau sits on the boundary between the deserts of the Southwest and the alpine terrain of the Rocky Mountains. The high altitude promotes the development of fragile cryptobiotic soils -- a thin living strata of lichen and mosses that can be damaged even by footprints. The massive seismic 'thumper trucks' being used for oil exploration in the region leave far deeper tracks, effectively building roads where none existed. As Burtman wrote, "the trucks crushed ancient stands of juniper, left fragile desert soil vulnerable to erosion, and cut 176 miles of new roads." If oil or gas are found, and if the BLM pursues drilling as aggressively as it has pursued exploration, those roads are almost sure to become permanent.
"This is a land of fragile desert ecosystems of stark beauty -- red rock towers, slick rock canyons," Young says. "These are places that are every bit as beautiful [as the nearby National Parks], but more remote, more rugged. Places that from our perspective, can serve their highest purpose by being protected as Wilderness."
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