OPINION:
President Obama takes his scheme to make the federal government bigger seriously indeed. The federal government already owns most of the land in Utah, and Mr. Obama has his eye on a prime parcel of 1.4 million acres near the Canyonlands National Park. With a wave of his autopen, he can banish development, declaring the Greater Canyonlands a “national monument.” This will make environmentalists happy.
For residents of southeast Utah, not so much. The sweeping land designation would steal jobs and opportunities to prosper. An antique law enacted a century ago called, naturally, the Antiquities Act, empowers the president to designate any parcel of federally owned public land a national monument, rendering the property essentially off-limits to development. Mining and even recreational uses that are currently permitted by the Bureau of Land Management would no longer be allowed.
The land that would become Greater Canyonlands National Monument is rich in minerals and has untapped potential for oil and gas development. Under current law, these below-the-soil riches could be retrieved under stringent Bureau of Land Management environmental-protection rules and would provide hundreds of jobs in a particularly needy rural and disadvantaged area.
Development wouldn’t affect the breathtaking vistas or disturb the spectacular red rock canyon. The area most ripe for exploration is in visually unimpressive areas covered in gray soil and scrub brush. With 1.8 million acres in it, there’s plenty of room to admire nature without foreclosing the possibility of creating jobs.
Fourteen Democratic senators wrote to urge Mr. Obama to declare Greater Canyonlands a National Monument right away. None of the signers are actually from Utah, and most of them have never been there. They cite a study concluding that money will roll in as a result of the mere designation.
Randy T. Simmons, a leading environmental and natural resource economist, disputes that. “Using a careful methodology and making comparisons between counties through time,” he wrote in an op-ed essay for The Provo Daily Herald, “we find at best no effect on local economies and, more likely, negative effects of monument designations.”
The senators who actually are from Utah, Orrin G. Hatch and Mike Lee, both Republicans, proposed legislation that would trade state lands around Canyonlands that are beautiful for the lands currently in federal hands that aren’t, but can produce revenue.
Mr. Obama doesn’t particularly like proper legislative process, so he avoids or thwarts it. His designation would follow the example Bill Clinton set when he invented the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument after coal was discovered in a remote area of that land. Rather than encourage responsible coal mining, or at least discuss options with locals, Mr. Clinton made the designation while lining up support for his 1996 re-election campaign. John Podesta, the former Clinton chief of staff, called it “pretty good politics.”
Turning federal land into a national monument should be about more than just “good politics.” A more important discussion would be about what business the federal government has in owning two-thirds of Utah. The several states are more than capable of appreciating the importance of preserving nature’s bounty in a way deskbound bureaucrats cannot understand. The Greater Canyonlands deserves a better landlord than the federal government.
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