A belated evaluation of wilderness-quality public lands around Price promises to do little to quell a public lands debate that has raged since the Bureau of Land Management issued its long-range plan for the area three years ago.

At the heart of the new study is whether more than 937,000 acres of wilderness-quality lands - which the BLM and a citizens group identified as such a decade ago - should be protected from oil and gas drilling damage during a time of national energy uncertainty.

But it won't stop there.

Because the supplement is one of several signature BLM land plans for southern Utah due this fall, it also will test the Bush administration's willingness to push natural gas development on federal land in the state even though the yield would do little to ease the nation's energy crunch.

The BLM study supplements the original 2004 Draft Resource Management Plan, which will govern 2.5 million acres in Carbon and Emery counties for the next decade and beyond.

The new proposal offers an alternative that would restrict energy development more than any others included in the 2004 draft. But even under that alternative, which has virtually no chance of wholesale adoption, hundreds of new gas wells would be allowed on some of Utah's most precious open country, revered for its redrock beauty, wildlife habitat and archaeological treasures.

Intense debate

Since the 2004 draft plan's publication, local officials, residents and conservation organizations have been arguing the merits of an energy economy versus an outdoor recreation economy.

The schism intensified after the federal 2005 Energy Policy Act ordered the acceleration of oil and gas leases.

Twenty-seven areas with wilderness characteristics - not to be confused with congressionally protected Wilderness Study Areas - are analyzed in the new supplement, published in response to a federal court ruling last year that energy leases on wilderness-quality lands had been sold illegally.

The ruling voided 16 oil and gas lease sales and put the BLM on notice that the agency had to include in its management plans alternatives for what the agency calls "non-wilderness study areas with wilderness characteristics."

But the BLM didn't revisit all of its previous analyses for the Price district. Rather, it created a fifth alternative, aspects of which could be cut and pasted into the final plan, said Price Field Office Manager Roger Bankert.

Carbon County officials, while understanding the legal need for the new study, appear unlikely to embrace it.

Rex Sacco, Carbon County's public lands director, said local government "doesn't want anything to be damaged down there. At the same time, we believe the proper protection [of wilderness-quality land] can be done without restricting a lot of the multiple uses."

Future moves

Among the uses always analyzed in BLM land plans are grazing, logging, mining, drilling and motorized and nonmotorized recreation.

Most important to Carbon and Emery counties, Sacco said, is to figure out how to keep the economy running so residents' children and grandchildren don't have to seek work elsewhere.

In 2005, the Price district issued a similar supplement on lands called areas of critical environmental concern, among them 26,000 acres in and around Nine Mile Canyon, where Denver-based Bill Barrett Corp. is planning to drill 750 to 800 gas wells.

The prospect of limiting energy development lit up Carbon County.

Sacco and two other county officials fired off a letter to the BLM saying the county "cannot allow this [Resource Management] plan to be adopted in such a manner as to devalue private properties, wreck our economy and make energy development prohibitive."

The county's position today remains the same.

"One of the best sources of money is energy development," Sacco said.

While he agreed that renewable energy must be developed, "we still need to use nonrenewables, and use them wisely," Sacco said.

"This is a national issue. We need to have sources of energy."

Energy calculations

The Price draft management plan shows that if nothing were done to change what's going on today, the area could see slightly more than 1,500 new natural gas wells drilled.

The preferred alternative laid out in the 2004 draft calls for 1,440 wells. The supplement, which outlines an alternative that would restrict energy development the most, would allow 950 wells.

The latter totals include all of Bill Barrett's gas wells proposed for the West Tavaputs Plateau, in Nine Mile Canyon, near wilderness-study areas and in non-WSAs with wilderness characteristics - a prospect unacceptable to conservationists.

"Just because an area has some [energy] potential doesn't mean you sacrifice some of the country's most special places," said Stephen Bloch, staff attorney for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. "Our very grave fear is these supplemental analyses are straw men, that the BLM is doing the minimum to get by, to say they considered an alternative to protect these resources when they have no intention to do so."

SUWA and other organizations, including The Wilderness Society, say that political rhetoric has overblown Utah's energy potential, an argument that U.S. Geological Survey and Utah Division of Oil Gas and Mining statistics seem to support.

Natural gas has been developed in Utah since 1891. Between then and 2000, total gas production has been 7.65 trillion cubic feet. Between 2000 and this month, drilling in Utah has yielded 2.3 trillion cubic feet, according to Jim Springer, spokesman for the state Division of Oil, Gas and Mining.

The United States now consumes about 62 billion cubic feet of gas per day. That means all of the gas developed between 1891 and 2000 amounted to about four months' worth. The gas yield since 2000 equals about 36 days' worth at today's consumption level.

USGS estimates show that all of the undiscovered natural gas resources in Utah would amount to about 24 days' worth of national consumption.

The energy potential in the 9.5 million acres of Utah included in the proposed Red Rock Wilderness Act accounts for just 10 percent of the state's total. The Price district includes a fraction of that.

Tough choices

The BLM points out that developing gas wells disrupts soils, causes erosion, increases runoff and damages water quality. But it doesn't acknowledge a prime cause: hundreds of trips per day by 80,000-pound rigs up and down steep roads to remote drill pads.

The Bill Barrett project area on the West Tavaputs Plateau overlooks two wilderness study areas, Jack Canyon and Desolation Canyon.

The area is revered for its ancient Indian rock art and rugged beauty. Should it be at risk for natural gas exploration that won't come close to solving the nation's energy woes?

"These choices are even more stark when you look at the wildcat wells being proposed in Moab or Cedar City. You're talking about sacrificing national treasures for one individual," Bloch said. "Those are the decisions the BLM tries to shield from the public under the guise of national security or energy independence, which we know is never going to happen. We will never drill ourselves to energy independence."

Sacco calls the controversy a "day-by-day situation," and stresses the idea that he and other regional leaders and residents don't want the area overrun by gas development or any other special use, including off-highway motorized recreation.

"We're not just yes-men. We don't want to see these energy guys come out here and completely wreak havoc," he said. "We've got a lot of good open country. . . . I just go back to the Bible. God put us here to help manage the land a little."

A supplement to the 2004 U.S. Bureau of Land Management Price district Draft Resource Management Plan is open to public comment through Dec. 13. The supplement analyzes 937,440 acres of public land within that have wilderness characteristics but are not within established Wilderness Study Areas. The BLM says such lands offer "naturalness, outstanding opportunities for solitude and outstanding opportunities for primitive and unconfined recreation." The Price Field Office manages 2.5 million surface acres of public land and 2.8 million subsurface acres subject to minerals development. For more information: Bureau of Land Management Price Field Office 125 S. 600 West Price, Utah 84501 Phone: (435) 636-3600 Fax: (435) 636-3657 http://www.blm.gov/ut/st/en/fo/price/planning.html