Three years ago, a proposed land swap between the state of Utah and the federal government collapsed amid allegations that the American people would have been ripped off to the tune of more than $100 million.

This year, Utah congressmen of both parties and area environmental groups are backing a different swap that would place precious wild lands along the Colorado River in federal hands in return for the state taking control of some potentially oil-rich territory in the Uinta Basin.

We should take it as no insult if Congress wants to look this gift horse squarely in the mouth first. But it certainly seems like a good deal for all concerned.

Both the state and the feds own irregular parcels of land throughout Utah and, in the case of the federal government, throughout the West. These checkerboard patterns of ownership make it difficult to develop land that would otherwise be a good bet for development and just as hard to preserve land that ought to be preserved.

Thus the idea of land swaps.

It is an idea, though, that developed a bad reputation in 2002 when a plan by then-Gov. Mike Leavitt to trade 108,000 scattered acres of state land for 135,000 acres of federal land, creating more manageable tracts and facilitating a proposed San Rafael Swell National Monument, fell apart.

That happened when whistle-blowers deep in the Bureau of Land Management credibly alleged that, instead of the value of the two sides' offerings being roughly equal, the plan would have instead shortchanged the United States of America by as much as $117 million.

Such deals generally carry the risk of fraud, as well the potential for honest and insoluble differences of opinion. It will always be a matter of subjective judgment to set the monetary value of preserving one tract of land vs. the value of exploiting another tract of land for economic gain - even when that economic gain will accrue, as it would in these cases, to the state's school fund.

Our argument would be that preserving certain land - in this case whitewater rafting territory in Westwater Canyon, Kokopelli and Slickrock bike trails and potential wilderness land near Arches National Park and Dinosaur National Monument - is worth quite a bit indeed.