The U.S. Board on Geographic Names is scheduled to consider a 2003 petition filed by the Coalition to Rename Lake Powell at its Oct. 20 meeting. The coalition of environment groups has campaigned to rename the popular lake created on the Utah-Arizona border in 1963 by Glen Canyon Dam to more accurately reflect its birthright and to avoid confusion with a small mountaintop lake in the Colorado River watershed that has the same name.

"There is little risk that these two lakes would be confused by recreationists," Hatch wrote in a letter to the board. "In fact, I suspect that the proponents of the name change have a political rather than practical motivation, that motivation being the eventual draining of Lake Powell."

Utah and Arizona lawmakers inserted a provision last year into the Interior Department's 2004 spending plan that prohibits the agency from using federal funds to study or implement any plan to drain Lake Powell. The Utah Committee on Geographic Names earlier this year found no compelling reason to rename the lake and voted unanimously to oppose the change, and the federal board is not expected to support the name switch.

- Christopher Smith