The proposal, known as the Price Resource Management Plan, isn't expected to be finalized until the end of next year. But county officials say the BLM has overreached with its preferred alternative of the proposal, and vowed in a Dec. 16 letter to the state's Public Land Coordination Office to "go to whatever lengths necessary" to keep it from being implemented.

The BLM currently currently plans to declare more than 26,000 acres of Nine Mile as an "Area of Critical Environmental Concern," or ACEC, while the Green River is being targeted for "Wild and Scenic River" status from below Flaming Gorge Dam to the Emery County line. Both designations would severely restrict, and in many instances prohibit energy exploration and development, and other forms of commercial enterprise in the affected areas.

County planning officials call that unacceptable, arguing that such restrictions will compromise future economic development.

"As a small, rural county we cannot waste resources on this foolishness, yet we cannot allow this plan to be adopted in such a manner as to devalue private properties, wreck our economy and make energy development prohibitive," said the letter, signed by county planning director Dave Levanger, lands and access coordinator Rex Sacco and deputy zoning administrator Gayla Williams.

Ruth McCoard, the BLM's Price Field Office spokeswoman, says that talks with the county are continuing, and emphasized that the land use plan is not yet finalized. "These are huge issues. It could still change," she said.

But McCoard also says that the BLM has an obligation to protect both Nine Mile and the Green River - both of which are internationally renowned for their natural, cultural and recreational resources - and that the agency is operating well within established guidelines in the current planning process.

"We do recognize that there is a lot of frustration," she said. "But we firmly believe in this process and will continue to work through it."

Essentially, county officials believe that the BLM is using the ACEC and Wild and Scenic River designations as a way to provide wilderness-type protection for areas that are currently ineligible for them. The BLM and the state signed a "No More Wilderness" agreement in 2003 that repealed all Wilderness Inventory Areas created during the Clinton administration and prohibited future wilderness designations - at least through the end of the Bush administration.

County officials say they have proposed smaller, and more specifically targeted areas for protection. Congress, they wrote, "never contemplated an ACEC the size they propose - which is over three and one half times the size of Arlington County, Virginia."

And, they added, "We will be joining with Uintah and Emery counties to defeat this Wild and Scenic Rivers designation. The BLM's proposed action . . . to create, again, de facto wilderness is not acceptable to us."

Environmental groups, likewise, are not entirely thrilled with the BLM's Price land use plan. But they solidly back the agency's proposal to protect Nine Mile and the Green River.

"It's entirely appropriate for the BLM to consider special designations that will protect these special places," said Steve Bloch, an attorney with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. "These are tools that Congress specifically gave BLM to protect values and places that might not exactly qualify as wilderness quality lands. We're somewhat baffled by how paranoid the county and state have become about the BLM considering options to protect these places. It's what the land use process is all about."

jbaird@sltrib.com