After a pair of public meetings in southern Utah, the bill dropped a proposed dam in the environmentally sensitive Beaver Wash Dam area, and removed a section designating a transportation artery that would have sliced across a tortoise preserve.
Otherwise, the bill remains substantively the same as the version Bennett and the House sponsor, Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, unveiled in March.
"No one disputes the dramatic growth occurring in Washington County. But we can't simply acknowledge the growth, we have to find a way to responsibly manage it," Bennett said in a statement.
"Congressman Matheson and I have produced a bill that provides a balanced framework for managing the growth, while also adopting substantial conservation measures."
Pete Downing, director of government relations for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, which has criticized the draft legislation, said the group would want to look at the full text of the new bill, but on the surface it appears few changes were made, despite various concerns.
"It seems that many of those concerns Utahns have been seeking to see address in the bill still are problems," Downing said.
But Matheson estimated there were dozens of various tweaks to the bill.
"I think that the amount of land sales is really capped at 25,000 acres and in the original bill it could've gone higher than that and I think those are significant issues," he said.
A key part of the bill, Matheson said, is the establishment of Envision Dixie, which will seek to develop a growth plan for the county.
Environmental groups had been particularly opposed to language directing the sale of federal lands, potentially for development to accommodate the county's population boom.
"There's simply no demonstrated need to sell off the heritage of our public lands," said Lawson LeGate, a public lands specialist with the Utah chapter of the Sierra Club. "When the president proposed something similar earlier this year [a sell-off of U.S. Forest Service lands], Western Republicans pronounced it dead on arrival. It's disappointing that the bill has been tweaked, but important and substantive changes have not yet been made."
Overall, the Bennett-Matheson proposal calls for the designation of 219,725 acres of wilderness, which the environmentalists argue is inadequate. Of the designated wilderness, 123,743 acres would be in Zion National Park where it already receives protections.
But Matheson said that "this is not a wilderness bill. This is a Washington County land bill."
He said the legislation moves about 1.5 percent of the land from federal ownership to private control, but also puts 85 percent of the revenue from those land sales toward conservation measures.
Bennett said discussions about possible additional wilderness in the county's Mojave region will continue.
As it stands, Washington County Commissioner Alan Gardner says the Bennett-Matheson proposal still includes more wilderness than county officials envisioned. They remain hopeful they can ultimately prevail on the proposed so-called Northern Corridor transportation route, and hope the new bill isn't the final word on the Beaver Wash Dam removal.
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Tribune reporter Joe Baird contributed to this story.
