Salt Lake Tribune

June 25, 2000

Rep. Hansen's West Desert Land Exchange Shortchanges the Public

BY JANINE BLAELOCH

Congressman Jim Hansen is hoping to sneak yet another huge land deal through Congress --
and you are all cordially invited not to participate. As he has done so often in the past, Hansen is
counting on the public to not pay attention and on his congressional colleagues to be too busy to
ask for details.

The Utah West Desert Land Exchange, HB 4579, would codify an agreement between
Gov. Mike Leavitt and Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt to trade about 106,000 acres of federal
land for about the same acreage in lands managed by the Utah School and Institutional Trust
Land Administration (SITLA).

As happened with the 1998 Utah Schools Exchange, cliches are being bandied around ("it's a
win-win") and the welfare of Utah's schoolchildren cynically used as a decoy for the real issues.
What is sorely lacking in the dialogue over this exchange is any real information as to what is at
stake -- and Congressman Hansen hopes to keep it that way.

In recent years, land exchanges conducted by the federal land agencies have come under
intense criticism by the public, the press, and watchdog agencies within the government. Bad
decisions are frequently made, leading to loss of valuable public resources. Faulty appraisals
overvalue private lands and undervalue public lands, resulting in multimillion-dollar taxpayer
losses. The public increasingly sees land trades as "backroom deals" driven and controlled by the
non-federal parties.

My organization, the Western Land Exchange Project, is working for sweeping reform in the
federal land exchange process. We surely recognize -- and have severely criticized -- the flaws
in the agencies' land exchange programs. But one of the few positive aspects of the agency
process is that it must make room for citizen involvement in land trades through the National
Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and allow citizens to challenge trades that do not serve the
public interest.

In stark contrast, legislated land deals pushed through Congress by lawmakers like Hansen pose
far worse problems for citizens and public lands, because they are driven solely by political
expediency.

Utah's West Desert Exchange is a case in point. Because this project has been taken to
Congress, the NEPA process has been effectively waived. There has been no environmental
analysis to inform the public of what this project means on the ground or what its long-term
effects would be (golf courses and subdivisions at the entrance to Zion National Park? Strip
malls across the landscape?). There will be no examination of alternatives and no recourse for
challenge by concerned citizens. Like the now-infamous Snowbasin Exchange, the West
Desert exchange takes the public out of the front seat and puts us in the trunk.

Hansen's bill contains no real information about the deal, it simply references the agreement
between Leavitt and Babbitt (not available to the public), which provides no meaningful analysis
of the trade's effects. Under the NEPA process, the public would have a much clearer idea of
 the consequences of this exchange, and would retain our rights to examine, comment on,
participate in, and possibly challenge the proposal.

Strangely, Hansen espouses the NEPA process when it suits him. On his own Web site is a
diatribe against the president's designations of national monuments, wherein he bemoans the
circumvention of citizen participation in public land decisions. "We have been following the
systematic and democratic processes set forth in . . . NEPA . . . and other planning statutes,"
Hansen says. "These new laws and systems preserve our lands more fully, and encourage
public participation in planning for our public lands."

In light of the behind-closed-doors West Desert legislation and the numerous other land deals
Hansen has facilitated, it appears that his passion for democracy waxes and wanes.

Under the laws governing federal land exchanges, they must yield equal value to both sides,
accomplished through appraisal procedures arrived at over decades and codified into law. But in
the calculus for the West Desert Exchange, these procedures, too, were waived. Appraisals
were thrown out the window, and a few dealmakers simply agreed to call the exchange
"approximately equal." The Western Desert Land Exchange Project's repeated requests under
the Freedom of Information Act for documentation of the land values have produced nothing: the
Interior Department has replied that it has "no records."

In any case, it is obvious that this trade of equal acreage could not possibly represent an
equal-value trade. One has only to glance at a map of the exchange (and good luck obtaining
one!). The state would receive lands accessible by road and ripe for development, while the
American public would get inaccessible and undevelopable parcels -- high in scenic and
wilderness characteristics, yes, but of rock-bottom market value.

The bottom line for American taxpayers is that the West Desert Exchange could cost us
many millions of dollars. The apparent inequality of the exchange is a significant problem for
people who care about taxpayer subsidies, and for anyone who has a stake in how Utah's federal
lands are managed.

Hansen rhetorically asks The Tribune, "What is a fair exchange?" as though it were some
complex moral puzzle. Quite simply, a fair exchange is one that has (1) gone through a full and
open process, (2) yields equal value to the two parties, (3) offers American citizens the
information they need to judge it on the merits, and (4) serves the public and public lands.

If Hansen really treasures the democratic process, he should withdraw his West Desert bill,
follow his own advice about democracy, and bring citizens back into the decision-making process
for federal lands.
_________

Janine Blaeloch is founder and director of the Western Land Exchange Project (www.westlx.org),
a Seattle group that evaluates federal land trades throughout the West. It advocates for reform and
citizen involvement.