Public land sell-off amendment is a test
Will the GOP stand on principle, or bow to Trump?
🌵 Public Lands 🌲
It appears that Republicans are actually serious about taking America’s public lands out of the public’s hands.
During a late night-early morning move this week, Republican Reps. Mark Amodei of Nevada and Celeste Maloy of Utah sneakily added an amendment to the House reconciliation bill that would open the door to selling off thousands of acres of Bureau of Land Management parcels (and some U.S. Forest Service land) in Utah and Nevada. Revenues would be used to help offset proposed tax cuts for the wealthy. The bill passed through committee, despite strong opposition from Democrats, but has not been voted on by the whole House yet.
The amendment will serve as an important test for Republicans who have condemned or remained ambivalent about public land transfers in the past. Rep. Ryan Zinke, the Montana Republican and Interior Secretary under Trump I, has said public land sales are his “red line” he refuses to cross, which makes sense since his constituents — and the general public — tend to be opposed to this sort of transfer1. We’ll see. The question is whether the GOP’s urge to pass a “big, beautiful bill” for Trump will erase that line for him and others. And if the amendment does pass, it may break the seal, so to speak, and open the door to much larger land transfers.
The whole deal has been wrapped in confusion, due to the rush of adding the amendment and lack of transparency around it, along with its vague language, which points to parcels on maps that are also a bit unclear. But it appears that it includes about 11,000 acres of BLM land in Utah and 200,000 acres or more in Nevada.
At least some of the land earmarked for “disposal” (bureaucratese for selling, giving away, or transferring public land) ostensibly would be used for housing. The amendment specifies that parcels in southern Nevada and in Washoe County be made “available at less than fair market value for affordable housing.” And parcels marked for disposal near Mesquite and Mormon Mesa in Nevada overlap with the American Enterprise Institute’s target areas for its Homesteading 2.0 and Freedom Cities initiatives. The Utah land is all in Washington and Beaver counties, the former of which is one of the nation’s fastest growing areas. The land is all on the urban fringe, meaning developing it would lead to more sprawl.
The Great Basin Water Network notes that some of the Washington County parcels also follow the path of the proposed $2 billion Lake Powell Pipeline, which would pull up to 28 billion gallons of water from the reservoir, use huge amounts of power to pump it across 141 miles of mesas and valleys to southwestern Utah, where it would water lawns and golf courses and irrigate alfalfa. Other parcels are long skinny segments that follow roads.
While some news reports and environmental groups have suggested that the proposed transfer is aimed at facilitating oil and gas drilling, it’s highly unlikely, as none of the parcels are in oil and gas-rich areas.
I did a mashup of the various maps for the Washington County, Utah, parcels, with the maroon and fuchsia indicating transfers requested by Washington County and St. George, and the dark blue by the water conservancy district. (To see a larger version click on it and go to the Land Desk website).
🥵 Aridification Watch 🐫
There’s really no avoiding it now: This year’s spring runoff is going to be pretty piddly (in some cases this is in the past tense, since peak runoff has already come and gone). The winter started out pretty strong, and for some areas continued to be average into early spring, but then it all went to hell in a handbasket, despite early May storms.
Hopes for a continued recovery of Lake Powell levels this year are pretty much dashed. The Bureau of Reclamation’s latest 2025 water year unregulated inflow forecast for the reservoir is a meagre 6.78 million acre-feet, or 71% of normal. That would mean Lake Powell will continue to shrink over the next 12 months.
📸 Parting Shot 🎞️
I browse through old newspapers quite often to research the history of things. And lately, when I was looking into wolves in Colorado and Utah, I stumbled across a bunch of ads with a similar theme. And I couldn’t help but be reminded of some of the crazy spam that clogs up my email and social media feeds. These are from the late 1800s and early 1900s, and here merely for your amusement.
Let’s just be clear about something here: Zinke and others may express opposition to full-on land transfers, but they strongly support de facto land transfers, i.e. oil and gas and coal leases and mining claims. While they don’t transfer title of the land to the lessee or claimant, they do transfer the American public’s minerals and hydrocarbons to the corporations for little or no cost. And access can be cut off from the land while it’s being drilled or mined, and those activities can not only wreck the land, but also preclude future uses even after mining and drilling has ceased.
Many of us care deeply about the public lands. We own them and we feel we must preserve them intact to pass on to our children and grandchildren. But many more people don't share our hopes. They want instant gratification. They feel the patrimony locked away is useless and they would clean out the savings account now. But a patrimony isn't the same as a savings account which can be built back up again. Onçe dispersed among the inheritors it is not restored- it ceases to exist. Once the public lands are sold off they are not coming back and we'll all be the poorer.
Not everything can be monetized. Open landscapes that ease the eye, the smell of the desert after a rain, the quiet and the wind, the dark nights full of stars, the crunch of the uneven ground under ones feet. How do we set prices on those things? Do we really want to live in an urbanized globe- a world of shopping malls and parking lots? Do we truly want an exploited world?
Parcels may seem inconsequential. It’s the PRECEDENT that is bad news