Utah officials pillage public lands -- again
BLM greenlights St. George highway; Lawmakers look to repeal GSENM management plan
🌵 Public Lands 🌲
St. George, in Utah’s southwest corner, is one of the nation’s fastest growing communities. This is partly because of a nice climate, access to a major interstate, and relative closeness to Salt Lake City and Las Vegas. But it’s also because the landscape in which it sits is stunning, characterized by burnished red sandstone punctuated by dark volcanic formations and the green ribbons of the Santa Clara and Virgin Rivers, all set against the backdrop of the Pine Valley Mountains. In 2009, Congress created the Red Cliffs National Conservation Area on about 45,000 acres of BLM land just north of St. George to protect some of this landscape and its wildlife, and to offer a refuge from the burgeoning mass of humanity.
But the Trump administration — and the state of Utah — have other plans. This week, the Bureau of Land Management approved Utah’s plans to build a four-lane highway through the south end of the conservation area. The stated aim is to accommodate growth, reduce congestion, and speed up the car trip from one section of sprawl to another. But really it will only induce growth and more traffic, while also diminishing one of St. George’s most appealing assets.
The idea for a Northern Corridor Highway has been bantered about for a couple of decades. The proposal seemed to perish in 2016, when the BLM denied Washington County’s bid to build the road through the national conservation area. But when Donald Trump was elected president the first time, the county and the Utah Department of Transportation seized the opportunity to apply for a right of way to build a 4.5 mile, four-lane highway across a portion of the conservation area.
In January 2021, the outgoing Trump administration’s BLM approved the right of way, even though its own analysis acknowledged that it would destroy tortoise habitat, spread invasive species, and essentially chop off the southern end of the conservation area, destroying trails and damaging the recreation experience. A large coalition of environmental groups under the banner of the Red Cliffs Conservation Coalition sued the BLM, and the agency ultimately agreed to redo the environmental analysis — finally rejecting the proposed highway at the end of 2024 and recommending an expansion of the existing Red Hills Parkway, instead.
Once Biden was out of office, however, the state and Washington County once again appealed to the feds to grant them a right-of-way, arguing that the Red Hills Parkway idea was not feasible. And since the Trump administration and Utah’s elected leaders tend to value roads and more suburban sprawl over tortoises, beauty, and the thriving desert landscape, the BLM opened the door to bulldoze more land to indulge Utah’s road fetish and to make way for yet another monument to America’s car-centric culture.
***
A couple of dispatches ago, I wrote about how curious it was that the Trump administration had yet to move to diminish or eliminate any national monuments during this second term. It may be because they are outsourcing the task to Congress.
Utah’s congressional delegation is expected to introduce federal legislation that would use the Congressional Review Act to overturn the Biden-era Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument management plan. If the “resolution of disapproval” passes both chambers of Congress with a simple majority vote, it would erase the plan and bar the Bureau of Land Management from issuing another plan that is “substantially the same” in the future.
This wouldn’t change the boundaries of the monument, but would likely cause management of the area to revert back to the 2020, Trump I-era plan. That plan was not only less protective than the newer one, but only applied to a much smaller area, since in 2017 Trump had significantly shrunk the national monument. Revoking the current management plan, then, would leave vast areas of the monument in a sort of management limbo.
“I strongly denounce any attempt to use the Congressional Review Act to overturn the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument Resource Management Plan. This plan reflects years of public input, scientific research, and meaningful Tribal consultation, and dismantling it through procedural shortcuts undermines good governance, responsible land stewardship, and the protection of irreplaceable cultural landscapes," said Autumn Gillard, Southern Paiute, Grand Staircase-Escalante Inter-Tribal Coalition member, in a written statement. “At this time, I urge lawmakers from both sides of the aisle to uphold the approved resource management plan from January 2025.”
***
Utah officials often say they dislike new national monument designations because, in their minds, protecting land and cultural resources is bad for the economy, mostly because they block new mining and drilling. A new study shows they are wrong.
Headwaters Economics analyzed economic conditions and trends in 30 national monument gateway communities, and found that national monument designations do not disrupt local economies. They also don’t give nearby communities a substantial economic boost. “Employment and population trends continue on the same trajectory after designation,” Headwaters found, “and income growth tends to improve modestly over time.”
The findings match up with what one would intuitively expect. National monuments are rarely designated in areas that are currently targeted for new drilling and mining, meaning they are unlikely to affect the existing extractive economies. Meanwhile, they are often established in places that are already experiencing an increase in visitation, meaning that designation wouldn’t necessarily cause a significant jump in tourism.
Take Bears Ears National Monument, for example. It was established in 2016 on federal land in San Juan County, Utah. Both the oil and gas and uranium mining industries were (and are) active in the county. But they weren’t interested in drilling new wells or opening new mines within the monument’s boundaries. Previous oil and gas wells had mostly come up dry — drillers have found much more success in the Aneth and McElmo fields east of the monument. And the Daneros uranium mine, which is been on standby status for years, is outside the boundaries, as well. In other words, monument designation had absolutely zero effect on either industry.
Meanwhile, fears that establishing a national monument in this corner of southeastern Utah would lead to its “discovery” by the masses were overblown, simply because the internet and social media had already lured folks to the area. Indeed, part of the reason people pushed for designation was to try to get a handle on increased visitation and its impacts on natural and cultural resources.
Headwaters has a nice interactive graphic on which you can check out the economic trends around the 30 national monuments. The trends, themselves, are interesting to see: They make it abundantly clear that other factors, especially COVID-19, had a much bigger effect than any national monument designation.
🤖 Data Center Watch 👾
The Big Data Center Buildup is accelerating. Nearly every day I get news of another proposed hyperscale facility somewhere in the West. A lot of them are not planning on connecting to the power grid, which is good for other utility users, because they won’t have to pay for associated infrastructure upgrades. But in almost every case, their proposed power sources include at least some gas-fired generation. And natural gas, i.e. methane, is not clean energy by any means.
So, while the data center boom has the potential to accelerate the clean energy transition by encouraging more solar, wind, and battery storage, it is also slowing the transition by perpetuating fossil fuel burning and even prompting construction of new fossil fuel-fired facilities.
Projects that have come onto my radar recently include:
Laramie County, Wyoming’s commissioners approved Crusoe Energy Systems’ and Tallgrass’ proposed AI data center complex near Cheyenne, despite residents’ pushback over the project’s massive scale. If this thing is built as planned, it will be ginormous, with estimated capital costs of $50 billion. That would not only include the Project Jade’s five data centers and associated structures, but also a 2,700 MW gas-fired power plant — which would be among the largest of its kind in the West. The developers plan to use a closed-loop cooling system, which is less water-intensive than conventional evaporative systems but uses more energy.
About 150 miles west of there, Power Company of Wyoming, an Anschutz Corporation subsidiary, is proposing a 2,000 MW gas generating facility in Carbon County to serve growing data center-driven power demand. These are the same folks who are building the Chokecherry Sierra Madre wind project and the TransWest Express transmission line. The controversial, 732-mile TransWest Express was originally billed as a clean-energy line that would carry Wyoming wind to California. Looks like it also will be moving fossil fuel-fired power, as well.
Residents of Surprise, Arizona, a section of Phoenix’s sprawl, are getting a little surprise of their own: A proposed data center and dedicated 700 MW natural gas plant adjacent to a residential neighborhood. Residents are not too pleased, according to a story in the Arizona Republic, and are worried about the environmental and health impacts of a gas plant and the data center. The data center would run off the gas plant for the first couple years of operation before connecting with the grid. Then the plant would serve as backup for the center as well as a “peaker” plant, meaning it is fired up during peak demand.
🫣 Correction 🙀
In this week’s Colorado River glossary and primer I inadvertently shrunk the Colorado River watershed quite significantly by leaving out two zeros. It covers about 250,000 square miles, not 2,500. Duh.
Cool Opportunity
The Wright-Ingraham Institute is now taking applications for its three-week immersive fellowship for graduate students and early-career professionals in science, design, policy, the arts, and beyond. This year’s field workshop focuses is on “designing for adaptation in a time of prolonged drought,” and will be held in the San Luis Valley and Taos Plateau from July 6-27. Read more and apply here.
📸 Parting Shot 🎞️
This one popped up on my Facebook feed and I just had to purloin it. It’s downtown Grand Junction in the 1960s (I believe), not long after they refashioned the main drag to make it more people-friendly. It’s funny because a lot of folks in my hometown of Durango are freaking out about a proposal to do something kind of like this, but even less radical, to its downtown. They claim that widening sidewalks and so forth will destroy the historic integrity of the streetscape. In my mind, this photo illustrates how untrue that claim is.
Will the conservative citizens of St. George face off against their own party? It's one thing to trash liberal towns' trails and tortoises, but when it's your own backyard...seems like there would be opposition. Is this area the equivalent of Red Rocks National Conservation Area outside Las Vegas? Or less smaller/less spectacular? Great story Jonathan, much appreciate your work here.
Thanks to Utah, Americans are about to lose their public lands…
America’s public lands belong to all of us. They are part of our shared heritage, protected for recreation, wildlife, clean water, and future generations. Today, that legacy faces a coordinated and escalating threat ─ one that demands national attention.
At the center of this effort is Utah, where state leaders have spent decades advancing a well-funded campaign to wrest control of federal public lands and transfer them to state authority.
Utah’s most recent attempt came in the form of a lawsuit built on legal arguments repeatedly rejected by courts and constitutional scholars. Rather than allowing those claims to stand on their merits, the state paired the lawsuit with a taxpayer-funded public relations campaign branded “Stand for Our Land – Let Utah Manage Utah Land.” The campaign promotes misleading claims about Utah history, American history, the U.S. Constitution, and federal land law ─ claims that confuse citizens and policymakers alike.
At the federal level, warning signs are multiplying. In early January, 2025, the U.S. House of Representatives quietly changed how public land transfers are scored, allowing them to be treated as “budget neutral.” While technical on its face, the change is significant: it lowers a key procedural barrier, making it easier for Congress to approve land transfers, sales, or exchanges with far less scrutiny.
Then, on February 3, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum signed Secretarial Order 3418, directing a sweeping review of lands withdrawn from fossil fuel and mining development, including national monuments. That same day, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to begin creating a sovereign wealth fund.
Taken together, these actions raise troubling questions. A sovereign wealth fund requires enormous capital, and quickly. At the same time, public lands are increasingly framed as financial assets rather than public trust resources. That combination makes the idea of selling off or transferring public lands not only possible, but politically tempting.
Meanwhile, the federal agencies charged with managing these lands are being hollowed out. In early 2025, thousands of employees from the National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, and Bureau of Land Management were laid off. These agencies were already understaffed. Their ability to protect public lands, enforce environmental laws, and manage development pressure is now in serious doubt.
Despite setbacks ─ including the U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal to hear Utah’s lawsuit and the removal of a proposed land-sale amendment from a broader bill ─ Utah’s leaders have made clear they are not backing down. Instead, they are pursuing a multi-pronged strategy that includes renewed litigation, legislative maneuvering, aggressive lobbying of federal officials, and continued public messaging campaigns funded by Utah taxpayers.
A central actor in this effort is the Utah Public Lands Policy Coordinating Office, established in 2005 to “coordinate, promote, and implement Utah’s public land priorities.” Particularly troubling is the state’s public relations campaign. Launched in 2024 at a reported cost of $2 million, “Stand for Our Land” targeted both Utah residents and national audiences through newspapers, billboards, television, social media, and direct outreach to policymakers in Washington, D.C.
The campaign rests on claims that do not withstand scrutiny: that federal land was “stolen” from Utah; that the Constitution prohibits federal land ownership without state consent; that public lands were promised to Utah at statehood; that Utah was denied equal footing with other states; and that transferring these lands would somehow keep them “public.” Courts and legal experts have repeatedly rejected these arguments, yet they continue to be presented as fact.
Utah Senator Mike Lee has been one of the most visible national figures advancing this agenda, inserting land-transfer provisions into federal legislation and promoting Utah’s narrative on Capitol Hill. He is not alone. A network of elected officials and allied interests continues to push policies that would ultimately transfer, privatize, or sell off America’s public lands.
This is not a regional issue. When Congress considers bills or amendments that weaken public land protections, lawmakers from all 50 states must understand what is truly at stake.
America’s public lands are a defining part of who we are as a nation. They are not a budget line item, a political bargaining chip, or a revenue source to be liquidated. If we fail to confront this coordinated effort now, America’s public lands will become private property.