National parks marginally escape Bush’s last-minute leasing program

(Scroll down for video of Robert Redford discussing Utah drilling on The Rachel Maddow Show)

If your blood boiled when you heard about President Bush’s plans to allow oil and gas drilling and the construction of coal-fired power plants within polluting distance of Utah’s most cherished natural lands—including Flaming Gorge Recreation Area, Arches, Capitol Reef and Canyonlands National Parks, and Grand Staircase-Escalante and Dinosaur National Monuments—you may be relieved to know that the most sensitive lands, at least, are no longer on the auction block.

The Bureau of Land Management offices in Cheyenne and Salt Lake City now say that they will defer some lands that border these parks, probably in response to vociferous protests from environmental organizations and the National Park Service.

The deferred lands include nearly 100,000 acres near these parks and monuments, including land at the bottom of Nine Mile Canyon and Desolation Canyon on the Green River, according to AP reports. Parcels overlooking these canyons are still up for auction, however.

The lease sale of the remaining land—more than 276,000 acres—is still planned for December 19. In an area known for having some of the clearest, most pollution-free air in the country, air quality will be in jeopardy if ozone-producing drilling practices are allowed to go forward. 

The National Park Service usually is allowed three months to generate public comment on issues of this magnitude, but this lease sale was scheduled with barely a month to spare.  The reason for the truncated time frame is clear: Sale of leases to drill or build on these properties before President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration on January 20, 2009, will be very hard for the new administration to reverse.

The president-elect’s transition team has expressed Obama’s intention to halt drilling in sensitive Utah lands with an executive order once he is in office, but if leases have been sold, leaseholders could sue the federal government for their right to drill.  The government could buy back the leases, but this could be very costly.

See what Robert Redford had to say about Utah drilling on The Rachel Maddow Show: