Utah was very much in the news a year ago after US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar ordered the Bureau of Land Management to reject 77 successful bids from a December 2008 lease sale. Several members of the state's congressional delegation angrily criticized the move.
Others reacted differently. Soon after he became governor last year, Gary R. Herbert, a Republican, contacted former Salt Lake City Mayor Ted Wilson, a Democrat, and asked if he could pick his brain about energy and environmental issues. After talking for several hours, Herbert asked Wilson to lead a new Balanced Resource Council.
"These are matters that have become so polarized that progress has become all but impossible," Herbert said during his Jan. 26 State of the State address. "This unprecedented partnership will provide a much-needed new 'state of mind' on environmental issues."
He may have exaggerated when he called it an unprecedented partnership. When this columnist started covering Utah energy issues in the mid-1970s, the state government formed such a council to discuss managing impacts from building proposed coal-fired electric power plants in rural areas.
'A tradition'
"We have a tradition of this," Wilson said in a Feb. 12 phone interview. "The governor asked me to put the council together now to interject itself into old, classic disputes as well as new ones, and try to work things out. I liked the idea."
Groups and individuals already were reaching agreements, he continued. Bill Barrett Corp. has worked some out with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance involving sites in eastern Utah, said Wilson, who has served on the group's board.
"Bill Barrett has been very creative talking to SUWA," he added. "As an environmental guy, I'm encouraged when someone like him tells me how drill sites can be smaller and roads can be less intrusive."
One issue the council is trying to resolve involves roads across public lands that producers need to reach leases, he explained. Several state and federal agencies can become involved, creating delays.
Wilson said the council has proposed to the US Department of the Interior that administration of such roads be given to each county, and that unresolved disputes be taken to court as a group.
With environmentalists
"Basically, we are trying to make oil and gas leases more accessible," he said. "We're trying to do this with environmentalists at the table. They don't like surprises. It gets their dander up."
What's important is that people are willing to meet and discuss issues, Wilson continued. "People are tired of fighting. They want to sit down and talk to the other side," he said. That includes Herbert, he added. While he is in Washington for the National Governors Association's winter meeting, the governor plans to meet with Deputy US Interior Secretary David J. Hayes and ask when DOI plans to get to the second phase of its study of those 77 leases.
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