SALT LAKE COUNTY ATTACKS WILDERNESS 

At the end of February 2003, the secret highway claims the State of Utah has made in Salt Lake County have become public. These claims to secure state ownership of rights of way over highways were lodged under the authority of Revised Statute 2477 (RS 2477), passed in 1866. If accepted by the US Department of the Interior and the federal courts, these claims collectively have the potential to invalidate existing statutory wilderness areas, carve up national parks and wildlife refuges, and destroy the last bastions of wildlife habitat in the United States.

Some of the highway claims penetrate all three existing wilderness areas in Salt Lake County. (See map.) They also penetrate roadless areas proposed for wilderness and might open up sensitive watershed lands to motorized access. The validation of these highway claims also holds the potential of re-opening lands currently off limits to heliskiing and allowing canyon trails to be widened into roads.

********TAKE ACTION******** 
Please help by contacting the mayor and the council to let them know these claims must be abandoned. For inspiration, see below for a sample letter. Click here to send this letter as an email to the mayor.  Remember that courtesy will get you further than curses.

Mayor Nancy Workman’s e-mail address is mayorNancy@co.slc.ut.us. 
Her phone number is (801) 468-2500. 
Her address is
Office of the Mayor 
2001 S State St, Ste N2100 
Salt Lake City UT 84190.

Three of the county council members serve on an at-large basis and represent the entire county. They are Jim Bradley (jbradley@co.slc.ut.us), Steve Harmsen (sharmsen@co.slc.ut.us) and Randy Horiuchi (rhoriuchi@co.slc.ut.us). The other six council members represent specific geographical districts. Click here to look at a map of county council districts and a list of county council members . Phone numbers, e-mail and US Mail addresses are available there too. 

SAMPLE LETTER
Click here to send this letter as an email to the mayor.

Dear Mayor Workman,

In a process that involved the public and Utah's congressional delegation, three wonderful wilderness areas were set aside in eastern Salt Lake County in 1984. The Mount Olympus, Twin Peaks and Lone Peak Wildernesses protect some of Utah's most beautiful alpine terrain and sensitive watersheds. Another process was held in the late 1990s, during which US Forest Service solicited public comments on how to manage roadless forest lands. This process elicited more than two million comments--one of the largest outpourings of public opinion ever--and the vast majority of these comments favored protecting roadless areas. Substantial roadless areas border the three existing wildernesses in Salt Lake County.

By contrast, Salt Lake County, under the former commissioners, submitted secret highway claims to the Utah Attorney General who then sent these comments along secretly to the US Secretary of the Interior. No public consultation occurred to establish whether any of these claims is valid or serves any useful purpose today. These secret demands submitted by Attorney General Jane Graham under the aegis of a repealed law, RS 2477, were an offense against proper, open procedure and work against important public values.

These values include plant and animal habitat, watershed protection, solitude and challenging recreation. All these values would be diminished or ruined by the network of useless and largely spurious highways currently claimed by Salt Lake County and the State of Utah. I urge you to strike a blow for open processes and the people's interest by rejecting these claims and asking the State of Utah to remove them from the maps of highways claimed under RS 2477.

Sincerely,

********************* 
BACKGROUND 
RS 2477, repealed in 1976, states simply, “The right-of-way for the construction of highways over public lands, not reserved for public uses, is hereby granted." New legislation passed in 1976 provided a process under which state and county governments could request to build roads across federal land. Despite the revocation of RS 2477, states retained the right to file right-of-way claims on highways the construction of which could be proved to have occurred before 1976. In the past five to ten years, Utah and Alaska in particular have filed thousands of RS 2477 claims—most of them bogus—to prevent or overthrow the protection of lands in wilderness, national parks and national wildlife refuges.

Some of the claims in southern Utah run over the sides of cliffs or in slot canyons barely wide enough to allow the passage of a horse. Check out the photo gallery of some of the funniest RS 2477 claims.

These claims have been considered outlandish by most observers and legal experts. The claims in the Wasatch Mountains are especially preposterous. These lands were reserved for the special public use of protection within the US National Forest system in 1906 and 1907 so the State of Utah would have to prove that the construction of these highways occurred between 1866 when the law was passed and 1906 when the land was reserved.

Unfortunately outlandish things might come to pass. ORV enthusiasts, motorcross organizations and mining and oil companies have pressed their RS 2477 agenda with any county or state official willing to listen. The Utah Legislature appropriated millions of dollars to assist counties to compile RS 2477 claims but even with lavish funding, no critical standards appear to have been applied. Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton, determined to open every acre of public land to oil and gas drilling if she can, has worked closely and covertly with the State of Utah on its RS 2477 claims. It’s believed she’s laying the groundwork to relinquish the federal interest in the claims to the states without requiring the states to provide any evidence of the construction or establishment of these highways.

Salt Lake County submitted the claims shown on the map in June 2000. At this point it has not been possible to establish if these claims were reviewed by the commissioners or if they were simply sent to the attorney general’s office by an unelected county official.

The current mayor/council system had not yet been implemented in Salt Lake County when these claims were made, but it will be up to them to undo the damage. Because these claims could undo years of conservation progress, this issue is an environmental crisis.