Officials eye airport expansion, reservoirs and new roads under Maloy’s proposed public land sale

Utah officials say they want to expand an airport, widen roads, and build new reservoirs and other water infrastructure on the federal land that Utah Rep. Celeste Maloy is proposing to sell to local governments in Washington and Beaver counties. 

Maloy says the proposed disposal of nearly 11,500 acres of Bureau of Land Management land will help the region cope with rapid population growth while generating revenue for the federal government — environmental advocates worry that the proposal has too few guidelines, and is a slippery slope that will ultimately anger voters. 

Maloy, along with Nevada GOP Rep. Mark Amodei, added the proposal as an amendment to the House budget reconciliation package, which ultimately passed during a late-night House Natural Resources Committee meeting on May 6. 

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“Not all federal lands have the same value. Some should not be available for disposal. We all agree on that,” Maloy said during the committee meeting, telling lawmakers that the land disposal will help St. George and Washington County — one of the fastest growing areas in the entire U.S. — meet the water, housing and transportation needs for its ballooning population. 

“The net impact will be to reduce the federal debt and deficit through fair market value sales of targeted lands needed by local governments for infrastructure. And the impact will be to a third of a percentage of the federal land in the state,” Maloy said. 

That reasoning doesn’t fly with some of the state’s public land and environmental advocates, like Steve Bloch with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. 

“Shame on Celeste Maloy for trying this,” said Bloch, legal director for the alliance. “When you think about how Congress works, at least in concept, this eleventh hour effort by Reps. Maloy and Amadei really stands in stark contrast. They introduce this in the middle of the night at the end of a long day of a budget reconciliation hearing for a reason — the sale of federal public lands is wildly unpopular.” 

Most of the land earmarked for disposal, about 450,000 acres, is in Nevada. In Utah, Maloy designated about 11,500 acres of land managed by the Bureau of Land Management, or BLM, in the southwestern part of the state. The land would be sold to Washington and Beaver counties, the Washington County Water Conservancy District and the city of St. George.

If the legislation goes into law, the land will be disposed of within 180 days, sold to the governments for “not less than fair market value.” According to the bill text, that money will be deposited into the federal government’s general fund. 

Per the amendment, here’s how much land could be disposed of: 

• Washington County stands to gain the most land, with 23 parcels covering about 6,492 acres. Maloy’s amendment divides the sale into two sections — the east half, with 16 parcels totalling about 4,959 acres, and the west half, with seven parcels amounting to roughly 1,533 acres. 
• The Washington County Water Conservancy District would be allowed to purchase 22 parcels amounting to about 4,375 acres.
• St. George would be allowed to purchase 23 parcels amounting to about 520 acres.
• Beaver County could get three parcels amounting to roughly 62 acres.

According to these entities, the land is slated for a variety of uses, like water projects, public infrastructure, housing, recreation and an airport expansion. Although the amendment was proposed during a late-night vote last week, the plans have been in motion for months — maps of the parcels in question, titled “prepared at the request of Rep. Celeste Maloy,” are dated as early as March 8. 

In St. George, a 203-acre parcel in the southeast corner of the city would be used for an airport expansion; a 105-acre parcel near Santa Clara would be used to build the Graveyard Reservoir and Dam; a 9.5-acre parcel off of Curly Hollow Drive in the southwest would be used for housing; several roads could be expanded or widened; an arsenic treatment plant owned by the city currently sits on a 4.8-acre parcel of federal land marked for disposal; a handful of 1-acre parcels would be used to protect well sites. 

“We thank Representative Celeste Maloy for introducing an amendment to a bill that would assist the City of St. George in securing properties that will be critical to our water infrastructure needs in the future,” the city said in a statement. 

For the Washington County Water Conservancy District, there’s a 418-acre parcel that will house the Chief Toquer Reservoir north of La Verkin, which according to the district could hold 3,638 acre-feet of water and is already under construction. Another 3,100-acre parcel — the largest of all 70 parcels identified in the proposal — will be used for a future water storage site near the town of Hurricane. At least three parcels totalling nearly 600 acres will be used for water treatment, and another 48 acres over four parcels used for water tanks. The district also says a number of the parcels will be used to build, or access existing, water pipelines. 

In Washington County, a number of the parcels are adjacent to existing roads — there’s a 487-acre parcel alongside Old Highway 91, which spans about 11 miles from the Arizona border north to the Paiute Indian Reservation; a 338-acre parcel that runs along state Route 18 north of St. George; and a 330-acre parcel that borders Interstate 15 north of Toquerville. 

Also included in the amendment is a 311-acre parcel bordering Zion National Park, near the gateway town of Rockville. Representatives from the county told KUER that the parcel would be used for recreation, including mountain bike trails. Other parcels would be used to build and expand existing roads.

Some environmental groups pointed out that several parcels line up with the proposed pathway and land identified for the Lake Powell Pipeline, a controversial project years in the making that would divert water from the Colorado River to Washington County to support its rapid growth.  

The project has yet to clear several federal hurdles, and needs a new environmental impact statement — officials in the area say the project is no longer a priority. Plus, it faces opposition from other states in the Colorado River basin, with Colorado, Arizona, California, New Mexico, Nevada and Wyoming threatening to sue Utah over concerns the pipeline could compromise ongoing agreements on the river. 

“The pipeline is not just a fantasy,” said Zach Frankel, executive director of the Utah Rivers Council. “I think this is for the Lake Powell Pipeline, they just won’t admit it.”

Maloy’s office denied the allegation, as did the Washington County Water Conservancy District, which pointed to a detailed list of intended uses for the proposed land disposal. 

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Still, the lack of a mandate in Maloy’s amendment has public land and environmental advocates worried. Maloy’s office and the governments who intend to purchase the land say it will be used for specific purposes, but not everyone buys it. 

“The water district could turn that land into a real estate development, and we, the public, have no ability to influence that decision because it is a non-democratic entity,” said Frankel, telling Utah News Dispatch “I have to presume that this is the first of many such bills.” 

“There’s no requirement. There’s no directive, full stop,” added Bloch with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. “Just look at where these tracks are … These are very intentionally chosen to do things like facilitate further growth.”

Bloch cautioned politicians against proposing similar legislation in the future. Polling has routinely shown that voters in Utah, and across the West, oppose the sale of public lands, regardless of political party. Rep. Ryan Zinke, a Republican from Montana who recently formed the bipartisan Public Lands Caucus, said he believes the sale should be stripped from the reconciliation bill. 

“They’re thinking about these (parcels) as assets to be bought, sold. It’s just antithetical to how Westerners think about the federal lands,” said Bloch. “The future of public lands is a third rail for politics in the West, meaning that you mess with them at your own peril.”