House Natural Resources chairman calls the move ‘a shameless giveaway campaign’
The Bureau of Land Management acknowledged Friday it plans to open a large portion of land in Utah — which the federal government until recently considered a national monument — to future oil, gas and mining projects.
At the urging of local and state officials as well as industry groups, President Donald Trump in 2017 shrank the size of Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument to 1 million acres from the 1.9 million acres it was when President Bill Clinton established it.
Planning documents released by the agency Friday said that of the acreage cut from the original monument, roughly 211,000 acres would be exempt from fossil fuel leasing, while the remaining land would be available for future leases. None of the land would be exempt from mining.
View the complete August 26 article by Jacob Holzman on The Roll Call website here.