PROPOSED LAND SWAP WARRANTS LOOK AT PARCEL VALUES

Janine Blaeloch, Director, Western Land Exchange Project

Arizona Republic opinion page, April 19, 2000

Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt's proposal to swap federal lands for Arizona state trust lands
needing protection is, as your recent editorial stated, intriguing (“Hull, Babbitt must work
together," March 31). The idea bears close scrutiny, but not for the reasons the Republic
suggests.

As you say, Mr. Babbitt completed a similar state-federal trade in Utah after some serious
wheeling and dealing with Utah Governor Leavitt. The Utah Schools Exchange, completed in
1998, was largely put together to buy off the anti-federal Sagebrush Bullies who had railed
against designation of the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument (and had sued the
federal government). Like so many land exchanges, the deal was hailed as a "win-win."

But who really won? According to appraisers in the BLM Utah State office, the land values in
that trade were enormously lopsided. The exchange yielded to the state land that is projected to
generate $1billion in revenue and we, the public, got about $70 million worth of land that was
largely unsuited or inaccessible to development in the first place. When agency appraisers raised
their concerns about the imbalance of the trade, they were barred from any further input. Instead,
land values were determined by higher-ups in the BLM, none of whom were qualified appraisers
or had the faintest idea of the true land values involved.

According to the press, at the signing ceremony for the exchange Secretary Babbitt joked that the
deal is so sweet for Utah, he ought to fire the staff members who negotiated it. Indeed.

Aside from the financial losses associated with a deal like this, the public is shut out from any
input into the decisions. The Utah Schools exchange was closed through an Act of Congress,
without the environmental impact analysis and public participation provided under the National
Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

Now, yet another land deal is brewing between Babbitt and Leavitt, a palliative to buy support for
Utah Rep. Hansen's puny 1 million acre Utah Wilderness bill. This trade, also engineered in the
rarified air of the national office, would give the feds 118,085 acres of rugged, largely
inaccessible state land valued at $50 to $150 an acre. In return, Utah would get 127,631 acres,
located primarily along the Interstate-15 corridor with residential, commercial, and industrial
development potential.

Our organization recently submitted a request to the BLM under the Freedom of Information Act
to obtain records on the appraisals for both the past and proposed Utah exchanges. The State
office replied that it has "no records" pertaining to these matters. A similar request to the national
office has so far produced no results.

Perhaps Governor Hull shouldn't be so fearful that a deal with Babbitt would "snooker" Arizona.
Babbitt's record shows a willingness to give states the upper hand and the American people the
shaft by grossly under-valuing federal lands.

We agree that Arizona state trust lands must be protected against development, but not through a
deal that rips off the American public at large or makes sacrifice areas of ecologically valuable
federal lands. People in Arizona and elsewhere should watch this deal very closely. If a land
exchange is to occur, it needs to happen through an open process with full disclosure,
environmental impact analysis, and citizen participation. Moreover, the public deserves the
assurance that land values and other aspects of a trade would be determined by the rules rather
than by a wink and a handshake.

Janine Blaeloch is founder and director of the Western Land Exchange Project, a Seattle-based non-profit
organization that monitors federal land swaps throughout the West and is working for reform in the federal
land exchange programs (www.westlx.org). Blaeloch was a panelist at a conference on state trust lands at
Arizona State University last November.