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Senate backs HCR 13 urging cautious federal wilderness designations after heated debate
Summary
The Utah Senate adopted HCR 13 urging Congress, as it finalizes BLM wilderness withdrawals, to protect state water rights, relocate state school sections outside wilderness study areas, avoid areas of severe conflict and oppose executive expansions; the measure drew a long floor debate over acreage and economic impacts.
The Utah Senate voted to adopt HCR 13, a concurrent resolution urging Congress to consider four state priorities as it finalizes Bureau of Land Management (BLM) wilderness designations: protect state water rights, relocate state school sections outside designated wilderness, exclude areas of severe conflict such as planned water developments, and resist expansion by executive order.
Senator Petersen, sponsor of the resolution, told colleagues the Legislature’s task force had reviewed BLM inventories and consulted counties, environmental groups and federal authorities before drafting the recommendation. He said the BLM’s initial inventory identified about 1,400,000 acres; after legal challenges that figure rose toward 1.9 million and additional study areas total more than 3 million acres, figures he read into the record.
“The policy of the state of Utah, when Congress identifies that final number and those final wilderness areas, is that they consider four things,” Petersen said, listing water-right protection, school-section relocation, excluding severe conflicts and opposing executive enlargement.
Senator Shepherd urged caution from a conservation perspective, saying Utah holds “a treasure” of varied ecosystems and that decisions that convert land to permanent protections are irreversible. “When we make this decision and we use up this land, we never get a second chance,” Shepherd said.
Senator Steiner offered an amendment to delete the resolution’s numeric 1,400,000-acre designation, arguing the body should not fix a single acreage cap. The amendment was put to a division vote and failed.
Floor debate repeatedly returned to competing valuations and the study Petersen circulated; senators cited both economic concerns (loss of development and jobs) and conservation values. Petersen read economic-impact figures from an executive summary commissioned by the Utah Association of Counties, including a figure given as $9,211,290,000 as an annual economic-loss estimate and a higher aggregated figure of about $13,000,000,000 for a larger proposal; those numbers were presented to illustrate possible statewide economic consequences.
After further discussion, the Senate moved the resolution under suspension of rules for final passage. A roll call showed the measure passed (vote tallies read on the floor: 23 ayes, 2 nays; absences were noted earlier in the roll calls). The resolution will be transmitted to the House and to Congress as the Legislature’s position on the BLM wilderness process.
The resolution does not itself change land management; it is an expression of legislative policy and a request to the federal delegation and Congress. Senators opposed to numeric restraints argued against pre-judging acreage; supporters argued the state needs specific protections for water and school trust lands and to preserve local development options.
Next steps: HCR 13 will be returned to the House for its concurrence and transmitted to federal decision-makers.
