Paula Jones isn’t the only person taking Bill Clinton to court these days.
In a legal double-whammy, the Utah Association of Counties (UAC), which represents the 29 counties of the state, and the Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration filed separate lawsuits this week challenging the president for his use of the 1906 Antiquities Act to create the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument last September and asking the court to reverse the designation.
“We allege that the president exceeded his authority and, therefore, the monument designation should be invalidated,” UAC Associate Director Mark Walsh told WorldNetDaily in a phone interview. “We think the courts need to step in and take a look at what was done and make a determination.”
What was done? Without warning, congressional approval nor consultation with those who would be most affected by his action, Clinton signed an executive order, and 1.7 million acres of federal land in southern Utah — an area the size of Delaware and Rhode Island combined — was withdrawn from mining, grazing, timber harvesting and other activities. Residents of the area, local officials, and their representatives in Congress were outraged. The president’s action spelled severe revenue losses for schools and local governments and would impact the use of the non-federal lands within the monument’s boundaries.
About 178,000 acres of state-owned school trust lands are in the monument, and are leased for various purposes to generate revenues for the schools.
“Those lands don’t belong to the United States,” said Walsh, “they belong to the school children of the state of Utah and are to be managed in that fashion.”
The monument includes the Kaiparowits Plateau, which contains the largest “clean coal” reserve in the United States. Kentucky-based Andalex Resources was planning to begin a huge mining operation there and, according to Walsh, had nearly completed its environmental impact statement showing there would have been no negative environmental impact.
“Revenues generated by activities on federally owned and leased lands are shared with the state and local governments.” said Walsh. In the case of the Kaiparowits mine, “the county [Kane Co.] under law has a claim to 25 percent of those revenues. Those revenues will be lost because the president shut Andalex down — which was his intention. He made that clear in his announcement.” The New York Times, at the time of the designation, noted the county would have received $1 million a year.
Besides Clinton, the suits name Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, Kahtleen McGinty, chairman of the President’s Council on Environmental Quality, “and others whose fingerprints are on the monument,” as Walsh put it, for violations of various federal laws during the planning that led to the designation — most notably the Federal Lands Policy and Management Act and the National Environmental Policy Act . FLPMA was passed in 1976 and amended the president’s authority to unilaterally withdraw lands from mineral extraction and development.
“When President Carter wanted to withdraw 25 million acres in Alaska, his Secretary of Interior Cecil Andrus understood he had to go to Congress for that kind of authority,” Walsh explained. “Clinton did not do that, nor has Secretary Babbitt approached the Congress for authority to make that kind of withdrawal.”
NEPA sets forth requirements for planning the management of federal lands. These include public involvement and coordination with state and local officials. Clinton apparently ignored these mandates, keeping his intentions concealed from all but his closest political inner circle. When he made his announcement and signed the executive order, it was not in Utah but at the Grand Canyon in neighboring Arizona.
The suits (which Walsh predicts will be eventually combined) were filed in the federal district court in Salt Lake City.
“We hate to do business this way, but our dealings with the administration have demonstrated clearly to us that if we’re going to protect ourselves we’re just going to have to go to court,” he said. “It’s unfortunate we have to do this but we don’t feel we have any other choice.”
