Interior wants to extend BLM land sales

WASHINGTON – The Interior Department asked Congress this week to expand a program that lets the Bureau of Land Management sell public lands in the West and keep some of the money.

Environmental groups warned the move could create a new incentive for the bureau to sell lands that have been federally protected.

“This creates a gravy train,” said Janine Blaeloch, director of the Seattle-based Western Land Exchange Project, a group that monitors federal land policies.

The BLM manages 261 million acres. Most of these lands are in the West and are used for recreation, grazing, mining and oil and gas drilling.

Under a 4-year-old law, the BLM has until 2010 to sell up to 3.4 million acres of public lands that were identified as suitable for sale before the law passed. The bureau can keep 20 percent of the proceeds for administrative expenses. The rest must go to buy private lands inside of or next to special federal areas, like national parks or wildlife refuges.

The department is proposing to expand that authority to 2015 and to apply it to lands that are still being identified as suitable for sale as land management plans are updated. Interior also is proposing that the BLM be allowed to keep 40 percent of land sale proceeds for administrative expenses and a new category, conservation enhancement projects.

Interior officials say the changes are needed to give them more time to sell land and a new source of money to pay for environmental protection work.

Environmentalists have two key worries: that bureau employees will be influenced to identify more land as suitable for sale and that the bureau will misspend the money.

Between now and 2005, the agency will be updating 60 of its 162 land use management plans and reviewing what land could be sold.

The legislation “is timed perfectly so these land use plans can take into account this budgetary incentive,” said Johanna Wald, senior attorney at Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group.

But Interior officials say they still would have to follow strict rules when identifying salable lands and involve the public. To be eligible for sale, BLM lands must be uneconomic to manage, no longer be needed for any federal purpose or their sale must serve an important public goal, like allowing a community to build a school.

“There’s no way to somehow make available lands for possible sale that otherwise might not have been suitable for sale,” said Assistant Interior Secretary Lynn Scarlett. She requested the changes Monday in a letter to House Speaker Dennis Hastert.

It’s not likely that land management plan updates will identify much more than the 3.4 million acres that have already been identified as suitable for sale, Scarlett said.

Interior would use some of the proceeds for environmental restoration, Scarlett said.