Simpson wants to sell BLM land used as a quarry

BOISE – U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, said he may put a plan to sell public land that’s the site of a disputed stone quarry into his bill to create 311,000 acres of new wilderness in central Idaho.

That’s after the quarry sale and mining industry reforms were cut from a separate federal budget bill by House Republicans who conceded this week those measures could scuttle the entire package.

Officials in Custer County, where the quarry is the No. 2 employer, say privatizing the 520 acres of Bureau of Land Management land near Clayton is the best way to ensure the operation’s 80 workers keep their jobs.

Still, some environmental groups insist it would allow the quarry’s California operator, L & W Stone, a backer of Republican politics, to skirt a U.S. District Court judge’s ruling forcing the quarry to undergo federal environmental scrutiny.

Simpson told the Associated Press the best way to speed the land transaction may be to put it in his bill to create the Ernest Hemingway, White Cloud and Jack Peak wilderness preserves. That bill already has provisions to boost local economies.

“We’d like to get it done, one way or another,” Simpson said Thursday of the quarry sale.

His wilderness bill, which has already divided the environmental community and other interest groups, may be considered by lawmakers in 2006, at the earliest.

Simpson originally wanted the quarry sale to be in his wilderness bill.

Then U.S. Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., recommended the bill be attached to mining reforms in the budget bill. Pombo thought it would move more quickly that way, Simpson said.

On Tuesday, however, the controversial mining provisions – which would have allowed mineral companies to buy public land at cheap prices – were stripped from the budget bill amid opposition from Western lawmakers from both parties. The quarry measure also died, leaving Simpson looking for options.

The new scenario concerns some environmentalists: They say Simpson merely wants the quarry property in private hands so L & W Stone’s owner, Scott Laine, won’t be subject to federal environmental standards that apply to BLM land. Laine’s family has given nearly $3,000 to U.S. Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, and others since 2002.

Laine hasn’t returned repeated phone calls seeking comment.

Western Watersheds Project, a Hailey-based environmental group, won a 2005 decision from Judge B. Lynn Winmill in Boise, mandating a federal environmental review before Laine can increase the size of his actual quarry operation.

“It’s taking this project that’s right in the middle of a public review process and yanking it away from the public,” said Janine Blaeloch, director of the Western Land Exchange Project in Seattle, and a critic of the sale proposal.

Blaeloch’s outfit is among those opposing Simpson’s wilderness bill even without the quarry sale, claiming provisions for land gifts to surrounding communities turn public lands into bartering chips that get tossed about to appease elected officials’ local constituents.

Other groups, including the Idaho Conservation League and The Wilderness Society, have so far supported Simpson’s wilderness plan as an acceptable compromise.

“We have to swallow stuff we don’t like for the benefit of the bigger package,” said Craig Gehrke, a Wilderness Society spokesman in Boise, who said the quarry’s inclusion wouldn’t affect his group’s support.