12/2/13 Public Lands www.csg.org/pubs/capitolideas/2013_nov_dec/publiclands.aspx 1/3 Focus on Federalism A Federalism History PreEmption and Nullification Fiscal Federalism Federalism 101 Health Care Public Lands The Supreme Court Nov | Dec 2013 The New Battle Lands: States Seeking Control of Public Lands in the West by Mary Branham, CSG Managing Editor The oil boom in North Dakota has filled some state leaders with envy. It’s not just because North Dakota has the lowest unemployment rate in the country at 3 percent. Or that its state budget never really took a big hit from the Great Recession. Part of the reason, especially for some lawmakers in Western states, is that they, too, could be reaping similar benefits from the new drilling techniques that have positioned North Dakota as the nation’s secondhighest oilproducing state. “The Institute for Energy Research says there’s more than $150 trillion in mineral value locked up in federally controlled land,” said Utah Rep. Ken Ivory. “That’s nine times our debt locked up … just sitting there.” In fact, the institute estimates the Green River Formation in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming contains 982 billion barrels of oil shale, which could be extracted using hydraulic fracturing. Ivory and other Western lawmakers would like to see the ability to extract that and other minerals grow, and they’d like for their states to benefit. That’s one reason behind a renewed push for states to gain title and control of the federal lands in the West. Utah, along with New Mexico, Arizona, Idaho and Wyoming, all have passed bills or resolutions challenging federal ownership of land within their boundaries over the past few years. Martin Nie, a professor of natural resources policy at the University of Montana and selfprofessed champion of federal land management, said this latest effort is part of a longrunning controversy. He views the effort as a continuation of the Sagebrush Rebellion that began in the late 1970s when Western states challenged the notion of federal ownership. “In a way, it’s kind of a flareup of this longsimmering debate,” Nie said. Ivory and others see it differently and believe all they’re asking is the same thing the federal government has given to states in other parts of the country—title to land as laid out in their statehood enabling acts. Ivory points to maps that illustrate the vast acreage controlled by the federal government in the West— 66 percent of Utah and 81 percent of Nevada is federal land —and the relatively small percentage of federal land in Eastern states, which ranges from 0.3 percent in Connecticut and Iowa to 13.4 percent in New Hampshire. “Why the difference?” he asks. Search HOME CAPITOL COMMENTS ENEWSLETTER ADVERTISING ARCHIVE CONTACT HOT TOPIC FEATURES REGIONAL ROUNDUP 10 QUESTIONS BY THE BOOK DEPARTMENTS
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