Additional potential obstacles to development: new wilderness designations

U.S. Department of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar recently issued Secretarial Order 3310 directing the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to "designate appropriate areas with wilderness characteristics under its jurisdiction as 'Wild Lands' and to manage them to protect their wilderness values." The Secretarial Order overturns without mentioning a Bush Administration's policy which that prohibited BLM from unilaterally protecting lands it finds have "wilderness qualities." The Bush Administration policy was based on a 2003 settlement with the State of Utah which barred BLM from designating so-called "Wilderness Study Areas" ("WSAs"). Though BLM's Congressional authority to establish WSAs had expired in 1991, BLM had continued doing so until the settlement with Utah. Because criteria for characterizing lands as having "wilderness qualities" is highly subjective and can be made with relatively little Congressional oversight, the new Secretarial Order could make it significantly harder to site renewable energy projects, transmission lines, pipelines, and other "greenfield" projects on BLM land for the foreseeable future...more