By Frank Priestley
In its selection process of a
route for a massive power transmission line across southern Idaho, the Bureau
of Land Management listed eight criteria used in the decision making process.
“Route on public land where
practical” came in seventh.
The purpose of the Gateway
West Transmission Project, proposed by Rocky Mountain Power and Idaho Power, is
to route energy generated in Wyoming to population centers on the West Coast.
Any benefits to Idaho residents are negligible. In fact, it’s not even on Idaho
Power’s list of needed improvements over the next 10 years. However, it will
place major constraints on some of the most productive farmland in the state
where it crosses Power and Cassia counties. In those two counties, 75 percent
of the route will be on private property.
On one hand, it’s astonishing
that the right to own private property, one of the most basic freedoms outlined
by our nation’s forefathers, slips to seventh place on a list like this. On the
other hand, when analyzing the six criteria deemed more important than private
property rights, it’s shocking how insignificant individual liberty has become
in the view of our federal government.
There are literally hundreds
of quotes made by our forefathers about private property rights and their
connection to our basic freedoms. James Madison said, “Where an excess of power
prevails, property of no sort is duly respected.” President Calvin Coolidge
said, “Ultimately property rights and personal rights are the same thing.”
Northern Nevada rancher, the late Wayne Hage, summed it up as well as anyone
when he said, “If you don’t have the right to own and control property then you
are property.”
So without further ado,
here’s what it’s come down to, folks. Following are the six criteria
established by the BLM as more important than your right to own property:
• Avoid BLM-identified
preliminary priority sage-grouse habitat and Wyoming core habitat areas.
• Avoid designated areas such
as national monuments, wilderness study areas, national landscape conservation
system areas and state and local parks.
• Avoid visual resource
management Class II areas.
• Follow existing corridors
or linear structures.
• Avoid sensitive species
habitat, including bald eagle nests and big game winter range.
• Avoid cultural and natural
resource areas.
Wilderness study areas are more important than private property. This is possibly the biggest kick in the guts on the list. It takes an act of Congress to establish a wilderness area, and judging by recent memory, we all know Congress doesn’t act on much of anything. In light of that fact, our federal land management agencies have the power to establish a wilderness study area — a de facto wilderness area — on their own. We would be surprised if the BLM could find one acre south of the Snake River in Idaho that meets the true definition of a wilderness area — “untrammeled by man.” Yet, here we have another instance of federal agencies running our state.
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