by Christopher Lee - Washington Post
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is
abandoning a controversial
land swap with Utah after
the Interior Department's
inspector general confirmed
complaints by the
government's own experts
that the deal amounted to a
multimillion-dollar giveaway
by U.S. taxpayers.
Gov. Michael Leavitt and
officials with Interior and
the Department of
Agriculture agreed to
terminate the agreement in
letters made public
Wednesday.
"Although some aspects of this land exchange proposal
still have merit, because
doubt and uncertainty would cloud future consideration
of it, we no longer believe
that pursuit of this exchange would be in the best
interest of the federal or state
government or the public," Interior Secretary Gale
Norton wrote in a letter to Rep.
Chris Cannon, R-Utah, a member of the House Resources
Committee who favored
the deal.
The deal would have exchanged 135,000 acres of federal
land for 108,000 acres of
state parcels. Utah would have gotten commercially
attractive land that would pump
tax revenue into its school system. The federal
government was to get scenic
red-rock bluffs for a possible monument as well as prime
habitat for the threatened
desert tortoise.
But at least six officials at the federal Bureau of Land
Management complained
internally that the swap offered a $100 million windfall
to the state. They said
several parcels of mineral-rich federal land had been
counted as having little or no
mineral value.
