Groups Sue to Halt Utah Natural Gas Survey Near Ancient Indian Art

Conservation groups filed suit Monday to stop a natural gas survey alongside eastern Utah’s Nine Mile Canyon, which contains a bounty of ancient Indian art panels.

The groups say that heavy “thumper” trucks and explosives used to look for gas reserves could damage the rock art, cliff dwellings and pit houses that have given Nine Mile Canyon one of the nation’s greatest concentrations of ancient sites.

The Wilderness Society, Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council and Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance filed suit Monday in U.S. District Court in Washington against the Bureau of Land Management and its parent agency, the Interior Department.

The groups are disputing the bureau’s finding that drilling, blasting and thumping will have “no significant impact” on the ancient artwork or environment.

“There will, in all likelihood, be damage to these irreplaceable resources,” said Stephen Bloch, an attorney for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.

Bureau of Land Management officials say the seismic exploration will stay out of Nine Mile Canyon, going up tributary canyons instead and a mesa top that has a dozen working gas wells.

Denver-based gas producer Bill Barrett Corp. will have to keep survey vehicles and 5,000 shot holes at least 300 feet away from known archeological sites, said Fred O’Ferrall, associate field manager for the Bureau of Land Management in Price, Utah.

“The steps we’re taking to avoid areas of Indian art are very painstaking,” said Jim Felton, the company’s investor relations manager. “We’re an energy company. We’re not going to apologize for that. People like hot coffee and cold beer.”

Another bureau official said the agency was requiring the company to take extraordinary steps to protect the ancient sites. Those steps include hiring monitors who will use electronic sensors to measure ground vibrations near ancient works and call off work if needed to protect them.

“We’re confident that these standing structures and rock art will be protected,” said Mark Mackiewicz, the bureau’s special projects manager.

Bill Barrett Corp. received federal approval March 19 to launch the 90-square-mile survey. The company was set to begin work as early as May 15, after seasonal wildlife restrictions expire.

Nine Mile Canyon has more than a thousand known rock panels and ancient dwellings, but a consultant hired by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance said there could be hundreds more undiscovered sites.

The consultant, archeologist James Allison, made two trips to Nine Mile Canyon and found seven previously unknown ancient sites just outside the proposed seismic corridors, Bloch said.

Lane Miller, board president for the Utah Rock Art Research Assn., said the sites are “truly a unique area and one worth fighting for.”

Leaders of the Sierra Club and Wilderness Society painted the project as a reckless act by the Bush administration to exploit more public lands for gas and oil.