Utah is poised to receive 520 acres of prime federally owned real estate near Utah Lake’s northwest shore, under a bill Rep. Mia Love is shepherding through Congress.
Her bill is a simple house-keeping measure needed to clear bureaucratic hurdles blocking a proposed land transfer envisioned in Utah’s 1894 enabling act, which granted the future state land to support civic-building institutions, the Republican lawmaker and former Saratoga Springs mayor said.
“This solution would satisfy both the state and federal government and help us keep the promises made to the state of Utah more than 123 years ago. More importantly it would ultimately raise funds to benefit Utah’s students by allowing SITLA (School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration) to manage these lands for the benefit of students,” Love told a House committee recently.
The measure, HR2582, which has passed the House, would allow two parcels to be given to SITLA, which would use it for residential development that will generate “millions” for Utah State University, SITLA chief David Ure said.
One 440-acre parcel is east of Eagle Mountain and an 80-acre parcel near Saratoga Springs connects existing SITLA-owned land, and can serve as a transportation corridor.
“It is not going to be developed tomorrow, but it is gently sloped land that is fully developable,” said John Andrews, SITLA’s general counsel and deputy director. “As population growth in Utah County proceeds that land will be brought to market.”
Utah’s enabling act — the 1894 act of Congress that paved the way for statehood — authorizes the transfer of acreage to support the Miner’s Hospital in Park City, universities and other nonschool beneficiaries. SITLA now administers those lands in the same revenue-maximizing manner as it does for the 3 million acres it holds in trust for public schools.
Some 200,000 acres was to be selected to benefit what was then known as the Agricultural College of Utah, which became USU in 1957. But USU remains about 2,000 acres short, representing a lost opportunity to raise money for Utah’s land-grant university, according to Andrews. Twenty years ago, SITLA identified the two Bureau of Land Management parcels outside growing residential communities that presented good money-making opportunities.
But SITLA’s application for the land got hung up on a confusing provision in the BLM’s resource management plan, which indicated that the parcels are for available disposal through an exchange. The agency’s lawyers concluded that SITLA’s proposed selections didn’t qualify as an “exchange,” although BLM officials were on board with giving the land to the state.
“BLM internally decided there was a legal issue that prevented them from doing the exchange without a plan amendment. They have said they don’t have the resources to do that,” Andrews said.
Love’s bill, titled “Confirming State Land Grants for Education Act,” is basically a legislative end-run around BLM’s planning obstacles. It would allow SITLA to select lands that the BLM resource plan identifies as available for exchange.