The proposal to expand the Utah Test and Training Range by several hundred thousand acres moved a step closer to reality after the U.S. House of Representatives voted to approve the National Defense Authorization Act on Friday.
The expansion proposal, championed by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Tooele), was folded into the NDAA for fiscal year 2017. Hatch attached the plan to expand the UTTR by 625,643 acres to the defense spending bill as a rider, which is an additional provision pinned to a different piece of legislation.
The House approved the 2017 NDAA by a 375 to 34 vote on Friday and it will now come before the Senate, which is expected to vote on the bill before the end of the year.
The additional acreage would create a larger buffer around the training area, expanding the existing 1.7 million acres. The expansion would also create a single contiguous territory instead of the current layout, which is bisected by Interstate 80 with buffers between.
An expansion of the property would fall under the purview of the U.S. Air Force and Bureau of Land Management. The proposal also calls for a swap of land between BLM and the Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration.
The land swap would send 84,000 acres of SITLA land scattered throughout federally-owned land into the test range. In exchange, the state would gain approximately 99,000 acres of BLM land with established mineral resources.
In a news release from last February, Stewart identified the buffer to UTTR as necessary to allow testing of more advanced weapons like F-35s and long-range bombers.
Encroachment by neighboring communities and increased unmanned aerial vehicle tests at Dugway Proving Ground were among the reasons cited by Stewart to expand the UTTR and the buffer that surrounds it.
The bill maintains that current grazing, environmental or recreational uses of the land that would transfer to UTTR would not be affected if the measure is approved. The BLM would continue to maintain its current land, as well as lands from the SITLA exchange, if the bill passed.
The bill’s impact would come during training exercises, when the Secretary of the Air Force would be able to temporarily close access to roadways and land within the larger UTTR footprint. The bill would also not open BLM lands to bombing during training exercises at the range.
The temporary closures of roadways would only occur at off-peak hours and would be limited to 100 total hours annually, according to Stewart’s bill. The public would be informed of the closures at least 30 days before they go into effect and livestock would be able to remain on grazing land during the temporary closures.
While I-80 would bisect the training range under the expansion, the highway would never be affected by any of the temporary closures at UTTR.
When presenting a similar proposal in October 2014, members of Hatch’s staff met with Tooele County ranchers, who expressed concerns about public access, road closures and grazing rights. One concern voiced was no additional grazing leases would be granted, but Stewart’s proposal would allow the BLM to issue new leases or permits while maintaining existing leases within current state and federal laws.