Citizens in Bluff, Utah, are voicing alarm about a possible effort by the Utah State Institutional Trust Lands Administration, SITLA, to create a major energy development north and east of the town.
The Bluff Service Area Board, the Business Owners of Bluff, and Bluff Water Works, which provides the town’s culinary water, have written to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell and others saying they believe SITLA hopes to use land exchanges to consolidate scattered holdings into an oil field. They note that three oil wells are already planned close to the town, the first in many years. They say energy development would threaten water, tourism, archaeological sites, and scenery, and call for the federal government to protect those lands.