Bills would provide more Utah campgrounds options, acquire federal land advance
A pair of land bills advanced on unanimous votes from the Senate Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment Committee on Tuesday that would set up a mechanism to create state campgrounds and then to also facilitate up to 30,000 Bureau of Land Management acres for Utah to purchase or lease.
The bill by Rep. Steve Eliason, R-Sandy, gives the state the ability to create campgrounds — not a full blown state park — through a bottom-up process.
Utah state parks received more than 1.3 million visitors in fiscal year 2024 and are often packed. Eliason spoke of how he sought to make a reservation at one particular park early in the season, but it was already booked during prime camping time.
His bill, HB34, would give the state the ability to create state campgrounds but only with the approval of the local governing body such as a city council or county commission. The campground proposal would also need buy-in from the state representative from the area as well as the state senator.
'This bill does not create any state campgrounds. It simply creates the process by which we would evaluate and potentially approve state campgrounds,' Eliason said. 'It is a bottom up approach versus top down, which we are all too familiar with.'
Eliason pointed to the example presented by the Utah Raptor State Park, due to open later this year. It moved forward by cobbling a number of landowners parcels together, including the school trust lands administration, the Division of Fire, Forestry and State Lands, as well as the federal government.
This sort of cooperative approach was enshrined in a bill last year that had unanimous support, but Eliason said the Senate simply ran out of time to get it passed.
'There are all sorts of opportunities,' with state campgrounds that can alleviate to an extent the pressure valve on state parks, he stressed.
Another measure directs the Utah Public Lands Policy Coordinating Office to conduct a survey of federal lands that may be suitable for lease or purchase. It caps the acreage at 30,000 acres per year and would have to be for the purpose of providing public good.
SB158, introduced by Sen. Keven Stratton, R-Orem, sets up a process to facilitate a survey of federal lands that if acquired would accomplish a beneficial public purpose.
Counties have worked in tandem with the federal government for such purposes, such as putting in a landfill, a park or fire station.
'What this bill does is it's an information gathering and a unifying voice within the state, under direction of PLPCO to track and provide resources and allow that (information) to be drawn upon,' Stratton said. 'We need to track that and have that information available if we're desiring to continue and continue the course of wise stewardship of the resources in our care.'
Redge Johnson, director of PLPCO, said the mechanism has been used with success before with the federal government with success using provisions in the federal Recreation Public Purposes Act.
'But I don't think anybody knows exactly how many acres we've gotten, so I think this is a good bill to get in and track and see how many we have,' he said.
The bill does not preclude private nongovernmental organizations from making purchases or leases.
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