By David Grant Long

Rep. Scott McInnis (R - Grand Junction) said Thursday he wouldn’t sponsor legislation to create a 160,000-acre national conservation area in western Montezuma County unless there were a local demand for it.

"We haven’t determined whether it’s necessary to have legislation," McInnis said during a press conference in Durango. "First of all, it’s not broken — there has not been a cry for something to be changed in the management.

"I’m not saying I won’t introduce legislation," he added, "but not unless it’s driven by local support."

Then yesterday in Cortez McInnis heard that local demand and support for a legislative solution from the Montezuma County Commission and others concerned that if Congress doesn’t act, President Clinton will, leading to draconian restrictions on the current multiple uses of the area, which include CO2 extraction, grazing and a variety of recreational pursuits.

But while McInnis said he would be "happy" to carry such a bill in the House, he explained that he already has a "full plate" to deal with in the upcoming session and suggested that Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, a member of the senate appropriations committee, would be better able to propel it through Congress since the proposed funding mechanism — gas royalties — would no doubt have considerable opposition.

"We’re prepared to carry the legislation," he said, ". . . but I would suggest you start it on the senate side because if we can get the momentum coming out of the senate, I think it would be easier to bringing it through the House."

Interior Secretary Bruce Babbit said last month that unless the Colorado congressional delegation acts promptly to protect the myriad Anasazi ruin sites in the McElmo Dome area that is managed by the BLM, he would ask President Clinton to declare it a national monument before his term ends in 2001. But other than a flurry of caustic letters and press releases from McInnis and senators Campbell and Wayne Allard castigating Babbitt and demanding that he do nothing, no apparent steps have been taken toward arriving at any legislative solution.

"We’ve found that the best way to work with these federal entities is to get involved," Commission Chairman Gene Story told McInnis. "You can either be combative, or you can try to develop some collaborative approaches and partnerships, and that’s been the approach this commission has taken over the past number of years.

"We do have a valuable cultural resource out here — it may need some additional protections," Story said, "and to accomplish that, it may need some additional revenues. That’s all that’s at stake here as we understand it."

The commission wrote a letter to both sides earlier this fall proposing an alternative management plan that would pay for increased protections of the ruins by using some of the federal royalties paid on CO2 extraction from the area, which presently amounts to more than $6 million annually.

Babbitt responded that this plan may have some merit, Story recounted, "but his last word was that if something isn’t done soon, the other shoe is going to fall, and that shoe, as we understand it, is going to be a national monument —we won’t accept a national monument."

But McInnis maintained that the Clinton administration has planned to make the area a national monument all along and that the BLM meetings in Cortez last summer to gather local input had been only for show.

"They’re going to shove this down your throat," he said. "I don’t want you to think you have any voice as to whether you get a national monument." Presidents have the executive power to create national monuments under the Antiquities Act passed in 1906, and it has been used 104 times to do so, most recently in 1996 when Clinton gave this designation to the Grand Staircase/Escalante area in southeast Utah.

But Story said when it became obvious that the county’s proposal wasn’t sufficient, "we backed up and said, ‘All right, maybe this is going to happen, can we approach it through the national-conservation-area issue?’

"And, of course, that’s going to require legislation on your part," he added, "and we feel comfortable that the type of legislation can be crafted which will assure what is occurring out there today continues — in other words, the multiple-use concept."

McInnis predicted, however, that any legislative approach to increased protection of the area that included the current uses would be opposed by environmental groups such as the Sierra Club and Earth First.

"They hate multiple use," he said. "They want to take the ‘Land of Many Uses’ sign down and put up one that says, ‘No trespassing.’ "

Putting more restrictions on public lands in the sparsely populated West is no more than a gambit by the Clinton administration to appeal to environmentalists in the vote-rich East, McInnis charged, while ignoring the wishes of the residents, whose political clout is scant.

But, he added, creating a tailor-made national conservation area is worth attempting, at least.

"What do you lose for trying?" he said. "I think you ought to put it together and make it the balanced approach of your working group —who can argue with that?’

Mike Preston, the county’s federal lands coordinator, said there have already been preliminary discussions between Babbitt’s and Campbell’s staffs on developing legislation based on the report developed by the BLM working group.

"The makings are there to get something drafted that we can live with," Preston said. "What’s been most useful to us has been, basically, not wavering from what came out of that working group’s report.

"The recommendations in that report protect the existing uses, but they also take significant steps toward the long-term protection of those archaeological resources."

Ute Mountain Ute tribal member Carl Knight pointed out that the area in question, officially dubbed the Anasazi Area of Critical Environmental Concern, contains a strip of land belonging to the tribe and asked if this would be affected by whatever action is ultimately taken by the federal government.

"Do we fall into this big mousetrap?" Knight said. "What kind of power does (Babbitt) have to come here and tell people how they should run their own lands?"