A canyon located in southeastern Utah — near where a Denver-based producer is conducting seismic natural gas exploration, which environmental groups are trying to stop — has made the list of the “Eleven Most Endangered Historic Places in America” for the current year.

The list, which was issued last Monday, comes out the same time each year, and was not intended to give the environmental groups added leverage in their ongoing battle to halt the seismic activities of Bill Barrett Corp., said Barbara Pahl, regional director of the National Trust for Historic Preservation (NTHP), a national non-profit group, in Denver.

The Nine Mile Canyon near Price, UT, received the designation because the area contains an “amazing array” of petroglyphs (Native American drawings), some of which are 2,000 years old, she said. In addition, Pahl told NGI the canyon contains a road that was built by the military in 1886, and historic oil and natural gas facilities from the 1950s.

Because the NTHP is not a federal or state agency, she said the group’s designation does not automatically mean that producers like Bill Barrett can no longer drill in or around Nine Mile Canyon.

But Pahl noted her group met with Bill Barrett two weeks ago and again on Friday to discuss the NTHP’s concerns. The producer “has told me that it can” carry out its seismic activities without damaging the Native American artifacts, she noted.

Pahl said the NTHP wants to work with Bill Barrett. “We’re hoping it doesn’t have to be a Sophie’s Choice” for the company. Her biggest concern isn’t with the seismic activity per se, but that Bill Barrett could potentially damage the artifacts when it brings heavy equipment across the access road in the canyon, she noted. There is “one particular place where the petroglyphs are right by the access roads.”

Bill Barrett officials “have met with several trust officials…to try to answer any questions they may have,” said company spokesman Jim Felton. He stressed that “we aren’t drilling any wells in Nine Mile Canyon,” but are using the roads in the canyon to transport equipment.

The company is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to “ameliorate our presence [in the canyon] and to clean up the debris from earlier operators,” Felton told NGI. In addition, Bill Barrett has purchased 160 acres of land in the canyon — an area that Felton said “has been vandalized for decades.”

Bill Barrett began the seismic exploration activity on the West Tavatus Plateau near the canyon on May 22, one day after The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) withdrew its request for a federal court in Washington, DC, to issue a preliminary injunction barring the producer from moving forward.

SUWA counsel Stephen Bloch said the group pulled its request because Bill Barrett agreed to do several surveys before carrying out surface-disturbance operations around the canyon area, and not to conduct seismic activity in any wilderness areas.

Bill Barrett will be allowed to continue seismic activity on an 80 square-mile area while U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan rules on the merits of a lawsuit brought by SUWA, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Wilderness Society, Sierra Club and Utah Rock Art Research Association against the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management, which cleared the producer’s seismic project. The group claims that Bill Barrett’s seismic activity would harm cultural resources and damage wilderness areas, and have asked the court to block it. Sullivan is expected to issue a decision in the case by late July.

“By the time the court acts, the seismic project may be partially finished,” said SUWA’s Bloch. But if SUWA and the other groups win on the merits, Bill Barrett “won’t be able to finish [it].”

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