New BLM director sees positive future for Utah land issues

Amy Joi O'Donoghue

SALT LAKE CITY — With the taste of gritty dust in his mouth and the smell of a harvest on the wind, Juan Palma was just a little boy when he worked the fields from south Texas to Yakima Valley, Wash.

Tomatoes and peppers in one state, grapes on the vine in another and hops and sugar beets awaited the hands of Palma's migrant farm family.

It was during this formative time in his youth that the new Utah director of the Bureau of Land Management says his love of the land was planted, even as he plucked its bounty.

"Seeing those beautiful scenic vistas from the back of the truck, peering out through the slats … I thought this has got to be like heaven, those beautiful mountains," Palma said.

Little did he know, as he witnessed the grandeur of the snow-capped Sierras from the floors of the Sacramento Valley, that he would one day go onto manage those lands.

"That is the wonder and acknowledgement — that in America, anything is possible," he said.

A business management major from BYU, Palma may have had his nose stuck in finance and sales at one point, but he was never far from the dirt he grew up with.

Settling in the little town of Vale, Ore., Palma was atop a tractor one day when a farmer who knew his university background asked him why he was still getting his hands dirty.

The question and some soul searching led him to the U.S. Forest Service, where he landed a job.

"I was fascinated that there was an agency like this," Palma said. "The concept of public lands was a foreign idea to me."

He later wound up at the Bureau of Land Management in the eastern Oregon district based in Vale, managing a "big building" he'd watched rise from the ground during the days he drove the tractor.

By 2000, he left the federal agency to take on the responsibility of executive director of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, a unique two-state compact between Nevada and California established to oversee all planning and development in the Tahoe Region.

It was a déj?vu moment for Palma, who as a boy had stared in awe at the Sierras.

Like so many of the paths in Palma's life, his newest post has him circling back to the time when he was raising his family in Utah and watching his children graduate from high school and go on to college.

He's returned to a sentinel moment in his past this summer and has undertaken management of the Utah BLM, which has been the fulcrum of controversy the past two years — from resource management plans under legal challenge to pulled oil and gas leases once secured at auction.

The BLM, in so many words, has the mandate to be in the middle of the fight, to be the simultaneous whipping boy for environmentalists who argue for wilderness protection and want to restrict use and for those who want "access" to the lands and want to drill, ride ATVs and graze cattle.

Lawsuits over too much use or not enough have originated in Utah, and Palma is well aware of the battlefield he's entered.

"One of the things I would like to bring to Utah is more certainty," he said. "Since I have been in Utah, I have noticed a large degree of uncertainty from the oil and gas industry to others involved."

The "noise" springing from all sides sooner or later needs to be quieted with resolutions that help to settle the fight, he said.

"From what I have heard so far from other people, there is a point and time when all of us just get tired of the rhetoric and of things not moving forward," Palma said, "and that has to change for American citizens — both for the economy and business community and also for the stewardship of the land. Perhaps there is a better way, a different way."

Palma points to the late-July announcement of the Tavputs Plateau natural gas drilling project as an example of a "balanced" approach that allows resource extraction but mandates environmental protections.

Called an unprecedented arrangement that forged cooperation between environmental groups such as the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance and the Bill Barrett Corp., the "programmatic agreement" formalized concessions made by both sides to move forward.

"Without that, we are not really getting at what we need to do to arrive where we need to be," he said. "What gives me optimism is not innocent or naive optimism but rather is based on the physical and tangible things I can see."

Rep. Mike Noel, R-Kanab, one of the most ardent critics of federal land management agencies in Utah, said he also has optimism that comes with Palma's arrival.

"I have heard good things about him," Noel said. "I've heard he is fair, and what I have heard from others who have worked with him has been positive."

Noel, a member of Gov. Gary Herbert's Balanced Resource Council tackling critical land issues, said he plans to keep an "open mind" and hopes to meet with Palma soon.

Scott Groene, director of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, said his organization has had a chance to meet with Palma and is optimistic as well.

"We have been pleased that he is open to meeting with the public. It certainly is a change from the past. ... He certainly has a big job ahead of him."

As he settles into the dust kicked up by Utah's land management issues, Palma is in many ways ready to get his hands dirty once again as he works to resolve festering environmental issues.

He said he was at a Texas Roadhouse restaurant recently, marveling at the workers as they hustled to serve customers. The back of their shirts say I (heart) my job.

"What energy, what devotion they have," Palma said. "Do I have that much energy, that much devotion, that much commitment? The answer for myself is that I do.

"I love being able to solve problems. Some people would think I was crazy, but to me, problems are nothing but a puzzle where I have to figure out where all the pieces go. I know we have a lot of problems, and I don't yet know where all the pieces are, and I don't know how we are going to solve the puzzle, but I do know the pieces are there if we search enough."

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Source: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700054555/New-BLM-director-sees-positive-future-for-Utah-land-issues.html

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