County waives road claims

The Salt Lake County Council has unanimously supported Mayor Nancy Workman's decision to waive road claims on eight trails.

The council approved a resolution this past week that Councilman Joe Hatch said "gives weight and support" to the mayor's decision to not claim eight trails under the RS 2477 statute, which could have allowed the trails to be developed into roads. The trails are primarily in the Willow Heights area of Big Cottonwood Canyon.

"They (Workman's staff) have obviously looked at these and determined that they are not important claims," Hatch said.

The road claims are based on the RS 2477 statute, which was intended to give prospectors easy access to their claims by granting use of rights-of-way for roads and trails over federal lands that are not reserved for public use. The statute was repealed in 1976, but any road in place prior to that time would still qualify as a local right-of-way under the old law. The state is involved in a lawsuit with the federal government about which roads should be protected.

In 2000, the County Commission publicly approved 15 roads, including the Mill Creek, Big Cottonwood and Little Cottonwood canyon roads and submitted the claims to the state for review. At least five of the additional eight roads that Workman removed had been submitted to the state without public discussion or record of how those decisions were made.

The resolution received unanimous support, but Councilman David Wilde expressed concern that some rural counties, especially in southern Utah, would criticize Salt Lake County leaders for a lack of unity with their lawsuit.

"It's an important issue for rural counties . . . but I'm comfortable that what the mayor has done will have no impact on the other counties," Wilde said.

Councilman Randy Horiuchi, however, said that even though Workman's move has no actual impact on the other counties' claims, there still will be those who want Salt Lake County to remain part of their fight.

"While this doesn't hurt their claims, they are disappointed that we are less involved," he said.

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