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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- An oil-and-gas lease that overlaps Moab's golf course and a residential area and threatened the town's drinking water will be pulled from a government auction list.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management said it was pulling the parcel over the objections of local governments and homeowners who own some of the land on the parcel but not the mineral rights.
The announcement came in a statement late Tuesday from BLM state director Selma Sierra.
Sierra said she also was taking a second look at 40 oil and gas parcels alongside or within view of Arches National Park and two other redrock national parks in Utah: Dinosaur and Canyonlands.
The proposed sale of those parcels angered the National Park Service, which has demanded they be pulled from an auction set for Dec. 19. One parcel is just 1.3 miles and visible from Delicate Arch, the signature landmark of Arches National Park.
"We also continue to work with our sister agency, the National Park Service, to further refine these lease offerings and clarify protections offered on each lease parcel," Sierra said in the statement.
Sierra said her agency never intended to allow oil or gas drillers to occupy any of the parcels next to national parks or in Moab. Instead, they'd would be required to reach the parcels from another pad, using directional drilling.
But Moab Mayor Dave Sakrison said any kind of drilling under his town's Spanish Valley parcel could have breached and polluted the town's only source of drinking water, an underground aquifer.
Sakrison said the water supply has been certified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as pristine.
Moab was preparing to file an official protest with the BLM that became unnecessary when Sierra agreed to pull the parcel.
(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
