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January 20, 2009

Judge Suspends Lease of 100,000 Acres of Public Land in Utah
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A federal judge has suspended the Bush administration’s last-minute
attempt to lease more than 100,000 acres of land near national parks in
Utah for oil and gas drilling. Judge Ricardo Urbina ruled the Bureau of
Land Management had not carried out sufficient study of the impact of
drilling near the Arches and Canyonlands National Parks and the Dinosaur
National Monument. Environmentalists had condemned the auction. One
University of Utah student, Tim De Christopher, had disrupted the
auction by posing as a bidder. He ended up buying the rights to twelve
parcels of land totaling 22,000 acres.



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