According to Renae Straab, Vale District office BLM, the BLM does not give easements, it gives "right of ways" She even considers "roads" as "right of ways". She is going to check with her land use person, Susie Menez, and get back to me about easement vs right of way, and whether or not a right of way can be used by more than one utility company.
According to Renae, she said there are no rights of way in the Vale Dist....I have been further researching this issue of existing right of way corridors on the web and ran onto an undated DRAFT to all state directors from assistant director, renewable resources & planning (wo200), and I quote some paragraphs:
the BLM and the Forest Service have had a longstanding partnership with the Western Utility Group (WUG)concerning the planning, identification, and designation of utility corridors in the western United States. Both agencies endorsed the WUG's 1992 Western Regional Corridor Study (WRCS) and committed to using it as a primary reference in our consideration and designation of utility corridors through the land use planning process. To make this effort even more manageable, the WUG recently updated its 1992 WRCS, and has provided the BLM and Forest Service with a more focused set of priority corridors in the western US. These are proposed corridors that the WUG has identified as having the highest potential of being developed with additional electric transmission, oil and gas transmission, and/or telecommunication facilities within the next 10 years.
The WUG has further categorized those priority corridors by identifying those corridors within which new projects will be proposed in the next 1-3 years, 3-5 years, and 5-10 years. A set of digitized maps of these proposed priority corridors can be accesed electronically by all BLM offices at : ftp://158.68.141.102/ (internal) or ftp://ftp.id.blm.gov/ (external). Each of these maps show corridors that the WUG has proposed as having the highest priority for the most immediate consideration and designation in BLM land use plans. The set includes 4 base maps, each with the priority corridors identified..... Now, folks, I (Pat P) have tried to access these files, but can't. I have called the Vale Dist Office, and Renae is going to talk to Susie about maps of existing corridors, but if any of you know of a faster way, please let us know. Thanks, pat p
