Segment 1: Iron County RS2477 Pilot Program
When you are on the streets of the city, it’s pretty obvious who owns the street, it’s the city. When you get a parking ticket that’s who you pay, the city, the city maintains it, they set the ordinances for travel upon it. Pretty clear cut but the further you move away from the city when you get into rural Utah, ownership of those roads becomes a lot more contentious. Now historically under RS2477 which we’ve discussed many times on this program ownership of a road built before 1976 automatically became county property or the agency that built the road; however, after they passed FLPMA in 1976 all new roads were supposed to become property of the federal government and you just leased them. Well that has lead to several court battles and it’s been fairly ugly for the last 15 or 20 years. But right now they are trying a new program in Iron County where they can move the debate about ownership of the road out of the courtroom and into the county courthouse to see if they can solve the problem. Here with the story is Terry Wood.
