DEER CREEK RESERVOIR - It's got a view, to be sure, one that not only takes in this sprawling man-made lake below, but also the majesty of Mount Timpanogos and a good chunk of the Heber Valley.
   And soon it could all be yours, for a price - with the check payable to the federal government.
   The land in question is one of seven Uinta National Forest Service parcels above Deer Creek Reservoir, totaling just over 800 acres, that federal officials have proposed selling, part of a larger sale of U.S. Forest Service tracts the agency has deemed unnecessary, unmanageable or both.
   Nationally, the Forest Service is planning to unload about 300,000 acres, including 5,400 acres in Utah; all as part of a Bush administration initiative to funnel a projected $800 million over five years into a revenue-sharing fund for rural counties and school districts that adjoin or are near Forest Service lands. Utah received $2 million from the fund in 2005.
   Federal officials call it a win-win proposal. They say the planned sale, coupled with a similar proposed sell-off of Bureau of Land Management parcels, will rid the agencies of relatively small, isolated tracts that hold little value when compared with the costs of managing them. It also will, they say, bolster small-town economies and help replenish the nation's coffers - 70 percent of the BLM's sale proceeds will go straight to the treasury.
   "This is going to allow us to more efficiently manage the lands that mean the most to the general public, and it's going to help local communities by increasing the tax revenues of these areas, as well as providing money for schools and roads," says Martin Jensen, a spokesman for the Forest Service's Intermountain Region in Ogden.
    However, opponents of varying political stripe have lined up against the plan, which still must go before Congress. They argue that selling such lands could impair important wildlife habitat and cut off access to larger Forest Service and BLM holdings. More philosophically, they say that creating such a precedent is just bad policy.
   "This isn't a few acres here and there. This is several hundred thousand acres, about the size of Rhode Island," says John Leshy, a law professor at the University of California-Hastings and a former Interior Department solicitor. "These federal lands are our heritage, our open space. You can't make enough [money] on this to dent the federal deficit. Americans have made it clear they want more open space, not less.
   "This is a very slippery slope."
   In its preliminary assessment, the Forest Service is planning to hang the "For Sale" sign on 46 Utah parcels, with most of those located in Wasatch-Cache National Forest, which covers the Wasatch range from the Idaho state line south to Utah County, as well as the north slope of the Uinta Mountains. The remaining parcels are in Uinta, Manti-La Sal, Fishlake and Dixie national forests.
   No individual parcel is larger than 600 acres, with most ranging between 80 and 160 acres. Some parcels, such as a 7-acre tract located in the middle of Provo, are clearly ballast and have no real value to the Forest Service beyond their market potential. But others could be much more problematic, according to environmentalists.
   "A lot of the sections are in areas that could be subject to exurban sprawl, so they are valuable in terms of real estate value. The problem is, a lot of it is also critical big-game winter range that needs to be protected," says Kevin Mueller, executive director of the Utah Environmental Congress, which monitors the state's six national forests. "In fact, one of the goals of the 2003 Wasatch-Cache Forest plan was to find more of these lands for winter range. Now they want to sell them. Go figure."
   Indeed, some of the Forest Service's own parcel descriptions reveal possible conflicts. A tract in Provo Canyon is next to "a large holding of [the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources] and is in critical winter range," one description says. Another parcel, a 160-acre plot in the Little Diamond area of Uinta National Forest, is "adjacent to National Forest System Lands. The forest would like to fill in the area by acquiring other private parcels of land." And two of the Deer Creek parcels, the descriptions note, currently have grazing permits on them.
   But discomfort with the Bush/Forest Service sale proposal goes beyond the environmental community. At least some sportsmen's groups have given the idea a thumbs down.
   Says Don Peay, founder of Utah's influential Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife organization: "There are probably some federal lands that could be sold off and benefit the treasury and not impact wildlife. But we are seriously opposed to selling off critical winter range for big game or parcels that provide public access for hunting and fishing and hiking. There's not an abundance of public land. Our position is, we need more, not less."
    Forest Service officials call the commotion premature. The public comment period on the parcels proposed for sale has yet to begin. Troublesome tracts could yet be pulled.
   "We're still pretty early in the process," says Jensen, the agency spokesman.
   What kind of greeting the Bush land sale will receive in Congress remains to be seen. Utah Democratic Rep. Jim Matheson calls the Forest Service plan another in a long line of "troubling proposals" by the administration. Republican Rob Bishop, meanwhile, considers it a sound idea.
   "I've always believed the feds own and control too much land in our state, so I think a proposal to transfer a certain, limited number of parcels has merit," Bishop says. "This deals with only one-half of 1 percent of certain federal lands, so we're not talking about a major land sale here."
   Utah GOP Sen. Bob Bennett also supports the concept of selling some public lands - but only to a point. "I don't endorse the idea that this is any way to balance the budget."
    Selling parcels is nothing new for either the Forest Service or the BLM - the latter has been selling surplus land going back to the 1970s, according to agency officials. The difference is, in the past, the Forest Service's rural-schools fund was financed through the budget and its land sales were tied to land swaps. And the BLM used to keep 80 percent of its proceeds, which it then funneled back into conservation and other programs.
   Under the Bush proposal, the BLM - which currently has 121,000 acres available for sale in Utah - will seek national sales of $30 million in the first year, building to a five-year sales goal of $260 million, according to budget projections.
   The biggest concern of critics, beyond the potential environmental consequences, is that by now redirecting this revenue into a rural-schools fund or the treasury, the administration will become addicted to real estate sales to prop up the federal budget.
    Sunset provisions, such as the five-year limit on the Forest Service proposal, might not mean much in the face of such pressure.
   "The worry is the link between the deficit and selling these lands," says Janine Blaeloch, director of the Seattle-based Western Lands Project. "That concept has now been put forth so many times by the Bush administration that that people will become indifferent to the proposal. This will further entrench that whole philosophy."
   jbaird@sltrib.com