The election-year move effectively blocks development of one of America's largest known coal reserves, to the dismay of political leaders in Utah, the nation's most Republican state.
"We can't have mines everywhere and we shouldn't have mines that threaten our national treasures," the president said.
Standing at the south rim of the rust-colored Grand Canyon, Clinton invoked a 90-year-old law to create the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument without congressional approval. He announced his decision near the same spot where Theodore Roosevelt used the same law, the Antiquities Act, to protect the Grand Canyon from development in 1908.
"We are saying very simply, our parents and grandparents saved the Grand Canyon for us," the president said, bathed in sunlight breaking through the clouds. "Today we will save the Grand Escalante Canyons and the Kaiparowits Plateaus of Utah for our children."
The area, 70 miles north of here, is marked with natural arches and bridges, high cliffs of red, white and yellow sandstone and deep canyons.
Seven weeks before the election, Clinton's action delighted environmentalists but brought threats of political retaliation from Utah.
Mike Matz, executive director of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, called it "one of the most significant land actions that any president has done."
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said Clinton was declaring "war on the West."
Utah's Republican governor Michael Leavitt said Clinton "completely chose to ignore the process ... (and) ignore the public trust" of people in the region.
Yet, with just five electoral votes in Utah, there was not much political risk for Clinton in offending the state's political establishment.
Arizona was the third state on Clinton's six-state campaign tour, and it was the second time he visited the state in a week. No Democrat has carried Arizona since Harry Truman in 1948 but Clinton campaign officials say the president holds a narrow lead over Bob Dole.
From here, Clinton headed to Seattle for a speech at the Pike Place Market. Today he will take a bus trip through Washington to Oregon for a rally in Portland tomorrow. The president will stop in South Dakota, another traditional Republican stronghold, on his way back to Washington later in the day.
Clinton holds a double-digit lead in Washington and Oregon and a narrower edge in South Dakota, according to his campaign.
Clinton's designation of a national monument in southern Utah covers federal land to the west of the Colorado River and to the east of Bryce Canyon National Park. It includes the coal-rich Kaiparowits Plateau, the Escalante River Canyons and the Grand Staircase.
A Dutch mining company, Andalex Resources, holds coal leases on the 600,000-acre plateau and already has begun some mining operations. The federal government will seek negotiations with the company to trade leases in the area for federal assets elsewhere, the White House said.
"All we've got to do is identify them and get that discussion going."
Babbitt said Clinton's order does not negate Andalex's leases but requires the company to meet certain environmental standards. White House press secretary Mike McCurry said, "You can foresee ways in which if mining were to occur, there could be a significant impact on the objects that are to be protected."
Another firm with a major coal lease in the region, PacifiCorp, agreed last week to negotiations with the intent of relinquishing its interests in exchange for other lands.
Utah owns about 180,000 acres of isolated, scattered tracts in the monument area. Clinton directed the Interior Department to offer to exchange the holdings for more accessible and developable federal resources of equal value elsewhere in the state.
Developers and environmentalists have fought over the land for years.
Some environmentalists have argued as much as 5.7 million acres should be protected, while Utah's congressional delegation has pushed legislation that would set aside 2.1 million acres.
Legislation stalled in the Senate would leave for development much of the land protected by Clinton, including the Kaiparowits Plateau and what some have estimated to be as much as 7 billion tons of low-sulfur coal deposits worth up to a trillion dollars.
AP PHOTO
President Clinton, Vice President Al Gore and Norma Mattheson, deliver a speech at The Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona yesterday.