The 26 applicants who were denied Fish Lake Road lots will not hold any special standing if future residential development occurs there, says the minister responsible.

Archie Lang explained this week in an interview the applications died with last week's decision by the land application review committee (LARC) to reject them.

'Once an application is terminated, once it is turned down, there is no waiting list per se,' said the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources, the department responsible for land disposition. 'It does not work that way.'

Lang said the review committee did its work. It listened to the concerns of the public and the local first nations and decided against permitting the group development.

The Yukon government, however, is willing to look at the possibility of revisiting a planned development for the Fish Lake Road area, he said.

Lang said the 'lack of land' for residential development on the Whitehorse periphery and inside the city, and around the Yukon, remains a concern.

A couple of Fish Lake Road applicants contacted late last week by the Star said they plan to appeal the LARC decision.

Lyle Henderson, director of the lands branch, said the first level of appeal is to him. The applicants have 60 days to file their appeals. The second level of appeal is to the assistant deputy minister of the department, he said.

Henderson acknowledged the review committee did recommend that before any residential development is permitted in the area, there be a focused planning effort to address the issue and concerns raised.

Whether there's an interest in initiating a land use planning exercise for the Fish Lake Road is a matter to be discussed first of all between Energy, Mines and Resources, and the Department of Community Services, the department that manages land development, Henderson said.

He said if a residential development did eventually go ahead, the lots would most likely be released through the more traditional public lottery.

Should a planning exercise go forward, said the land director, everything would be on the table for discussion, including the possibility of smaller lot sizes, in keeping with the average one-hectare parcels that are standard in country residential subdivisions. The rural residential lots that had been applied for were six hectares or 15 acres in size.

Whatever the situation, it's clear the LARC has emphasized the need for a comprehensive land use planning exercise in advance of any residential development along the Fish Lake Road, Henderson said.

He acknowledged that such an exercise can be exhaustive, and if it were started, the chance of having anything available for 2006 would be slim.

Last summer's onslaught of applications for rural residential property along the the Fish Lake Road sparked public curiosity and concern about how such prized property could suddenly be available without the general public's knowledge.

There were suggestions of insider information; that those travelling in the right circle were the first to benefit.

The minister, however, dismissed any such accusation. Lang said the land became available through the normal process in the wake of the April 1, 2003 transfer of authority for land from the federal government to the Yukon.

He insisted he would not apologize for someone who came across the Fish Lake Road opportunity while researching the availability of rural residential land in the Whitehorse periphery.

But as the news spread, the number of applications ballooned to well over 30, though a handful were turned back, resulting in 26 applications.

The lands branch decided to review the applications as a group, rather than individually, meaning they would be subject to more stringent environmental considerations.

An individual application, the first received last June ahead of the rush, was processed individually and approved.

Merle Just, one of the 26, told the review committee at its meeting earlier this month that it was unfair to process the applications as a group. She said she and her husband followed the same process as the June 2004 applicant who was approved, and should have been treated in the same way rather than be subject to tougher scrutiny.

Among the many concerns raised was the potential impact on the local wildlife population.

But area resident Wendy Fournier, who grew up on the Fish Lake Road and whose son was one of the applicants, said development in the area would not do any harm.

If anything, she told the review committee, it would deter the large volume of area residents who use the Fish Lake Road area as a jumping-off spot to get their snowmobiles and ATVs into the outback.

It's in the outback beyond the Fish Lake Road where the impact on the wilderness and the sensitive landscape from off-road-vehicles is occurring, not in the Fish Lake Road area, she told the review committee.

Numbers provided by the lands branch today indicate there were 21 applications last year for rural residential properties in the Whitehorse periphery, of which nine were approved, including the Fish Lake Road application.

There have been 26 received so far this year, of which three have been approved, 16 denied and seven are awaiting review.