The BLM can be a major pain in the ass. I tried to run a pipeline from a private pasture 300 yards into a BLM spring box so I could water cattle in the private pasture and shut them out of the BLM land part of the year. This is the kind of thing that BLM likes since it allows better management of the pasture. BLM said they would be okay with that so I bought the pipe and hired somebody to dig the trench. We were about to start when the BLM guys told us that we needed to have the pipeline path looked at by an archeologist to check for arrowheads or any other relics that might be there. I said sure and put everything on hold. I didn't hear back from the BLM for two years. When they finally called, they brought out 7 people (archaeologist, hydrologist, wildlife expert, and I have no idea what the rest of them were). When I heard back from them they wanted me to fence off the entire riparian area, move the existing tank a quarter mile to a place where it could no longer fill by gravity flow so it would have to have a pump at all times. There was also a few chunks of busted up concrete from an old stock tank that were deemed to be an archeological relic which needed to be protected. This would have all been at my expense. All it would have taken to improve both pastures would have been for them to let me dig a 6 inch wide trench 300 yards into their land and stick a solar pump into an existing spring box but that was obviously unacceptable. As a result I said fuck it and now I have a big pile of PVC pipe that I don't know what to do with.
That said, I don't really see how a reasonable person expects to use federal land without paying for it.