A Utah judge denied an environmental group’s emergency motion to halt the paving of a road through Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

The ruling is a setback for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, which argued a form of paving called chip-sealing is imminent on Hole in the Rock Road in Garfield County, Utah. The county gained title to the road crossing in the monument in separate litigation last year, the group claims in its suit.

The dispute over Hole in the Rock Road is the latest twist in a decades-long fight over federal control of public lands and national monuments …