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Show PAGE 16 THE ZEPHYRMARCH 1994 The Canyon Country WATCHDOG By Scott Groene 70 Green River Canyon Slated for Development The Green River is currently threatened by two proposals. first, BLM will soon release a new proposal to allow a slew of natural gas wells to be drilled on either side of the Green River just north of the head of Desolation Canyon. The proposal would turn a pristine area, generally reached only by a flat water float down the River from Ouray, into a mess of scattered roads and pipelines. Over twenty of the wells would be drilled within a proposed wilderness area. This threat appeared to be dead a year ago, when the BLM state director ruled in SUWA's favor on an appeal against an earlier proposal to drill 52 gas wells in the "Desert Springs Unit in this same area. But the ail and gas industry is back. To get on the mailing list for the plan call the Vernal BLM office at Second, the BLM's Vernal District office is proposing to open the Nutters Hole area, on the east side of the Green near Sand Wash, to commerdal collection of building stone, with permits granted for 150 tons of stone per year per permit (with apparently no limit on the number of permits issued). Trucks and hoists would be allowed cross country travel to retrieve the stone, degrading this remote and rarely visited area which is now proposed for wilderness. Comments on the project, or requests for information, can be directed to Richard Wilson, 0. District, 170 South, 500 East, Vernal, Utah 84078, 781-441- and Missiles Things that fall from file sky over the Canyons: Raven crap environmental draft a impact statement for its plans to This February, the Army released Base in New Mexico. Last year Missile launch missiles from Green River, Utah to White Sand the military told us it wanted to bomb proposed wilderness areas adjacent to Canyonlands National Park with booster rockets; well now things are even worse. In its new plans, the Army hopes to fire 70 missiles from Green River over the next six years, dropping booster rockets up to 30 feet in length and weighing 23,000 pounds on either the east or north side of Canyonlands National Park in the process (previously the weight was limited for the to approximately 1500 pounds). As an added benefit the military now wants to close Dead Horse and to Point State Canyonlands firings, as well as Highway 313, the entrance road Park. Visitors to the Harts Draw, Hatch Wash and Labyrinth Canyon proposed wilderness areas will be forced to evacuate and river runners will be stopped from using Mineral Bottom to launch Stillwater Canyon river trips. "Drop zones" will continue to be dosed while the Army tries to remove the ten tons or so of debris dropped on the backcountry. The Army admitted in a Sait Lake Tribune article that the project will bring no jobs to Utah, although folks in Green River were led to believe otherwise. Last year Utah Representative Karen Shepherd introduced legislation, HR 2655, which would stop this nonsense. Utahns can write Ms. Shepherd to thank her and Senator Bennett to request he sponsor the same bill on the Senate side. Our Representative, Bill Orton, has taken no position. The Army will hold a public hearing in Moab at 7 pm on March 2 at the Civic Center. 0. Moving in Exotics while Killing file Natives. A privately funded announcement in the local advertising circular was successful in BLM-Vem- al 781-441- Groene is wearing a WALU ball cap because: A) Too much stress has caused premature hair loss. B) He wants to show that he's a Secretary Babbitt Strangles Reform. Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt forced BLM Director Jim Baca to resign an February 3,1994. Baca, formerly a New Mexico Land Commissioner, ruffled feathers with western governors and senators with a blunt style, a style well known by the Administration before Baca was appointed BLM Director. Babbitt has apparently decided his primary goal is avoiding political controversy, rather than bringing much needed reform to public lands. For example. Babbitt dumped national grazing reform efforts and offered as a substitute local planning groups. The Utah BLM has already tried twice to resolve grazing issues through local forest planning groups. The first group concluded it would be a good idea to rip Pin off of the Henry Mountains in order to make more cattle forage. That plan which was appealed by SUWA and Siena Club and a federal administrative judge found the plan violated federal law. The second planning group involved the Comb Wash allotment, discussed below, and was abandoned as a failure after a year. These groups will do little but waste resources, while the problems continue. As an Albuquerque Journal editorial put it, when Babbitt now comes out west in an effort to regain trust among environmentalists, "environmentalists will have reservations about their chameleon-lik- e former fellow traveler." yon-junip- kinder and gentler environmentalist. er What the Strangled Has to Say. Director Baca said Clinton administration officials In a Washington Post interview, were "dead wrong" in assuming that the White House would increase its political popularity in the West by pulling back on efforts to reform public lands management. Mr. Baca said of Secretary Babbitt's effort to deflect criticism from the livestock industry by weakening reform efforts that "No matter how many compromises you work out, those traditional extractive western industries will cry 'rape.' Mr Baca added that the livestock industry are "really the experts at whining" and that mining reform and other issues are "sitting on the bade burner while 29,000 livestock lessees are running the agenda." ex-BL- M It was thrown through his window with a big rock attached C) to it. D) All of the above. drumming up plenty of public comment on the Forest Service's proposal to poison Larkspur, a native wild flower, in order to protect the cows that make such a mess out of the La Sals each summer. The Division of Wildlife Resources is proposing to introduce moose into the La Sals, for species unexplained reasons, though I suppose it may set some record for the biggest ever deliberately transplanted into an area. Comments on either project should be directed to 5. Heather Musdow at the Moab USES office, non-nati- ve 259-715- Cowpie Caucus: Men for the 50's. The Salt Lake Tribune recently ran four front page articles about the actions of a couple of members of the "cowboy caucus" with banner headlines such as "The Making of a New Frontier," and "West Leaders Warn Washington: Give us Liberty - or Else" (the last time I saw more fluff was in a pillow fight). It appears about a half a dozen Utah legislators, some county commissioners, and Director of file Southeastern Utah Association of Local Governments, Bill Howell, attended a two day pep rally in Denver where the subject was the once forgotten "sagebrush rebellion" (the artide did not say whether or not Utah taxpayers picked up the tab for the junket). A couple of themes were promoted, uncontested, in file articles. First, that the West is mad as hell that there may be reform of current public land grazing practices. Actually, according to a public opinion poll conducted 1993 in by Utah State University, 76 of all Americans, induding westerners, either believe the livestock industry should start paying fair market value to graze public lands or alternatively should be booted off public range no matter how high fees self-prodaim-ed That was then, this is now. Late in 1993, the Utah Board of State Lands and Forestry killed an effort by the BLM to acquire state land sections located in the Sand Flats area. Now the Utah Division of State lands may sell or lease those lands for development. BLM manager Brad Palmer voiced concern over that result in a December 12, 1993 Salt Lake newspaper article: "It's not that much unlike what the State of Utah talked about a few years ago about building a McDonalds in Arches National Park." The BLM's current concern over potential commercial development in the Sand Flats area reflects a change in position. In fact, the agency itself tried to push development of the area only four years ago. On February 1, 1990, Mr. Palmer classified approximately 400 acres of BLM land around the Slickrock bike trail for disposal to the State of Utah for an "outdoor theater complex and a theater of the stars." An administrative appeal filed by Grand County resident Jack Campbell stymied Mr. Palmer's effort to dispose of die land for development. Thanks Jack. Timber Sales The Division of State Lands is proposing two timber sales. One in the Winter Ridge area in the Book Cliffs and the second around Taylor Flat in the La Sals. Comments are due March 18 for each sale, contact the Moab State Lands office for more details, 259-631- 6. The Beginning of file End- - Vamoose Little Doggies. On December 20, a federal judge prohibited the Moab District of the Bureau of InH Management from allowing cattle grazing in five southeastern Utah canyons in what is known as the Comb Wash allotment. The agency is precluded from permitting any grazing unless it first prepares an environmental impact study and only then if the BLM finds that grazing serves the public's interest For now. Arch, Mule, Fish, Owl, and Road Canyons will be free of cows. The dispute over the Comb Wash grazing allotment brewed for several years when the agency refined to stop the damage caused by overgrazing, until the National Wildlife Federation, the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, and law professor Joe Feller filed an administrative appeal arguing that the agency was permitting cattle to destroy the andent Indian ruins, stream banks, vegetation, water quality, wildlife habitat, and recreational opportunities of Cedar Mesa area. Based on 18 days of testimony and argument, the Judge found that the environmentalists had "presented overwhelming evidence that grazing has significantly degraded and may continue to significantly degrade the quality of the . . . environment of the Canyons." The Judge also found that BLM had responded to the public efforts to become involved with "open defiance." Finally, the judge ordered the BLM to weigh the damage grazing does against o filer values before issuing any grazing permit. are. Second, talk was hot about county plans geared to overriding federal law by defining "culture and custom" (according to the Trib., the Utah House of Representatives voted 73 to zip to spend $210,000 on county land use plans that include definitions of "custom and culture to be considered by federal land managers"). Left ignored by the plan proponents is that the same effort was already found to violate the U5. constitution in a recent Idaho State Court ruling. While file ideas proposed by the participants of "sagebrush rebellion II" are wacky enough to be amusing, I wish file Director of the Southeastern Association of Cramtiea (of which Grand County is a member) and State legislators were not using our money and official positions to push their personal and outdated agendas. Tourist Taxes. Last November, Colorado's voters refused to renew the State's tourism tax whidi had been handed over to the Colorado Tourism Board for a massive advertising campaign designed to draw visitors. Reasons given for the repeal in a Salt Lake Tribune artide were anti-ta- x sentiment, the view that the tourism industry should pay for its own publidty, and that Colorado was already overrun tourists. by The Director of Utah Ski, Inc, predicted that individual Colorado Ski resorts would step up to pay the bill, rather than lose the advertising. Utah hands over 35 million dollars from our general fund to the Utah Travel Cindl with 18 staffers. Utah also has a specific tourist tax where the revenues are given directly to individual counties for local promotion. County Commissioners as diverse as Louise Liston from Escalante and Bill Hedden from Moab have argued that counties should be given control over tM tourist tax so that local communities can dedde on their own whether the money should be spent to deal with adverse tourist impacts, rather than just draw more visitors. |