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Show PAGE 4 THE ZEPHYR JUNE 1995 WORLD NEWS ROUND UP we're working on a capital improvements plan for the whole county so we can look for them. at longterm needs and figure out how we're going to pay What's happening in June though is that the council has realized that to just go out and zone is not that productive an exercise. People either hate zoning and want to just come in and change it...and the council has shown a willingness to do that. All they The World News Round Up is compiled by Jim Stiles. ... V1"1 "From Dialogue to Action Phase One of the Master Plan process. County Councilman Bill Hedden on Atlas Reclamation & the next step in the Master Plan process. ZEPHYR: Where do we stand on the Atlas Mill tailings reclamation plan? HEDDEN: NRC wanted to come out with an environmental impact statement at the end of last year and the Department of the Interior and the county and the state realized that there were big ground water and geologic problems that they hadn't solved yet. So they've been postponing the thing; now the Park Service is in the early stages of doing a comprehensive monitoring program on the river of fish and sediments that should tell them a lot more about how much the pile is polluting the river. The NRCs position is still that it's OK to pollute the river because it's all going to be washed down and diluted. That's not the position of the state or the county or the Department of the Interior. There are lots of endangered fish involved and the wetland across the river is being examined as well to see if it's being polluted. So we're still waiting for that to happen and our lawyers are monitoring the whole thing. Is there evidence of seepage from the pile? There are a number of leaks that they've found directly below the tailings pile and dead tamarisk that are just several feet above the river and they're seeping in; they're extremely high in total dissolved solids and salts and heavy metals and radionucleitos. It's seeping into the river. I recently saw a document concerning the amount of money Atlas claims its already spent on reclamation. What's the significance of that? We've been informed that Atlas has already filed for some of the money they're entitled to under Title 10 of the Energy Act for the government's share of the reclamation for that site. So they've used up the lion's share of the money set aside for the reclamation plan and this makes it seem pretty clear that before the pile is cleaned up, whether it's in place or moved, that Atlas is going to go bankrupt. That situation has never occurred before. Piles cleaned up by responsible companies are cleaned up under the oversight of the NRC. Orphan piles are cleaned up by the DOE as Superfund sites. So the Atlas pile presumably would switch from NRC oversight to a DOE superfund site, and no one knows what that process will be or how it will work. It's going to be complicated and a major legal problem to work it out. We're about to move into the next phase of the Master Plan process with another public meeting scheduled for June 9. Whats next? Planning in most rural Western places is a complicated thing. Planners tell us that nothing generates emotion the way planning and land use issues do. Let me put this into some perspective. When we elected the County Council two and a half years ago, the hospital was hanging by a thread, the school had just been turned down for the bond, the courthouse was under construction with hundreds of change orders and no one keeping track of them, a sewer system and water system that needed upgrading, and the county had borrowed more per capita than the next two most indebted counties combined. So we had no money to try to resolve these longtem problems. Yet people have an odd attitude toward planning. One approach is a rather paternalistic idea to say we elected you guys, do a good job, tell us what to do, only don't tell us to do anything we don't want to do. The other attitude is to say, those guys are taking care of it; we don't have to think about it. People either hope that something good is going to happen, or they hope that nothing is done at all. So the council has been struggling with these kinds of problems and I think we've had some success in areas like the hospital, the school bond issue has now passed. wants a zone change; they don't need to hear why it's good for the community. They're willing to support anyone who wants a zone change and the taxpayers be damned. It's something 1 object to very strongly and it makes me feel like working hard to produce a good zoning map is not a fruitful exercise. So we're working hard now to get people who care about things like sensitive lands, ridgeline, watershed. ..to get them involved and make them realize they have to become advocates for the things they really care about. They have to know when these things are on the agenda and they have to be organized and show up at the need to hear is that someone meetings or else this community is going to sell out and develop like crazy. Whether people want to hear it or not, it's going to turn into a place more dangerous, more expensive, and less fun and less interesting than they want to live in. Sooner or later, no matter how resilient they might think they arc, they're going to start thinking about other places they might mow to. The answer is that there aren't that many places out there. We need to make a stand here and make this the kind of place we want to keep on living in. That involves learning how to say NO once in a while. It requires us to decide what we value about this place and what kinds of things we might want to stay away from. How do you convince people they can make a difference? How do you convince them they participate and have any kind of effect? It may be having a council shock them. The on the who showed ridgelinc people up development proposal and watched the council completely ignore all the financial considerations and all the people speaking out on behalf of the scenic views and watershed protection and the night sky and saw the council casually vote that down realized that they needed to become involved. People need to realize that without their involvement, the wrong is be done over and over again. Like the to thing going League of Women Voters says, "Democracy is not a spectator sport." They have to be a part of it. On June 9, the people who have been involved in the agricultural group that has been involved in various aspects of preserving agricultural lands and making it more viable arc going to get together with those involved in sensitive lands, and those who want to work on cooperation between the city and county are going to be brought together. We 11 talk about what each of those groups has been doing and try to reenergize them and keep them going. We're trying to energize people to get them involved in local affairs more than anything else. Updates... For subscribers and those of you who have been trying to aooti Reality but made the mistake of picking up this newspaper, thinking toe were trying to avoid Reality even more heiT IS the outcome f several stories we've discussed in the last couple of months. out-of-to- THE TRAM IS 'HD By a 3 to 2 vote, the Moab City Council approved annexation 'creation property on Kane Creek Rd. and a of the Portal development agreement with the Jh SotfeRB NORTH AMERICAN RIUER EXPEDITIONS 543 North Morin Moab, UT 84532 259-586- 5 or 800-342-59- 38 can FEATURING: Daily river trips 2 and 3 day Cataract Canyon trips (3rd day by Jeep in the Needles) Jet Jeep combos |