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Show i Sans WHEN MOAB HAD A PULSE Sa: In 1988, a toxic waste incinerator at Cisco looked like a foregone conclusion. Until Moab came alive! By Jim Stiles Note: This is as much a remembrance as anything else. I’ve now been around here long enough to write historical recollections of events I observed and first commented upon at the time they were ing. I was writing and cartooning for the original Stinking Desert Gazette in those golden days; some of the drawings, comments and quotes that follow first appeared in the SDG....]S In the summer of 1987, the economy of Moab and Grand County hit rock bottom. A few years earlier, as uranium prices plummeted, the Atlas Vanadium Processing Mill north of town closed its doors for good. It seemed as if the mainstay of Grand County’s economy had vanished overnight and Moab was on its way to becoming a ghost town. Empty homes and ‘For Sale’ signs were everywhere; at one point as many as one in five homes was on the market. The way the story went: Everybody moved to Elko. The "economic, collapse" was viewed differently by different people. For the old time Moabites, the ones who had cut their teeth during the Uranium Boom days of the 1950s, Moab’s demise was an unmitigated catastrophe. It was inconceivable to them, and heartbreaking as well, that the party was over. For almost 40 years mining had sustained the Moab community and now it seemed as if the town had nothing to show for its past LINE porto oneness, wae “HERS SAlwomen ‘voters ie 3 dR pont eres perators awe A Public Showdown and the Grand County Alliance By late October, the word was out and opposition was quick and fierce. A group calling itself the Colorado-Utah Alliance for a Safe Environment gathered 2000 signatures in just a few weeks from citizens in both states. But the petition had no legal standing and Commissioner Walker dismissed the signatures out of hand. At a meeting of Republicans in January, Walker said, "Thousands of hours were spent in the shopping malls in Grand Junction on that petition...they spent two months collecting those signatures and that doesn’t impress me at all...90% of those names came from Colorado." Walker and the other commissioners were convinced that Grand County residents supported the incinerator and into the Times-Independent, mostly in opposition to the incinerator and the Grand County ge) that gents 88 Sind. yo/37! i. County attitudes shifted? We were about to find out. called efforts by the opposition, "fear politics" designed to "scare the masses." One thing was certain, the "masses" were definitely scared--letters to the editor poured ‘ se 87°" economic downturn. But none of them sensed how much Moab had changed in such a short time. Just five years earlier, in 1982, Moab residents had supported the proposed nuclear waste repository by a 3 to 1 margin, despite the fact that the facility was to be built within a few thousand feet of Canyonlands National Park in San Juan County (That project collapsed in the late ’80s.). So the fact that the commissioners enthusiastically supported an industry that would incinerate a staggering variety of toxins, from benzene and paint thinners to pharmaceutical wastes should not have surprised anyone. But the community was enraged, or at least part of it; what no one could predict was the extent of that anger. Was this just another vocal minority? Or had Moab and Grand Alliance was formed to consolidate Utah opposition. ae! ss ss = = oe — ——— a, 4 Pr: FOR? or AGAINST? In 1988, citizens of Grand County were faced with a choice: to build a toxic waste incinerator, or to vote against it and find another way to So SS e Sua. fund the county's ae shrinking tax base, ane The Grand County Alliance was really born one night in Castle Valley. Andrew Riley had caught wind of the rumor and shared this incredible tale with fellow residents Jayne Dillon, John Groo, and Dave Wagstaff. From that kitchen table, a strategy to combat the incinerator took root and the Alliance grew. An attorney and lobbyist from Salt Lake City named Ralph Becker offered hundreds of hours of free legal advice. Bill Hedden gave invaluable amounts of time, sifting through the scientific information. Kyle and Carrie Bailey worked tirelessly to organize and recruit new members to the Cause. And Carl and Debbie Rappe’s Main Street Broiler was always a Rallying Point for the incinerator opponents. According to Jayne Dillon, the fledgling Alliance sought help and advice from: the environmental group, the Sierra Club, but were turned down flat. "They made us feel like a bunch of hicks,” Jayne recalled recently. "We told them, ‘We're a small community with national parks all around us and we’re trying to stop a TOXIC WASTE INCINERATOR!’ but they told us the issue wasn’t big enough for them." But the environmental group Greenpeace did what the Sierra Club would not. According to Dillon, a small contingent of Greenpeace workers came to town, and worked quietly and behind the scenes to assist the Alliance any way it could. success except boarded up Main Street businesses and a shrinking tax base. For another part of Moab’s dwindling population, however, the downturn in the On the evening of December 2, 1987, a "toxic waste information meeting" was held at Star Hall. Commissioner David Knutson assembled a panel of CoWest officials, federal and economy state regulators, and private citizens. Almost 400 people crammed into the building for one of the most spirited gatherings in this town’s recent history. Dean Norris, the president of CoWest became an instant antagonist for incinerator opponents. Dressed in gray polyester offered an unexpected opportunity. Since the early 1970s Moab had become a mecca for a small but growing group of young pilgrims, for lack of a better word, and I was one of them. We were searching for a different kind of life, away from the polluted madness of urban areas. In Moab, Utah, we thought we'd found it. Coming to Moab meant making some sacrifices. We knew we'd never get rich. We knew we had removed ourselves from cultural and social opportunities that we’d grown accustomed to in our old home and sporting a huge diamond-studded pinky ring, Norris looked like a bored and slightly annoyed man who would much rather be somewhere else. He barely tolerated the barrage of questions by angry residents that filled much of the evening. towns. And we knew we'd probably always be a vocal but persistent minority in a very conservative part of the American West. The end of the mining boom presented yet another disaster for some, and an _unexpected dividend for others. With the exodus of the mining community, housing prices plummeted, but for the first time, all those seasonal rangers and river runners--the marginal This cartoon appeared in The Stinking Desert Gazette. citizens of Moab—could suddenly afford to buy a home. We went from being bearded hippies to responsible land owners in eighteen months. And at the same time, Moab’s economic slump seemed to offer an opportunity to re-define ourselves as a community. What kind of town did we want to be as we approached the last decade of the 20th Century? It seemed as good a time as any to abandon our title of "Uranium Capital of the World." First the rumors... But how to make a living...that was the rub. In the fall of 1987, Moabites began to realize how divided they still were on the subject. A rumor began to make its way around to the way I responded recently to rumors of chairlifts and gated condo developments: When the shouting was over, nothing had been resolved and a showdown looked inevitable. The commission showed no sign of backing off and Moabites continued to vent their anger through the letters page of the T-I. Finally, on December 17, editor Sam Taylor There is no way they'll ever get away with such a project. became so overwhelmed town about a proposal to build an incinerator-a toxic waste incinerator~at Cisco, Utah, 35 miles upstream from Moab. I can still remember my first reaction to the story; it was similar ; Sounds like "famous last words," doesn’t it? But as summer turned to fall, hard information began to replace the gossip and the truth was pretty amazing. The Grand County Commission--Jimmie Walker, Dutch Zimmerman, and David Knutson~had been working behind the scenes for six months with a corporation named CoWest, Inc. CoWest specialized in building toxic waste incinerators and they now wanted to construct what they claimed would be a state-of-the-art facility on 180 acres of land in Cisco. But the land there was not zoned for that kind of use; in fact, there was no heavy industrial zone in Grand County at all, and the county commissioners, seeing a way to dramatically boost the county tax base, thought they’d stumbled across a gold mine. Or a high-tech version of one. And they were convinced that the residents of Grand County would support them. Jimmie, Dutch and Dave were all lifelong residents of Moab and survivors of the that he refused to print any more letters--pro or con-- on the incinerator issue, "at least until the County moves into the public hearing process in the early part of next year." The Petition Grand County residents kept scribbling anyway, but now they were signing their names to a petition that would put the issue on the November ballot. In Utah, voters can hold a referendum election to decide issues like this; it requires 12.5% of the total number of votes in the last gubernatorial election. In Grand County, that meant 418 signatures. On January 25, 1988, the commissioners ignored a hostile crowd of 200 people and unanimously approved a "heavy industrial (1-2) zone." It was a big open door for hazardous waste and everybody was in everybody else’s face. It was a mean and ugly, and yet strangely inspiring sight. It should be remembered that not everyone, by any means, |
