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Show REVIEW CastleValleyReview.com 75 Cents Castle Valley The Volume 3, Issue 2. You’re News to Us! March 2009 Heart & Soul Inside A Night with the Stars Photo by James L. Davis With public lands legislation pending in Washington County, the San Rafael Swell is once again a focus of debate on what should, or should not, be done to protect it. SWELL Storm Clouds Over the Swell Recipes A storm of conflicting emotions forever seems to be broiling over colliding values when it comes to the San Rafael Swell James L. Davis A Splash in the Pool and... News of the Weird T here forever seems to be a storm brewing over the San Rafael Swell. Perhaps not a natural storm, but a storm nonetheless. The storm is a storm of conflicting emotions and colliding values that groups who far too often are reluctant to even agree to disagree take extreme positions on. The storm is nothing new to anyone who loves the Swell and worries about its future. The debate over how to manage the San Rafael Swell has ebbed and flowed over the years and more often than not any plans for its protection have been shredded in a cyclone of outrage that has done little but polarize opinions, especially between environmental groups and off highway vehicle proponents, who have historically only been able to agree on one thing – they don’t like each other. But as debate over the Swell once again begins to swirl, there are those who detect a new element in the breeze, one that gives hope that perhaps, this time, there might be reason to believe that the debate will generate more than hot air. The hope comes not from Emery County, but from Washington County, which somehow managed to piece together a bill that was supported by a diverse group of stakeholders and easily passed the U.S. Senate 73 to 21 in January. It now awaits a vote before the House of Representatives before moving on to the desk of the president. Senator Bob Bennett played an integral part in bringing stakeholders to the table to hammer out an agreement which sets aside more than 256,000 acres of wilderness in Washington County. The remarkable element in the legislation for many is less the details of the bill and more the fact that, for the first time, stakeholders, including environmental groups, came together to support a piece of legislation. “The bill itself is not nearly as important as the fact that we got everybody to the table and everybody made some compromises,” said Randy Johnson, a former Emery County commission who is now a public lands consultant. Johnson said the fact that environmental groups were willing to sit down and talk with other stakeholders was a key element in the success of the bill and could lead to an revolutionary change in how public lands issues are debated, espe- Continued on Page A7. |