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Show A-19 Wed/Thurs/Fri, July 3-5, 2013 EDITORIAL A day to celebrate what's right with America O beautiful for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties Above the fruited plain! America! America! God shed his grace on thee And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea! T ime out. Let's take a day off on Thursday to set aside all of the political partisanship and to turn down the volume on the grim news cycle. It is time to celebrate everything that is right about our great nation. If anyone has reason to celebrate it is those of us fortunate enough to live in the shadow of those majestic mountains. Most of the time we spend admiring their grandeur but, admittedly, we also spend a lot of time arguing about how they should be managed. Over the last two weeks our attention may have been focused more on who owns what along the Wasatch Range, but, truth be told, regardless of the name on the deed, we all have a vested interest in ensuring the land is GUEST EDITORIAL Cautionary note: Natural gas isn't perfect By Sarah Cooper Klingenstein Natural gas is not the panacea some would call it. "American energy independence" and "Drill, baby, drill" have been calls to action since September 11th. Now there's a domestic boom in natural gas and you'd think it was a dream come true. It's cheaper and much cleaner than oil or coal. It's abundant, right under the ground in over 35 states. Maybe we can be free of Middle East oil, even export it - and it creates jobs. What's not to like? That was the message from the June 26th guest editorialist, Jon Haubert, of the natural gas trade group, Western Energy Alliance. My reaction? Things are not always as simple as they appear. And I've been doing a little reading on the subject. Natural gas is still a fossil fuel, which we need to move away from as quickly as possible. While it may be cleaner, it is still a pollutant, it contributes to climate change, and counting on it to meet our energy and environmental needs is short-sighted. Fracking, the process by which most natural gas is obtained, is being found to pollute the air and the ground water. There's much more, including fracking's intensive water use (especially concerning in our dry West) and the significant danger of methane leakage. All this with little regulation. It all cries out for more oversight and more study. While the representative for the natural gas industry encouraged readers to demand that even more federal lands to be opened for drilling, I would say, "Hold on a minute!" As a trade group for the natural gas industry, the Western Energy Alliance would dismiss the value of wind and solar energy. But many more independent thinkers believe that renewable energy, including, but certainly not limited to, current solar and wind technologies, must be the answer. President Obama, in his comprehensive speech on climate change on June 25, added his voice to a growing worldwide vision of a fossil-fuel-free world. "Natural gas is the transition fuel that can power our economy even as our businesses work to develop and deploy the technology required for an even cleaner energy economy of the future." He called natural gas an important power source in "the medium term." So, let's make sure that natural gas is drilled, transported and burned as safely as possible, in the short term. But let's not be lulled into thinking that this "transition" or "bridge" fuel is the key to our energy future. 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Links to the content on www. parkrecord.com, however, are permissible. The Park Record maintains a staff of writers, photographers and graphic artists who are committed to producing local news for Park City and Summit County. In order to continue doing so, the management must protect its original content. If there are any questions about this policy, please contact the publisher, Andy Bernhard, at ab@parkrecord.com. well cared for. Beyond offering opportunities for recreation, the mountains and valleys of Summit County serve as watershed, pastureland and mineral resource bank. We have an embarrassment of riches. The test is how well we use them and what we leave to the future. Independence Day is also a good time to pay tribute to our democratic system that so many other nations admire. Despite its messy, chaotic outward appearance, our democracy continues to serve us well thanks in large part to the citizens who actively participate. These days, in particular, public servants bear the brunt of our dissatisfaction with the economy, with dissent, with everything, including the weather. They are rarely lauded for their day-to-day service, for the long tedious meetings and contentious public hearings. So over this holiday weekend, seek out a town council member or a county leader. Thank them for their effort and then look up at the skyline and hum a few bars. You know the words, and if you live in Summit County you know exactly what they mean. Happy Fourth of July! LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Please reopen The Preserve Dear editor: I had to see it myself. Upon arrival at the highest cyclist entrance to the Preserve, I saw the Board. Last month's article in the Park Record about the Preserve developer changing his mind about closing the cyclist entrances on 5/27 due to safety and privacy reasons, was too good to be true. I was relieved and ecstatic, but also encouraged that he was able to work together with our cyclist community. He saw our passion, our connection to the Preserve. He also learned of our willingness to work with the homeowners to have better road etiquette, whatever was needed to keep the passage open. I was saddened today upon seeing the nailed board as my two-to-fourtimes-a-week rides on the Preserve roads have added to my quality of life in Park City, tremendously. I have even bragged to a few non-Summit County friends, in the past month, how the grassroots effort by Mountain Trails Foundation revealed promise. Promise for our community, potentially symbolic of our Congress and how they, too, could work together. But I will still be hopeful. Hopeful that Preserve owners will work with us, leisure and competitive cyclists, who cherish those precious hills. We could put reminder signs on the roads to ride single track, perhaps the county would even add a bike lane on Bitner? We would continue to watch over your homes. We would patiently wait for the height of construction to pass so safety won't be a prominent concern and we would take personal liability should an accident occur. We would like to work with you, hopefully you feel the same. We would sure love that. Mary Closser Snyderville Cycling fest was a success Dear Editor, I want to sincerely thank Parkites and visitors who turned out in large numbers to make KPCW's second annual Park City Cycling Festival a huge success this past weekend. Af- ter a one-day "test" event in 2012, we went big and hosted a three day celebration of all aspects of cycling at Park City Mountain Resort this time. Between guided trail and road rides, skills clinics, a midway lined with cycling related vendors, manufacturers with demo bikes, non-stop rock bands, and food and drink, visitors had a great time and said they'd be back. After a successful weekend, I can promise KPCW will be back to present the Park City Cycling Festival again next summer. And while there are too many individuals and sponsors to thank here for their enthusiastic support, I do want to single out one. Our Development and Special Events Director Cindy Bywater is the Queen of the Festival, its organizer and tireless cheerleader through many long days and nights of preparation. Cindy, the hard working staff of KPCW and dozens of great volunteers pulled this off with the hope of creating one of the great weekend events that make summer in Park City like no place else. Larry Warren General Manager, KPCW GUEST EDITORIAL Learning to live with wildfire By Allison Linville Writers on the Range The enormous column of black smoke towered before me. As the Hammer Fire closed in on the backcountry workstation that I call home in the summer, fear spread from my hard hat to the soles of my fire boots. I was on a trail-crew turned firecrew, suited up to help protect the historic Forest Service workstation in Montana's Bob Marshall Wilderness. Working this close to flames and smoke was a brand-new experience. I had never been afraid of fire before. I've studied its role in the West and always supported using fire to reduce fuels and replenish the ecosystem. This blaze, though, was raging, and the only suppression we could do was inside a half-mile perimeter around the compound. The fire was burning for "resource benefit," and every nervous trailcrew worker supported that. We've seen the undeniable benefits of wildfire in the wilderness. But suddenly it was burning a little too close to our "home," and we weren't certain we could hold it back. When I read about 19 lives tragically lost while fighting a fire in Arizona or see photos of charred homes in Colorado -- I can begin to understand the fear that courses through homeowners as the landscape changes in an instant. In a year of already record-breaking fires that are predicted to become yet more memorable, expensive and devastating, it's hard to remember that these fires are raging because they were suppressed for the last 100 years. But the only way to protect future generations from years like this is to let some fires burn while still protecting homes close to forests, and work on fuels management to prevent disas- trous consequences in the future. It's a challenging situation for homeowners and fire-management officers, but if nature has taught Westerners anything since 2000, it's that we can't keep stopping these fires. The benefits of fires are always a hard sell to people who have been hurt by them, and "let it burn" is a statement sure to stir up controversy. But that approach was born when foresters finally realized, at the end of the last century, that the 90-yearold, 10 a.m. policy -- to have every fire under control by 10 a.m. the day after it is reported - had created a gigantic tinderbox of fuels. The Park Service first designated "let it burn" zones in Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Park in 1968, and the Forest Service adopted the policy shortly afterward. The Flathead National Forest in Montana, which manages the Bob Marshall Wilderness west of the continental divide, has been using wildfire to maintain a naturally functioning forest ecosystem since 1985, and has made notable progress with the policy. When 36 percent of Yellowstone National Park burned in 1988, however, much of the public feared the fires had "destroyed" the park. Wildland fire-use policies began to be quietly set aside due to public outcry. Today, though, it is apparent that the fires of ‘88 actually rejuvenated the Yellowstone ecosystem and prevented even bigger fires from torching the area year after year. Nonetheless, the public remained fearful. Westerners still seemed to want every fire put out, as soon as possible. Meanwhile, the many people who built homes on the edge of national forests essentially stacked tinder for inevitable fires that will only burn hotter and faster. Only 15 years ago, a 500-acre burn was a large fire. Now, fires hit thousands of acres in a few hours. Fear is understandable when homes are at risk, but fear won't stop megafires and it won't save homes. And sometimes it leads to the deaths of firefighters themselves. Since the Hammer Fire in 2011, I have watched incredible -- and, yes -terrifying fires that burned hundreds of acres in minutes. That is what fires do, I told myself, and it's always a matter of when the trees will burn, not whether they will burn. While I have always supported letting wildland fires burn to help forests, now that I have stared fire in the face, a pump in my hand and my heart in my throat, I wonder if it is possible to convince Westerners that fire can be beneficial. When fire doesn't impact things that we place value on, like homes or resources, it should be easily accepted as a natural occurrence. However, fear is irrational and impossible to argue with. If the public's understanding and perception of fire changes, perhaps we can let a fire go as far as it can before reaching structures, allow it burn the understory to clean out some fuels, and let it burn in the wilderness. Perhaps we can even get used to smoky summer skies and fire camps in towns, and adopt a policy that allows some fires to do their job in less devastating ways. And we can discourage people from building homes in the wrong places. Like it or not, fires are part of the life and death of forests; it's our job to get used to it. Allison Linville is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). She is a graduate student in creative writing at the University of Montana and spends summers working in the wilderness near Whitefish, Montana. |