OCR Text |
Show Dear Sam, I've just finished reading read-ing everything I could get my hands on concerning the Park Wilderness Proposal Pro-posal at Arches National Monument. Since I'm a member of the Wilderness Society, the Sierra Club, and have worked as a seasonal sea-sonal ranger at the Arches for three summers, the number of pages consumed has been considerable. v hearing should be clear. I do pJan to make a statement state-ment as a citizen. I would like to react to paragraph 5 in last week's editorial where you stated, "It is difficult for us, as well as most southeastern Utah residents to imagine anything more drastic than wilderness preservation as practiced presently by the National Park Service." Stewart M. Brandborg, Executive Director of the Wilderness Society, explained ex-plained this problem to some degree. Quote: "While many administrators ad-ministrators within the wilderness wil-derness agencies recognized recogniz-ed their responsibilities for the protection of wilder-nes wilder-nes lands before the Wilderness Wil-derness Liaw was enacted, there was a serious lack of direction and policy to guide effective, continuing national wilderness preservation preser-vation programs. Much depended de-pended on the interest, good will, and personal inclination in-clination of local administrators." admini-strators." Public pressure for de-velopiment de-velopiment in National Parks, Monuments, and Forests is constant. The only development problems prob-lems I can see in the future fu-ture for the Arches are the campground facilities. The campgrounds don't have to be bui'lt in Federal areas. This should be an excellent excel-lent opportunity for private pri-vate . enterprise. Cleanliness, Cleanli-ness, friendliness, and service ser-vice are the trump cards, and the. Arches provides these cards to the visitor. However, firewood at the Devil's Garden is a card that has fallen off the ta- ble. , : The public hearing , on December 14 at the Courthouse Court-house makes park - plan-ruing plan-ruing a two-way street. Statements by citizens at the hearing will be valuable valu-able in the planning. Letters Let-ters may go unnoticed because be-cause of the back-fog in hearing, dates. The official i record of the hearing will ibar heavily .on decisions to be made . Cordially, Russ Donogtoue Moab, Resident Conservationist. Dear Sam, I would like to clarify my reason for opposing the Book Cliff road. In your column in the last paper you have charged the stockmen for opposing the road only as a favor to Bill Cunningham and you have given us credit for more shrewdness than we possess when you intimate inti-mate we deliberately waited wait-ed until the last minute. Actually Bill only asked for support from other taxpayers when it suddenly sudden-ly became 'known the road was to be routed through East Willow Creek rather than alonjj the ridge as had originally been planned This route would cause a substantial financial loss to Bill and he is the first to admit that he is prejudiced prejudic-ed against the road. This road, however, would have no direct effect on me except what it would cost and what possible benefits it may have for the future of the area. After Af-ter talking to the Commissioners, Commis-sioners, the county road suijrvisor and others familiar fa-miliar with the terrain, I am convinced that the cost to the taxpayers is too much at thfls time in view of the doubtful use which could be made of this road. I have personally traveled Sego Canyon to the top and it could hardly hard-ly be considered a good road and would be expensive expen-sive to maintain. It is doubtful that the National Guard in the 9 days available avail-able could consruct mucli more than a trail on top Which the county would then have to improve and maintain. The county presently pres-ently has one mill which raises about $25,000 for maintenance of ; all the county roads and it is estimated es-timated that from $15,000 to $25,000 woujd be needed need-ed this summer just for blasting pjowder and culverts cul-verts which the Guard would need. ' This doesn't leave any money to improve im-prove the road or construct the two miles of fence re-: re-: quired on the Indian land. The Commissi oners esti-. esti-. mated it will take at least a. 2 mill levy to construct this road without neglecting neglect-ing other roads in the county, many of which can ill afford any neglect. I think if everyone knew what this road will cost in the next few years and the poor quality road we will get for our money, there will be little support for it. It was reported on the radio that Lester Rogers Rog-ers charged in Chamber last week that the good of the county should not be ignored for one man's benefit. ben-efit. I agree. But I feel that in view of the property proper-ty which Les owns in Thompson, he is in a poor position to make this kind of charge. I don't think this poor quality road which could only be kept open about 8 month's of the year is going to attract as much business to Grand county as the cost and possible neglect to other county roads might chase away, s D. L. Taylor |