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Show San Juan Commission Takes Issue With MPS Position on Road A statement last week faom the National Park Service that the section of road from U.S. 163 to Dugout Dug-out Ranch on the Needles entrance road was really not an NPS responsibility, but county responsibilitp, this week brought a sharp retort from a member of the San Juan County Commission. Com-mission. The report last week quoted an agreement signed sign-ed a number of years ago between the State of Utah, San Juan County and the National Park Service, wherein San Juan agreed to maintain the section of road in question if all three parties agreed to finance fi-nance an armor-coating project there. ' "That agreement wa3 only temporary," Commissioner Commis-sioner Calvin Black stated this week. Mr. Black indicated indi-cated that the road, which had been on the San Juan County system for many years prior to the creation of Canyonlands, was being torn to pieces by travelers travel-ers to the National Park and construction crews working for the Park Service, Ser-vice, and the three-way agreement on an armor-coating armor-coating project was entered enter-ed into only . as a temporary tempo-rary , measure until the funding of the project, as promised, prior to creation of' Canyonlands, could be scheduled by the Park Service. Ser-vice. "Park Service officials offi-cials in Moab told us at that time that it would be at least five years before they could fund the project, pro-ject, and our decision to bring the three agencies into the act of providing a light paving coat was done as an absolutely necessary nec-essary temporary measure," meas-ure," Mr. Black told The Times - Independent Wed. nesday. Mr. Black stated that the paragraph in the agreement agree-ment pertaining to maintenance, main-tenance, was a standard one placed in all contracts where the State Road Commission Com-mission enters into funding fund-ing a road that is on a County B system. "That language was demanded by the State, and not by the National Park Service," Mr. Black stated. The Commissioner went on to say that in the original ori-ginal bill creating Canyonlands, Canyon-lands, language was included inclu-ded to the effect that the Federal government would undertake responsibility for building entrance roads from U. S. 163 (then 160), from Utah 24 and from Utah 95. "Senator Moss could see that the State and. Counties could never 1 handle the huge task of building and maintaining these roads, and that is why the bill made the work a Federal responsibility." Commissinoer Black - stated. stat-ed. "The National Park Service Ser-vice promised us $17 million mil-lion in development money mon-ey during the first five years of Canyonlands life before the- bill passed." Mr. Black stated. "Their most recent action is another an-other example of how they have gone back on their promises since the creation crea-tion of the Park," he continued. con-tinued. "Until this past week, there has never been any question but what the responsibility re-sponsibility for the total entrance road system in Canyonlands would have to be a National Park Service Ser-vice responsibility," Mr. Black stated. He went on to say that it was absolutely absolut-ely impossible for San-Juan San-Juan County to continue the job of maintaining and improving the road, and if pushed to the. wall, th3 County might be forced to abandon the stretch of road and remove it from their Class B system. |