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Show Western Resources Utah, Nevada elude MX ; By Helene C. Monberg ' hinston-The Nevada Cat-ff,sS'iKciaUon Cat-ff,sS'iKciaUon (750 members) Utah CatUemen's Association members) were the big winners in Hit Reagan's announcement on , that he did not favor siting new $ based MX missiles in Nevada and tead, he opted to build 100 MX in-:J5ental in-:J5ental ballistic missiles in ex- silos in Arizona, Kansas and lias now occupied by smaller iles.. These silos are to be Qorced to withstand a direct hit enemy missUes- ' "fteU S Air Force had proposed that : 1 V missiles be deployed in 4600 Alters in the Great Basin of Nevada Qotah, mainly on public land. The iles were to be moved periodically ffuse the enemy, who is construed be the Soviet Union. It has ac-Jierated ac-Jierated its missile build up in recent drears. REJECTS GRANDIOSE SCHEME Bonald A. Michieli, an official of both the National Cattlemen's Associate Associa-te and the Public Lands Council, was selected by the Nevada Cattlemen's Association to represent it at an jUiance against the MX press con-lerencehere con-lerencehere on Oct. 2. As the details of le President's decision became inown, Michieli was made lead off speaker. "We believe the President has selected a reasonable and better alter-1 alter-1 native which avoids the severe en-rironmental en-rironmental and economic disruptions tot would have been caused by the re-B re-B jected shellgame system" under which ' 'ie MX would have been moved from " w hole to another. "His decision a' jeans that we can continue to do what ! ie do best: produce the red meat that I15 tie American consumer desires," Michieli said at the press conference. to a Michieli told Western Resources ffl Irapup(WRW) in an interview on Oct. U, 5 why he thought the stockmen in the tat Basin were the only ones within v the alliance against the MX who had 'lllj tomeoutwinners.TheMXhadnotbeen Uj Hied, as the anti nuclear and en-ijL en-ijL ronipental forces in the alliance had yd... Bit it will not be deployed in f Wa ancTbtahl 'under Mr. Reagan's ,.' iecision. jfi "The shell game that the Air Force ie proposed in the Great Basin was the B. mcst grandiose scheme ever conceived hy man," Michieli told WRW. "All of le concrete that would be produced nl 'est of the Mississippi River in the next n years would have been used to erect h MX shelters in the Great Basin," i 23 shelters per missile to reduce ' fcir vulnerability to surprise attack, be said. "I served in a missile battalion while jj 'ws in the service. I know something will how cumbersome missiles are. ((J " plan to site them in the Great Basin lW s very vulnerable. The shelters j, s not nave been hardened to withs-Wan withs-Wan enemy attack, and the track to wd to move the missiles could have easily sabotaged. If someone PPed holes in the track, it would rendered the entire system nil. 'Sockmen in the area had their u up against the wall. They ployed two very effective tactics. 1 fft constant communication Senator who was very sensitive weir needs in Sen. Paul Laxalt 'W.). Rep. Jim Santini (D-Nev.) !M a very astute role on this issue, Mis Sagebrush Rebellion bill," l4ieh told WRW. Ialt is President Reagan's closest 5" Capitol Hill and a former ""Paign manager. Laxalt is J descent, and his own family nwaed sheep over the wide open w ?' Nevada. Santini is a senior ' anH House Jnterior Commit-d,?ntmuallv Commit-d,?ntmuallv sought hearings, W?! Wlthin blic Lands mittee, and reports from agen- Wd0 , 6 invarialy critical of , - wpioyment plan in Nevada and CativT AiF FrCe Prefel" Great Basin made a CnSvwith various SrouPs rt at ,k and the' sou8ht our '!iociat . National Cattlemen's W "' Michieli related. Wf008' mainy from ewith Und themselves in an suT ant'-nuc'ear and anti-war iiaS(S,ANE-a ge number Upaver. it grouPs National Hrs in 0n' and a wide range of 5MXP,POSition t0 deployment -v 0( land based system for a treasons' environmental and XtoTj? "Pected military HissI ,ed' PPsed e land 1 rylor f"i,mcluding Gen. Maxwell s of' s.er chairman of the Joint NryMd, lnd former Defense rW -Critics call-Jerland call-Jerland concept an 'Alice in J- )'. enano' and a 'doomsday urchC17ch hich first surfac-".'"erature surfac-".'"erature last Christmas season and then in a formal declaration against the deployment of the MX in Utah and Nevada which was issued last March. At the time WRW asked Jim Black, natural resources specialist on the staff of Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, what he thought the opposition of the . Salt Lake City-based Mormon church meant to the Great Basin race track plan. "Dead duck," he replied. Subsequently the plan was modified somewhat to a scaled down version of 100 MX missiles in a smaller area in Nevada, but Mr. Reagan didn't buy that either. A number of church affiliated organizations came out against the MX, but the Mormon opposition was particularly par-ticularly potent in relation to the Great Basin, livestock groups remarked in their publications to their members. OTHER FACTORS AND LEGAL CHALLENGE "Other factors were important in the decision", Michieli told WRW. "You have got to remember that the MX was conceived during the Carter Administration, Ad-ministration, and Mr. Reagan had expressed ex-pressed some doubts about the deployment deploy-ment concept during the 1980 campaign", cam-paign", he observed. "There was a lot of question about the land and water. Where in the hell would you get the water? The racetrack system would have used a helluva lot of water than never would have been returned. There was talk of diverting water out of the Snake River in Idaho for the program. The Air Force was planning to dig new wells, and this would have impacted on existing wells in an already water short area" Michieli stated. Lt. Col. Ken Kissel told a briefing here on the MX on Oct. 1 that only 2.5 acres of land would be used per shelter and only 12 square miles of land would be fenced. Asked about that, Michieli told WRW, "We didn't believe that for one minute. Our experience with the government is that when it has a project of this type, there are limitations on land use. That is why there was so much distrust of the government. The military had said a long time ago it was going to give up a gunnery bombing range in Nevada after the war was over. It never gave it up" Michieli said. , , !, , '. , ' . This distrust of the government was underscored by a letter that Vincent Cropper, president of the Deseret Cattle Cat-tle Growers Assn. of Delta, Utah, wrote to the Denver office of the National Cattlemen's Assn., on March 19, 1980. It stated, "The Air Force will control the area for a short time and then they will turn it over to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and they will have no choice but to say, 'Sorry, your desert is gone, the feed is not there, your water is npfHpH fnr thp missilps nnt fnr vnnr cows' and the buck will be passed and passed around again until no one is to blame." Finally, Michieli said the stockmen in the Great Basin, with help from the National Na-tional Cattlemen's Assn., "don't take credit for the Oct. 2 decision of the President. We helped force debate on the issue and to lay out the facts behind it. And our members out there auctioned auction-ed off their livestock just to raise money for the legal battle against the MX" that they filed in the U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City on Aug. 13, he told WRW. Legal hassles often talk louder than any other message to the government, and the stockmen knew that the Administration Ad-ministration wanted to get on with the missile build up to close, as soon as possible, "the window of vulnerability" that our military experts say we have today vis-a-vis the Soviet missile build up. Arthur Brunwasser, attorney for a group of Nevada ranchers, notified the BLM district managers of the Ely and Battle Mountain Nev. offices on May 12 that both the special use permits issued by BLM and the cooperative agreement between BLM and the Air Force were issued without statutory authority or any properly adopted regulations and demanded that they be revoked at once. "This action by BLM constitutes a clear example of bureaucracy knowingly know-ingly exceeding its authority. Military use is not authorized by the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) of 1976," Brunwasser told BLM. Subsequently, BLM signed a memo of understanding with the Air Force concerning con-cerning MX tests in Nevada and BLM Director Robert F. Burford on June 2 apologized in a letter to Michieli for failing to inform him about the memo signed on May 15. The response came in court on Aug. 13 when the Nevada and Utah Cattlemen's Cat-tlemen's Associations and the Nevada and Utah Wool Growers jointly sued Interior In-terior Secretary James G. Watt and Burford for "acting without legal authority". "One group of Sagebrush Rebels suing another" a Capitol Hill staffer quipped upon learning of the suit. COLORADO RIVER SALINE WATER HAS INDUSTRIAL USE SAYS NEW STUDY Washington (WRW) A special report just issued by the Bureau of Reclamation indicated many "potential "poten-tial beneficial uses of saline water" in the Upper Colorado River Basin exist "in both local use and for export." Michael J. Clinton, chief of the Colorado Col-orado River Water Quality Office in Denver, who worked on the study, told Western Resources Wrap up (WRW) on Oct. 7, "We could cut the cost of federal projects to reduce Upper Basin sources of salinity by about 75 percent if we could put to beneficial use about 600,000 acre feet of saline water in the Upper Colorado River Basin, particularly in Colorado and Utah." Clinton said public response to the special report on "saline water use and disposal opportunities in the Colorado River Basin has been positive" from some coal companies and some utilities, but had been generally non committal from oil shale companies "because they have their water lined up for short term needs." The Upper Basin saline water use would be primarily for cooling water for power plants and for other industrial purposes close to the source of supply, Clinton told WRW. We got a favorable response from Union Pacific (UP) "I think that's a first," Clinton told WRW. The report contains a letter from UP's Thomas B. Graves, Jr., dated July 23, which states: "Of particular interest" in the report "is the scheme for utilizing saline waters in slurry pipelines in order to transport Western coal destined destin-ed for both domestic and export markets., While the ideas contained in the report appear to be, as yet, embryonic in nature, they may provide a framework for further research and planning efforts. In this regard, it is our feeling that further efforts would prove most fruitful were private industry to be involved in the formulation of specific strategies. This involvement should begin at the earliest possible stages." UP fought the ETSI pipeline, Clinton observed. He said he also had received a positive verbal response from Southern Pacific, which operates the Black Mesa coal slurry pipeline in Arizona. The Colorado River Salinity Forum has a task force working on water rights issues if saline water were exported ex-ported out of the Colorado River Basin or from the Upper to the Local Basin, and it is working on legislation with the staff of Sen. William L. Armstrong, R-Colo., to allow followup feasibility studies to be conducted on specific beneficial uses of saline Colorado River water, several sources told WRW. |