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Show THE ZEPHYRSEPTEMBER PAGE 14 p 1991 UiJHilllBIffll1 plan. Dont we want to change this? still on the table and being diacuaaed to build a huge, hundreda of feet tall, are Plane concrete dam In the mouth of Mill Creek (to help Moab'a population double or triple). use of this currently and negligently Undoubtedly, thla would be the "highest and bear be for such a worthless underdeveloped economic resource. What other use might there cut In the sandstone hardly even enough forage In Mill Creek for more than a few cows. And the Vice Problem. A couple of good dams In Mill Creek and Negro Bill Canyons vice problem reported In those canyons. It's a would solve the hopelessly confirmed reports of "skinny dipping" touchy iaaue to discuss in public, but there have been indecent to exposure), in both of these areas. prevent (swimming without adequate clothing Even Louise Uston, Garfield County's incomparable commissioner, told us right here at a REASON behind public meeting in Moab only a year ago that NUDITY was the REAL.SECRET the Wilderness movement Nothing like a good, clean water skiing and beer drinking area above the new JANIE WALKER MEMORIAL MILL CREEK DAM to elevate the public morals! current beyond left and right BLM out-of-cont- by Jack Campbell Multiple Use Ever notice how the person with the most destructive proposal Is the one most loudly championing the doctrine of Multiple Use? If Its a hiker and a rancher debating the impacts of cows in a small canyon, the rancher la all for everyone sharing the land equally. But when the next Multiple User comes along who happens to want to do a little coal strip mining on the rancher's grazing allotment, wow, all of a sudden our rancher Is an Sharing Our Public Lands Major BLM Planning Begins There Is little chance for peace In Moab's immediate future. With the announcement of a new management plan for the BLM land In Grand County, all the old contentious Issues will be ignited once again. How do we share and divide the pie that we call our PUBLIC LANDS? With all the different parties contending for the largest share, will we once again be but a group of spoiled children throwing temper tantrums to get our way? Or will we finally find a solution that somehow captures that elusive quality of fairness and balance? THE most important plan affecting Moab and Grand County is the BLM Grand Resource Area Management Plan. This Resource Management Plan (RMP) determines how the 1.8 million acres of BLM land in Grand County (78 of the county) will be managed. Gene Nodine (BLM Moab District Manager) announced last week that a new Management Plan for Grand County will be started this October. committee will hold a public meeting to On Monday, September 9, a BLM receive local input concerning management of the large land area sweeping from Porcupine Rim above Castle Valley, across the Negro Bill Canyon drainage, across the Slickrock Bike Trail, the Sand Flats Road, and across all the Mill Creek drainages almost as far south as Ken's Lake. This 40,000 acre land block may be called the Slickrock National Conservation Area. Highly impacted from both traditional user groups and the deluge of new users, such as the mountain bikers, strategy needs to be formed to protect this area and guide management in the future. This planning may even be used as a prototype plan for the larger Grand Resource Area RMP scheduled to begin in October. (Check date of meeting to make sure it's not changed 7:00 pm in the Commission Chambers at the County Courthouse.) Because of the national and international significance of the Moab area, correcting the outdated and severely flawed Grand Resource Area RMP has been given priority over other BLM areas which do not yet even have a management plan. For the BLM head offices to make this funding allocation is no small statement about the importance of the Moab area and the GROSS INADEQUACIES of the existing RMP. quasi-adviso- environmentalist Another good way to convert a traditional Multiple User Into a resource protector is for a large urban area like Denver to try some nice "highest and best use" projects, like trying to divert water from the western slopes of Colorado, across the divide, to the Denver communities. Western slope ranchers have even become Wilderness advocates when confronted with the loss of their traditional water to the Denver suburbs. Ever notice how someone riding a loud motorcycle wonders why those "Intolerant environmentalists" are too selfish to want to listen to his noise pollution? These people are that they actually don't realize that they are seriously harming aomeone so else's outdoor experience. Conflicting and incompatible uses must be segregated into separate areas, so that gentle and people are not always the victims of the selfish and aggressive. self-center- ed non-aggressi- ve ry Changing Values At Issue is the meaning of the term MULTIPLE USE. BLM ia mandated to manage ita public land according to the principle of MULTIPLE USE. This is a vague and poorly defined concept at best, reflecting more the political climate in a specific resource area than any grander vision. (Some excerpts from Federal Law regarding Multiple Use are at the end of this article.) The Grand RMP is an archaic document, prepared during the twilight of the extractive industries value monopoly. Protection of some of the most spectacular acenery in the world is almost impossible under this RMP. The current RMP (and current BLM top management) basically reflects a commercial development, permit iasulng mentality. (Have some development scheme in mind? Well, just apply for the permit. BLM is required to reject only the most blatantly destructive requests.) Commercialization or protection? Will we be able to establish a new, fairer balance between those who only care about extracting money from the land and those who care about the other values found in the public lands? Will those who seek a quiet, time on the public lands have a say, or will they once again choose not to vote? peaceful Will snyone be out to speak for all the plants and critters, or will the dialogue once again be limited to discuasing maximum forage for cowa, the beauty of oil wells, the desirability of placer mines, and the blessings of dams. non-moneta- as the Most Destructive Use The Big Lie Multiple Use and the 1872 Mining Law Some of the user groups are "more equal than others." In particular, the mining interest groups did their homework, paid off their Congreasmen yeara ago, and bought the laws they needed before the turn of the century. Our public lands are still held hostage to the 1872 Mining Law. This old law allowa miners to actually obtain title to public lands at fees of $2.50 to $5.00 per acre if certain minerals are found. Horror stories abound where land is taken from the public domain at these rates and then quickly resold at thouaands of times that price for real estate developments. It's ironic listening to the WALU and the Multiple Use Coalition folks defending the 1872 Mining Law, when this law more than any other law completely and totally denies public access to the public lands (by converting public land to private land). To really fed how bad this law is, picture someone going up to Warner Lake, catching a fish, and then going back to the BLM and "staking a claim" to the fish in Warner Lake (thereby legally preventing anyone else from fishing there). All you'd have to do each year to maintain your excluaive fishing claim is to do $100 worth of Improvements-li- ke maybe building aome steps on your house trailer or making a boat launch area or anything else that would help you "work your claim." For only $5 an acre you buy up all the land around the lake for your own private use, as long as you could demonstrate that the "fishing was good." Sounds utterly preposterous, but this Is almost exactly what happens with minerals under the 1872 Mining Law. Quality Realty, Inc. ry Traditional and Existing Uses uaers of aoutheast Utah have violently resisted sharing the public lands. They've had it all to themaelvea for all these years, and don't take well to the Idea of sharing with newcomers. They're used to thinking of it as their own Ideas of the young private land, for their own private economic gain. Pleaae, no family from Iowa being part owners of the public land and having righta there-oWell, maybe the family can come, but only if It agrees to drop a lot of cash into the locals' pockets while they're here (and not make any rude comments about how the public lands are being abused). Actually, the traditional, commercial users have been graciously sharing...their cow pies, their barren over-grazland, their canyons, their chainings, their clear-cforests, their unreclaimed and abandoned mines, their endless bulldozer scars across the land, the noise and racket of their motorcycles, the smog from their coal fired power planta, canyons killed by damming or dewaterlng....perhaps we're just not sufflclsntiy appreciative of all they've been a ha ring with usl Traditional usera could be reported to the FBI for the deatructlon of Federal property, the destruction of the Public Land under many of their current land management practices. (And while we'll soon hear a lot more rhetoric about traditional uses, keep In mind that SLAVERY was a legal, "traditional" use of black human beings only a hundred and fifty years ago In this country. Black children were separated from their families on the auction block if separate sale yielded their "highest and best use, Ia the highest price. The unctuous repetition of the phrase "traditional and existing uses" by the economic development folks, Indicates their desperation in trying to justify the unjustifiable.) Like spoiled children, the traditional new-fangl- ed n. ed cow-pollut- ut Canyons or Cow Sewers? Currently the delicate, watered canyons around Moab are little more than sewer troughs In carrying the waste of the cattle Industry to the Colorado River. Change comes slowly In the Is of Irrelevant the this abuse hurt are canyons by southern Utah.- That many people Toll Free Ext. 800-345-46- 65 AXd 259-502- FAX: 1 259-838- 7 Put your trust in Number One: Equal Housing Opportunity ft EACH OFFICE IS INDEPENDENTLY OWNED AND OPERATEDL 521-- Z |
