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Show THE ZEPHYR AUGUST 1993 PAGE 14 The Zephyr Interview Bill Hedden Grand County Council, District 4 Ken Durey interviewed County Councilman BUI Hedden on July IS. The interview has been edited for clarity and length. in Zephyr: You were elected to the county council at a time of change. What are die filings, terms of planning and direction, that you feel have to be changed? Bill: I think that in this instance, change is almost a reactionary thing. To say that for the first time in Grand County, we're not necessarily going to be boosters for every project that comes We need to begin to be along, that we've had enough growth and enough development. selective, or the shortage of housing and the rising prices are going to drive many of us out of here. Zephyr: Looking to the future here, what do you see as the problems? Bill: One problem that strikes me is that we're going to see the countryside around here get so much more intensively used that lots of us who have used this landscape for all sorts of reasons are going to find it harder to go out there and do the things we're used to doing. It doesn't matter if you're a recreationist, or someone who really likes to be alone, or graze cattle or mine... all those things are getting a lot more complicated. That's one big problem. We're trying to work with the BLM and the Park Service and the Forest Service to get everyone (me at least coordinated in their approach, to plan for the use of public lands in a cooperative way. We're going to take our best shot at that, but it's not a problem that can be solved. ' Zephyr: What do you mean by that? Bill: The people who live here have been highgrading this part of the world. We've had some of the most spectacular country in the world, and no one else in it. The fact that those days are just about over is sad, but there are many more people in the world, and they have found this place, and there's no keeping them away. Just regulating the wild places and putting in porta-pottiand hardening campsites and paving trails may deal with the impacts, but it doesn't help someone who knew that canyon when it was wild and no one else was in it. That's what I mean by the problem being insoluble. Zephyr. So are you a defeatist on that? Bill: I think that I would like us to work out as many parts of an answer here as we can, because we're facing it, along with Washington County, before the rest of southern Utah. Answers that we work out here will be helpful to other places. Another problem that I see is that Moab is going to become a much more expensive place to live. That scares me. We're appealing to mud: wealthier people, lots of new construction, building much more expensive henries. We have people here now who really place a premium on education, we're going to be building new schools, we're going to have to upgrade our infrastructure. Every one of those pressures is upward on the cost of living. This used to be a hard place to get rich, but it was a real good place to be poor. I see that changing, and I don't like that. That's one of the problems that's uppermost in all of the members of the council's minds. Zephyr Don't limitations, in terms of growth, housing, land available for building, don't they increase that pressure? The less land you have to build on, the more valuable the land becomes. Isn't that one of the problems of Aspen and Telluride, they have such limited land? Bill: Well, yes, that's true, and you have to remember this is a desert oasis. Not too many people are clamoring to go live in Cisco. We have an oasis here, and another in Castle Valley. We do have limitations. But if you're trying to set me up for the next question about whether restrictive zoning and so on is going to accelerate the problems I'm describing, I will say that I know that, I've been aware ever since I first got involved in this political thing. By doing things that seem very farsighted, preserving open space and helping the community in a "classy" way, I may well accomplish the exact opposite of what I would love to see happen in Moab, a beautiful, exclusive place that I can't afford to live in anymore. I'm aware of that contradiction, and I've been wrestling with that for five or ten years now. I have some little pieces of answers, but I'm not sure that I know. My crystal ball is murky. Zephyr Is the big problem growth in the towns, or is the big problem out in the countryside? Bill: Something that Charlie Peterson Grand County Council chairman is always pointing out is that it would be best if we concentrated people in small lots, people who want to Uve on small pieces of ground, in the urban part of the county, and that we maybe would want to restrict how many small lot subdivisions could be built way out in Spanish Valley. The biggest problem would be to let a whole lot of subdivisions be built way out in Spanish Valley that have their little lots, and need to go a half mile to hook up to the sewer. Our infrastructure would be inadequate even more rapidly than it already is. I would tend to think the big problem is further mall percentage of the land being overused and abused and not taldng into account that 20 miles outside of town in another direction, where you don't see too many people? Bill: We're still very fortunate that there's so much great country around hoc, that anyone who lives here for awhile can discover places the tourists don't know about But there's a new this spring, there were guidebook published every week it seems, and during the busy weekends of sections remote more of the some Canyonlands National Park. 180 people camped per mile in like chaos and a circus seems when it Their visitation is up 44 percent this year. That period along the river and along Slickrock grows larger every year. And this spring it spilled over into what I call "total camping," cars next to one another and tents placed so dose that there's nothing but smashed down territory. That spread into a number of new places where it hadn't been before. It's not alarmist to be pointing at this and saying it's a real problem. People at Canyonlands and Arches are practically in a desperation mode now to find answers to some of these filings. Zephyr People are going to say to you, "You came here, you were allowed to move in, and now you're trying to stop o filers." What's your response? Bill: Well, if I actually had a plan that was going to stop anybody else, I'd fed that's a mare appropriate criticism. But my general response to that is to liken a little community like this, that is, a desert oasis with a lot of uninhabitable ground around here, so we're all crowded together, and it's a nice place to live. We've got something very special here, and it's like a lifeboat. If you have a lifeboat you can say, "sure, you guys got in, how can we restrict the next person from getting in?" But when the person gets in who tips the boat over and everyone drowns, then you've lost it all. So I don't think it's completely inappropriate at some point to say, if we don't start thinking about how many people can live becoming lives in this valley, then we'll make it into one more suburb of Salt Lake, where everyone who lives here will have a tremendously diminished quality of life. Zephyr Isn't there an element of elitism in that? Doesn't it mean that "me and my friends" have a right to enjoy the area, but other people coming, we have to somehow prevent that? Bill: In a community this size, that has a real personal flavor, the people who live here put a stamp on it... communities like that evolve. This place had probably a very distinct character in es out Zephyr. There is a hue and cry each spring that the visitors are destroying the area. You drive up the River Road and there is smoke in the canyon, campers everywhere. You go up Sandflats and you see people falling all over themselves. But are people overreacting to a i n This used to be a hard place to get rich, but it was a real good place to be poor, I see that changing and I don't like that Bill Hedden 1900. In file 1950s when it was booming with uranium, it was a totally different town. And every one of those groups probably felt like, "this is our town." That's part of the nature of a place like this. We coundl members were all called a bunch of outsiders who had no business getting involved in county government, even though some of us have been here quite awhile. Maybe we're guilty of the same thing, we say "we know Moab, we have a vision of what kind of place it ought to be, we're fighting for that." As long as that seems appropriate to the majority of people here, they'll support us. When they say, "you guys have lost touch with this place and what people really want, then we'll probably be out on our ears, and it will be a new town. Zephyr: You've talked about the need for planning, you've talked about some of the problems. But what is your vision? What would you like to see the county look like in 10 years? Bill: I generally look for balance. And I have to admit I like a lot erf the things that have come with all the new activity here. The new cultural activities in Moab, there are terrific new people here, I enjoy the bookstores and the restaurants, these things are exciting. It's fun to go into City Market and meet Europeans, try out my German once in a while. But I think we need to realize that lots of towns end up looking back and saying, "Gosh, you should have seen Santa Fe in the 1950s," or "you should have been in Aspen in the 1960s," and we're going to say, "you should have been in Moab in the late '8Qj and early '90s." There's a lot about the size of the town that's nice, the feeling of vitality, yet you can still let your kids be at large at the baseball games in the evening and not worry they're going to be kidnapped. I can still leave the keys in my car. You know people who are involved in things, there's a real feeling of community here. That's terrific. To try to have some of that positive development without letting it run over us is the kind of balance I'm looking for. We haven t paid for this growth yet We haven't upgraded the sewage treatment plant, or our water lines, which today are falling apart We don't have the whnnls that are adequate. We've just begun to pay for the courthouse. There's a big bill coming. We need to be aware that growth generally costs us money, it doesn't make us money. 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