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Show 7 ‘UTARADO Should southern Utah & Colorado's West Slope form their own state? By Michelle Nishuis I’ve lived in Colorado for about a year and a half now, but I’ve never been to Denver. Really. Unless you count a few stops in Denver International, which most people say is in Kansas anyway, I’ve never spent time on the Front Range. I’m neither terribly proud nor playing to special interest groups in her district like the Sierra Club and Earth First!. These ashamed of this, but it has led to a some embarrassing situations—I’ve had to admit I had This is the person who’s called Yellowstone National Park "one of the great wonders of man." I had the good luck to run into him in the Denver airport over the holidays last no idea that the Broncos won the Superbowl So I don’t feel entirely qualified to write about Colorado politics, since I’ve never even been to the state capital (that’s capital, Stiles, not capitol, OK?) But I do feel nearly groups want to take away multiple use of our public lands." Then he added, "I don’t mean to be negative." year, when I was on my way to a family reunion and he was on his way to impeach the president, and I made a plea for mercy. Let's just say I couldn’t do much to convince him The way it WAS in Colorado: Downtown Silverton, 1946. Colorado car camping, 1948. By Herb Ringer qualified to write about western Colorado politics, and this is the point. The West Slope should be part of Utah, and not just because we get the Zephyr over here, too. When have a particularly bad windstorm, the sky turns an eerie shade of pink, thanks to slickrock on the other side of the Uncomphagre Plateau. You're not that far away, as dust flies. But we've also got our own redrock, our own Fat Tire Festival (in Fruita), we the the our own LDS churches (everywhere), our own mysterious liquor laws ... and, yes, a few of our own dead-from-the-neck-up politicians. And our own wilderness battles, just in case you don’t believe the comparison yet. The Colorado Environmental Coalition has been working away at their citizen’s proposal for wilderness, which now includes 1.1 million acres of Bureau of Land Management land throughout the state. Most of that, as you might guess, is on the West Slope, far from the Rocky Mountain timber country managed by the Forest Service. These are the places where we take our day hikes and our weekend backpacking trips. Much of it rivals Utah’s canyon country, in beauty if not in scale. And in comparison to the big numbers tossed about by the good folks at SUWA, the Colorado activists’ proposal looks downright reasonable. But not to most West Slope politicians. In December, U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, a Democrat who represents Denver County, introduced a bill which would give wilderness status to nearly all of the Colorado Environmental Coalition’s proposal, as opposed to the less than 400,000 acres recommended by the Bureau of Land Management. It faces the same uphill battle as wilderness bills from other states, breathing response from U.S. Rep. Scott McInnis, a West "This bill is being jammed down our throat from audience of county politicians and others at a meeting in A and it immediately drew a fireSlope Republican. Washington, D.C.," he told an early March. "Diana DeGette is of the error of his ways, and I bet Id strike out on the wilderness issue, too. But if you ever meet him in the airport ... well, maybe that participatory democracy thing could work after all. (P.S. He flies first class.) This is not to say that all West Slope politicians are bad news. San Miguel County commissioner Art Goodtimes, our lone Green representative on the county level, has been livening up stodgy county commission meetings for three years now. He's also a member of Club 20, an association of 22 West Slope counties. Club 20 has always been an unabashed booster of economic development at any cost, and Goodtimes must be the only member who records poetry on his outgoing answering machine message. "It’s a good forum for people to deal face to face," says Goodtimes. "Scott McInnis’ rhetoric really doesn’t work anymore. People cheer him, but they also realize he’s being divisive." With Goodtimes and the High Country Citizen’s Alliance from Crested Butte now on board, times may be changing in Club 20. We'll see. On top of the wilderness bill, we also have a proposal to turn the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Monument into a national park-—-the nation’s smallest national park, in fact. The bill, sponsored by Democratic-turned-Republican senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, was introduced into the Senate in late January, and McInnis is sponsoring a companion bill in the House. If it passes, 9,000 acres of BLM land will be turned over to the Park Service, since national parks need to be at least 30,000 acres. The bill would also establish new park and BLM wilderness areas in and around the canyon, but it doesn’t include water rights for the park; some environmental groups think the bill has room for improvement, and they’re wondering if Campbell is just trying to put the little-visited Black Canyon on the map. Wwifeny At An experience of a lifetime sharedy WESTERN SKY PLANETARIUM with a lifetime of experience. A Portable Traveling Planetarium Mesa Midwives has delivered over 15,000 babies in the last 15 years...Personalized pregnancy care. Patient-designed birthing plans...All births at St. Mary's Hospital Family Birth Place. 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