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Show A-26 The Park Record Trump’s national monument changes return to spotlight Zinke exits as Congress prepares microscope BRADY MCCOMBS MATTHEW BROWN Associated Press SALT LAKE CITY — As Democrats in Congress prepare to scrutinize President Donald Trump’s review of 27 national monuments, most of the recommendations made by ex-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke remain unfinished as other matters consume the White House. Trump acted quickly in December 2017 on Zinke’s recommendations to shrink two sprawling Utah monuments that had been criticized as federal government overreach by the state’s Republican leaders since their creation by Democratic Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. But in the 15 months since Trump downsized the Utah monuments, the president has done nothing with Zinke’s proposal to shrink two more monuments, in Oregon and Nevada, and change rules at six others, including allowing commercial fishing inside three marine monuments in waters off New England, Hawaii and American Samoa. Zinke resigned in December amid multiple ethics investigations — and has joined a Washington, D.C. lobbying firm. Trump has nominated as his replacement Acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, a former lobbyist for the oil and gas industry and other corporate interests. A sweeping public lands bill signed into law on Tuesday by Trump creates five new monuments — two of which Zinke suggested — but none of the reductions or other changes he recommended. The monument review was based on arguments from Trump and others that a law signed by President Theodore Roosevelt allowing presidents to declare monuments had been improperly used to protect wide expanses of lands instead of places with particular historical or archaeological value. On Wednesday, the House Natural Resources Committee will host a hearing that the Democratic majority said will focus Continued from A-24 Mountain Town formally off-limits. “You just don’t ski those runs,” he said. Climate shift considered in ski resorts of future FRISCO, Colo. – Climate change probably does not rank as the top worry for skiers and snowboarders this winter. After all, how long has it been since nearly everybody had snow like this? But climate change does show up as a consideration frequently in a profile of SE Group, a Colorado-based firm that has been designing trails, lifts, and other components of ski areas since the 1960s. Chris Cushing, the principal, says that warming temperatures have altered the design of ski areas. Runs have become narrower, because wider ones are more expensive to maintain snow cover, and expansion areas have fewer south-facing, sun-exposed trails. The story in Architecture + Design, a magazine, also points to Deer Valley as an example of a resort where climate change has altered plans. Various factors—including climate change— resulted in a new base village being located further up the mountain than is currently necessary. But, as Cushing puts it, there may be snow now, but wait a decade. The story also points out that the greatest shift in ski resort design has been the almost mandatory contemplation of non-winter activities. “Having a business model that operates one season out of four is just not a good model,” says Claire Humber, the director of resort planning and design for SE Group. on the “inadequate” nature of the administration’s review. Democrats claim the move to shrink the monuments was illegal and overlooked overwhelming support for keeping them intact. Speakers include tribal leaders, a leading paleontologist and a conservationist who are expected to say their arguments for protecting the land were ignored during the review. People and groups who advocated for the changes are disappointed with the inaction and in the dark about White House plans. Some critics of the monument review, meanwhile, say the delay shows Trump’s intent all along was to launch the sweeping review as justification to shrink the Utah monuments to appease powerful politicians such as former U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, who in return gave the president support for his causes. Environmental, tribal and paleontology groups called the review an attack on protected land that put at risk habitat rich with ancient artifacts, wildlife and dinosaur fossils and sued the challenge the shrinkages at the Utah monuments. On the other side are commercial fishing operators who say jobs will be lost unless Trump reverses Obama’s 2016 creation of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts monument off the New England coastline, where boats previously targeted squid, swordfish, tuna and other fish. Bonnie Brady, executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, recalled meeting with Zinke in 2017 to air the industry’s concerns. “We left that room, I want to say, hopeful. And we still have some hope, but it would be great to actually have some results,” she said. Brady said that despite early indications Trump would sympathize with the industry’s economic struggles, “we seem to be forgotten so far to date.” Interior Department spokesman Alex Hinson said the White House has not requested information about the monument recommendations since Zinke submitted his proposals. A White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss deliberations said the Trump administration was still considering taking action, but declined to elaborate. House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Raul Grijalva said he believes the Utah monuments were targeted immediately for shrinking in order to open up the lands for the extraction of coal and uranium. The Arizona Democrat said his efforts to confirm those suspicions had been frustrated when his party was in the minority, by the administration’s refusal to turn over documents related to Zinke’s recommendations. Zinke and Trump advocated for a return to American energy dominance but through mid-February, lands stripped from the Utah monuments haven’t been mined, according to state and federal officials who approve permits. Grijalva spokesman Adam Sarvana said Wednesday’s hearing will focus on the Utah monuments, which he said serve as a template for what other communities could expect if more of Zinke’s recommendations are acted upon. Heidi McIntosh, managing attorney for the Earthjustice conservation organization, said she wonders if Trump hasn’t pushed the other recommendations because he doesn’t have much to gain politically in states besides Utah by enacting them. She said the lack of an outcome for so many monuments “raises questions if this was really about abuses they saw in monument designations or whether it was really more of a political deal that he had made with the Utah senators?” Conn Carroll, spokesman for Utah Sen. Mike Lee, disputed that there was a deal between the senator and the president. “Any suggestion otherwise is irresponsible conspiracy theory mongering,” Carroll said in a statement. Former Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch — the state’s other senator when the recommendations were issued — defended the importance of the monument review. “Regardless of what radical environmental groups in San Francisco say, the president’s monument review was about fixing monumental disasters and getting input from Utahns to balance the needs of local communities with the original intent of the Antiquities Act,” Hatch said in a statement. What will it take to keep recyclables from landfills? KETCHUM, Idaho – Oh, what to do with those copies of the Idaho Mountain Express, Skiing, or just about any other paper in Ketchum, Sun Valley, and other communities of Blaine County. China doesn’t want the bundles of mixed paper that local residents have faithfully carted to recycling centers in Blaine County—and hardly anybody else does either. The Atlantic explains that the county eventually stopped collecting the mixed papers when the pile had grown to 35 bales. Instead of being recycled, the papers were taken to the landfill. “For decades, we were sending the bulk of our recycling to China – tons and tons of it, sent over on ships to be made into goods such as shoes and bags and new plastic products,” The Atlantic explains. “But last year the country restricted imports of certain recyclables, including mixed paper – magazines, office paper, junk mail – and most plastics.” There are no easy answers. Burning recyclables, such as plastic, produces energy, but also pollution. Some studies, have found the incineration facilities release more harmful chemicals, such as mercury and lead into the air per unit of energy than do coal plants. Too, there’s a problem with contamination. Most of us do a very poor job of sorting through the recyclables we place into the bins. The contamination reduces their value. In Ketchum, the Mountain Express reports that Blaine County lost $24,000 on its recycling program last year. Paper was part of the problem. Bales, which not long ago sold for $100 each, were worth nothing. Last week, county commissioners agreed to pursue a limited form of paper recycling focused on easily identifiable types. If the contamination can be reduced from 5 percent down to almost zero, a firm in Twin Falls, about two hours away, will pay $65 per ton. To that end, only newspapers and office papers will be accepted. Income gap prominent in clientele of ski areas ASPEN, Colo. – Go figure this. Ski passes have supposedly made skiing very affordable. But the income levels of the core skiers have been rising. The Aspen Daily News, in an article about the heartburn caused by the Ikon and Epic passes, points to a report by Kelly Pawlak, the president of the National Ski Areas Association. In the winter, 2019, edition of the association’s magazine, she points out that skier days are flat, with fewer than 60 million visits since 2011. But here’s this interesting fact: “About 27 percent of our guests have incomes of $200,000 or more compared to 5.8 percent of U.S. households,” the report noted. That’s up from 17 percent a decade ago. In other words, while the U.S. population continues to diversify, customers of ski areas have not. Skiing remains predominantly a sport of affluent white people. Snowmass at last OKs the sale of cannabis SNOWMASS VILLAGE, Colo. – Snowmass Village has finally warmed up to sales of cannabis. The slope-side town declared a moratorium in 2013 once sales of recreational cannabis became legal in Colorado on Jan. 1, 2014. Nearby Aspen began sales that very first day. But after five years, the town council has authorized sales beginning April 1. Taxes on sales have been projected to deliver between $195,000 and $585,000 annually, reports the Aspen Daily News. Unlike some other Colorado towns, Snowmass will not specifically limit the number of stores. However, there are many restrictions on where stores can be located. Vail remains the largest ski town in Colorado not to allow cannabis sales, although Mt. Crested Butte, Mountain Village, and several others also remain leery of authorizing sales. Sat/Sun/Mon/Tues, March 16-19, 2019 Sunday in the Park By Teri Orr My favorite person It starts with a mistake, or wrong-headed action, or judgment — or when my kids were teenagers — with the scrape on the side of the car. It starts with something gone kinda wrong. Wrong in a way you know in your heart was wrong and there might even be evidence (see sideswiped car). But in the place or the moment (where there are no witnesses) where you could walk away from the deed or the comment or the action and not be ... responsible. What do you do? You are only cheating yourself out of the whole human experience if you don’t admit a mistake and ask for forgiveness. It is a kindness to yourself and others. We have made this so unpopular — to be decent and upstanding — even law-abiding. We talk about idiots or suckers — who openly face the music when caught. Lawyering up is often the answer and the lesson we teach our children — plausible deniability. In every embarrassing awkward demeaning circumstance — my favorite person is always the one who says — without a prompt or a lawyer — I made a mistake. It is so rare something touches us as a shock in a moral failing way anymore. ... We kinda already knew about it — expected it — we’re not surprised. The Catholic Church covering up anything related to sex and sexuality of humans. A culture of rape and abuse and lies and secrets. Then all that becomes public and undeniable. But shocking? Not anymore. Misdeeds by politicians of any party — no surprise ... those are simply the cost of doing the people’s business — we have come to expect nationally. In education we look away at grades given for maybe not checking all the boxes. Helicopter parents and buzzsaw parents and now a national scandal of “pay to play” parents with fake sports scholarships for sports those kids never played. We understand the primal desire to see our children launch into the world ... and the slippery slope becomes allowing the space for our kids to learn for themselves. The detachment goes two ways in child rearing — right from the start — our children’s accomplishments or failures — get mixed up with a reflection of ourselves. I was a single mom with a son who was an all-star in all sports — soccer, basketball and football. He also was a straight-A student. Captain of the Academic Decathlon team. We also called him Crash at home. He was a terrible driver. Terrible. And so his part-time job in the ’80s? He drove a van for a property management company ... full of tourists ... in the winters. I, of course, was just grateful he had a part-time job. (Thank god I never dated a lawyer.) All the “crashes” had zero injuries to the humans or other vehicles but, oh, the sides of those vans! His boss always forgave his scrapes with snow banks and rocks. He was — after all — a reliable kind kid and there are always points for that. You are only cheating yourself out of the whole human experience if you don’t admit a mistake and ask for forgiveness. It is a kindness to yourself and others.” I remember a football game his senior year — he played tight end. He was 6-foot-3 by then. He would later be named player of the week because he caught all the interceptions and made touchdowns and really had a great game. I remember some dad — very excited Park City High had won (we didn’t much back then) and he slapped me on the back — yes, he did — and said “You must be living right — you had a great game!” I looked at him dumbfounded. And I might have just smiled and walked down straight away on the field to congratulate Randy. But I couldn’t. I turned and said — “His great game had nothing to do with me.” And then I left the stands. I hope if Randy had been a goat and had had a bad game and we lost — I would have responded the same way if someone had blamed me for the loss. I never was my kid. Not when my daugh- ter won awards statewide for her drama presentations or Academic Decathlon awards when they won the national competition for schools our size. When she got off the plane as the only girl on the team and they gave her the crystal trophy to display for the television cameras — the superintendent at the time said how proud Park City was of all the hard work the boys had done and ... wasn’t Jenny “so pretty.” It had been her extemporaneous speech that won the final points for the team. She made the final touchdown. I was furious. When the superintendent asked if I wasn’t proud of my beautiful girl — I said I was very proud of the hard work of the whole team. Because I was. We are almost — to a person this week — not surprised people of means have paid into a system of bribes and altered grades and created blurry videos showing fake athletic feats of under-achieving students. Like all parents — I want and wanted — what is/was best for my kids. I didn’t/they didn’t have resources to help make their lives easier. They had student loans, lived in crappy campus housing, worked dumb low-wage, parttime jobs and drove banged-up crappy cars. They are now good parents of complicated teenagers who are trying to find their way. And the rule books all changed from then to now — on how to parent. The cellphones and broken education systems and national leaders who appear completely rudderless. The drugs, the gender fluidity — all make just day-to-dayness — pretty confusing for parent and child. Here’s what I still know — if you made a mistake — there are always points for fessing up. Always. And if you can’t figure out a moral compass, ask yourself the eternal Grateful Dead question — but are you kind? If the answer is the same — most days — you and your kids are gonna be fine any day ... including Sundays in (and out of) the Park... Teri Orr is a former editor of The Park Record. She is the director of the Park City Institute, which provides programming for the George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Center for the Performing Arts. Purdue mulls bankruptcy County filed one of dozens of lawsuits against drug maker GEOFF MULVIHILL MATTHEW PERRONE Associated Press The company that has made billions selling the prescription painkiller OxyContin said Wednesday that it is considering legal options including bankruptcy, a move that could upend hundreds of lawsuits claiming it had a major role in causing the U.S. opioid drug crisis. “As the company has stated, it is exploring and preparing for any number of eventualities and options, given the amount of litigation the company currently faces,” Purdue Pharma spokesman Robert Josephson said in an email to The Associated Press. “A decision has not been made to file for bankruptcy, nor is there a timetable.” Such a move has been seen as a strong possibility as the privately held company hired an executive and consultants that specialize in helping companies restructure in the past year. The company is owned by members of the Sackler family, who have given money to museums around the world, including the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and London’s Tate Modern. A court filing made public in Massachusetts earlier this year asserts that members of the family were paid more than $4 billion from Purdue from 2007 to 2018. The first trial date is nearing in hundreds of lawsuits aiming to hold the company and others in the drug industry accountable for the nationwide opioid crisis. Bankruptcy proceedings would likely pause that litigation, at least for Purdue. A federal bankruptcy judge would have wide discretion on how to proceed, which could impact the claims of hundreds of local and state governments that have sued. The judge could let claims against other drugmakers and distributors move ahead while Purdue is handled separately, consolidate all of them or let the other claims continue without Purdue involved. Another possibility is that the bankruptcy filing includes a settlement with plaintiffs in the suits. The lawsuits assert the Stamford, Connecticut-based company aggressively sold OxyContin as a drug with a low chance of triggering addictions despite knowing that wasn’t true. Since OxyContin, a time-released opioid, was introduced in 1996, addiction and overdoses to opioids have surged. In 2017, opioids were involved in nearly 48,000 deaths — a record, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In recent years, there have been more deaths involving illicit opioids, including heroin and fentanyl, than the prescription forms of the drugs. That change has happened as awareness of the dangers of prescription opioids has increased and prescribers have become more cautious. Purdue’s drugs are just a slice of the opioids prescribed, but critics assign a lot of the blame to the company because of it developed both the drug and an aggressive marketing strategy. According to a lawsuit filed by the Massachusetts attorney general, the company pushed big sales of OxyContin from the start. Doing so meant persuading doctors who had been reluctant to prescribe such strong painkillers that this one was safe. In court filings, Purdue has pointed out that its products were approved by federal regulators and prescribed by doctors. A federal judge overseeing more than 1,300 of the cases against Purdue and other companies has been pushing the parties to reach a grand settlement that would make a difference in the opioid crisis. The judge, Cleveland-based Dan Polster, has scheduled a trial for the claims brought by Ohio’s Cuyahoga and Summit Counties for October. An Oklahoma state court has scheduled a trial in a case brought by that state for May. If it goes to trial, it would be the first of the wave of recent claims against opioid companies to do so. Purdue’s statement to the AP came the same day The Washington Post published a story in which company president and CEO Craig Landau acknowledged bankruptcy is under consideration. One lawyer who is suing Purdue on behalf of clients including the city of Albuquerque and the state of Utah said it’s long been thought that Purdue couldn’t afford to pay the massive amounts being sought in the lawsuits. “I don’t think there’s enough money in that company to pay for the damages that are claimed,” said Jonathan Novak. Abbe Gluck, a Yale Law School professor who has followed the case, said even if the Oklahoma trial moved ahead “nobody is going to get paid ... without coming to the bankruptcy court, once Purdue files.” There’s a history of bankruptcy claims by organizations facing big lawsuits. Dozens of asbestos companies have done so since the 1980s. Last year, USA Gymnastics filed for protection as it faced lawsuits over sexual abuse by team doctor Larry Nassar. Earlier this year, Pacific Gas & Electric Corp. sought bankruptcy protection because it faces billions of dollars in potential damages from lawsuits over catastrophic wildfires in California. Vincent Buccola, a lawyer and professor of business ethics, said Purdue may be trying to avoid going to court in states that have been heavily impacted by the opioid epidemic. “That’s not the jury you want to face,” said Buccola, who teaches at University of Pennsylvania. A bankruptcy judge could pressure plaintiffs to settle with the company if they want to get any damages at all, Buccola said. |