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Show Gam Assures Bhff Trail Road Support Letters have been received by many Garfield County residents recently from Senator Jake Garn expressing his commitment to supporting in the Senate the improvement im-provement of the Burr Trail. Garn points out that the Burr Trail upgrading was actually proposed by three prominent environmental groups (Sierra Club, Escalante Wilderness Committee and the Wilderness Society) in 1972 as an alternative to a more costly and environmentally questionable road called the Trans-Escalante Parkway. Park-way. That road, Garn notes, would have cost $61 million in 1974 and carved an entirely new corridor out of the Kaiparowits Plateau. Garn states that the proposal he has made in the Senate is approximately ap-proximately one-third the cost of the original road and provides far more tourist benefits to local communities with none of the environmental consequences. Garn states that he believes that the Burr Trail as a low speed, all weather scenic road will attract tourists from everywhere. He said he believes people from California, Nevada, Arizona and Utah will use the road and as it becomes better known, visitors from points east will also use it. Referring to National Park Service Ser-vice Director William Penn Mott's proposal to pave only the most dangerous sections of the road while upgrading the entire route into a national rural scenic road, Garn says he would prefer to pave the entire length but feels that Mott's proposal "is a good foundation on which to build." - "i will support his plan providing the legitimate access rights of Garfield County residents and the people of Southern Utah are protected. "The people of Southern Utah have fought long and hard for this endeavor and deserve nothing less than a fair result," he said. He called Mott's proposal a "sound, thoughtful one." |
