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Show Burr Trail Meetings Show Opposing Views Separate meetings to receive input in-put on the Burr Trail Draft Environmental Envi-ronmental Assessment showed the extremes of opinion on Garfield County's plans to improve the 66-mile 66-mile dirt road connecting Boulder with the Lake Powell area. Last week's Wednesday evening meeting in a heavy snowstorm in Escalante contrasted markedly with a Friday evening meeting held in Salt Lake City. In Escalante, the majority of those expressing opinions were clearly in favor of proposed improvements im-provements while in Salt Lake City, environmentalist opposition to the county's intent rang loud and clear. Although comments in Escalante Es-calante remained pertinent to the purpose of the meeting, addressing the contents of the DEA in detail, Salt Lake City's meeting elicited comments directed more explicitly opposed to any work on the road rather than addressing the DEA. Salt Lake City comments by environmentalist envi-ronmentalist faction representauves almost without exception call for a full Environmental Impact Study, while Garfield County Commission Chairman said, "The Burr Trail's been studied to death; let's get on with it." Cedar City Bureau of Land Management officials said that Friday Fri-day night's meeting in Salt Lake City has been scheduled to respond to a specific request by a Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance Cedar City representative for a meeting in the Wasatch Front city. BLM offi cials said they felt a similar meeting meet-ing should also be set for southern Utah, thus the Escalante site. "We don't normally hold public meetings on DEA's," said Dave Everett, BLM environmental coordinator coor-dinator for the Cedar City District, "but when a SUWA representative in Cedar City asked for a Salt Lake City meeting, we felt one should be held in southern Utah also." Approximately 35 people attended at-tended the Wednesday night meeting in Escalante to hear comments from only nine on the DEA. More than half present were from Escalante, with the small group attributed to the heavy storm that keep many away. BLM officers said there had been no release to the media on the two meetings. Everett said some 300 copies of the inches-thick study accompanied ac-companied by a cover letter announcing an-nouncing the meetings had been sent to those who had requested copies and closely followed the issue. is-sue. Commenting first in Escalante, Commissioner Hatch said the scope of the DEA "does not address itself to the narrowly defined issue of 'undue and unnecessary degradation' of adjoining Wilderness Study Areas Ar-eas as set forth by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver." Hatch cited inaccurate data-bases on erosion, noise, and traffic volume, vol-ume, all, he said, with a "worst case scenario." He said the DEA fails to realistically depict the present pre-sent condition of the road and the benefits of improving it. The study seems to minimize the fact that lhe road already exists, he said, and often seems to present the impression that it is not an existing road. He said if no action is taken, the road will continue to deteriorate and wash out regularly as it always has. Commissioner Louise Liston commented that all the material contained in the DEA had been gone over in even greater detail during the four weeks of trial in federal district court in Salt Lake City. "Nothing new was found," she said, "and the study is a basic waste of taxpayer dollars." The county's attorney, Barbara Hjelle of St. George, said the DEA should carry out the intent of the court decision by recognizing that impacts described in the document are already inherent in the county's right-of-way, and the fact that the road already exists. She said she agreed wilh Commissioner Liston that all of the issues addressed in the DEA had already been described and resolved in court. Hjelle cited the "value-laden conclusive terminology" of the study which, she said, lacks factual language. Engineer Brian Bremner of Creamer and Noble Engineers, St. George, criticized the scope and the depth of the DEA, saying it uses (See BURR TRAIL On 2-A) BURR TRAIL MEETINGS (Continued From Page One) criteria to apply to the low-volume road normally reserved for interstate highways. The county's plans, he pointed out, are designed to create the least impact on the environment, environ-ment, and generally to let nature take its course, not to create a super-highway. Bremner specifically cited the DEA's vegetation study which he said "looks at areas that will not be disturbed." He also criticized the document's perception of traffic on the road as misleading in its language. lan-guage. An increase from 15 cars a day to 35 cars a day may be a 135 percent increase, but it still places traffic on the road in a very low category when 0-400 cars a day is considered a low-volume artery. Bremner, as most who criticized the DEA, said it does not adequately consider the current impact of the already existing road in use since the 1800s. He said that many cut slopes referred to in the study are in fact already there, and need improvement im-provement to meet today's standards of better vegetation included in the county's plans. The only dissenting vote at the Escalante meeting was that of Bruce Chesler who opposes paving the Burr Trail. He, too, found fault with the study, saying it overestimates current traffic volume and fails to consider possible increased in-creased traffic impact if industrial development occurs in the Circle Cliffs area. He called for a full Environmental En-vironmental Impact Study. Ken Sizemore of the Five County Association of Governments, Govern-ments, addressed economic development devel-opment of the area. He said the road is critical to the Grand Circle tour and that the 1985 paving of Boulder Mountain Road had increased business busi-ness for the county. He pointed out 20 places in the DEA where findings find-ings of no significant impact were indicated. Commissioner Sherrell Ott said, "Garfield County citizens are the only endangered and threatened species" with only .8 persons per square mile and plagued with outmigration. Unemployment is critical in the county where income is 21 percent below the state's per capita income. He said that with 290,000 acres in the county designated as Wilderness Wilder-ness Study Areas, the 200 acres affected af-fected by the Burr Trail hardly seem significant. Garfield County Attorney Patrick Nolan said the DEA presents pre-sents a "worst case scenario" and, according to the court, should address ad-dress only the question of "undue and unnecessary degradation." He describes the DEA as "inaccurate and exaggerated." Garfield County decided to have the DEA address the entire length of the Burr Trail road, rather than confine con-fine the study to only the short section ordered by the court, in hopes of avoiding "future attacks by environmentalists." Friday's Salt Lake City meeting was held in the Salt Lake County Commission chambers with a substantially sub-stantially larger crowd present. Attending At-tending from Garfield County were Commissioner Liston, attorneys Nolan and Hjelle and engineer Bremner. Some 25 persons commented on the status quo, calling without exception for a full EIS. Only six spoke in favor of the county's proposal, pro-posal, with a seventh asking for "sensitive paving." Among those asking for no action ac-tion were Gibbs Smith of the Utah Chapter of the Sierra Club; Mike Medberry of the Wilderness Society; Soci-ety; Terri Martin, Rocky Mountain Regional Representative of the National Na-tional Parks Conservation Association, Associa-tion, and Rodney Greeno, public lands specialist for SUWA. Amy O'Conner, speaking for SUWA on Tuesday night, said, "There must be a better economic solution for Garfield County people. peo-ple. They should try to capitalize on the road as it exists now by advertising ad-vertising it as one of the nation's most unique and unparalleled experiences." |