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Show Local EMTs Need Help No one plans to be in an automobile accident or have a medical emergency, but everyone wants immediate assistance when such a crisis happens to them. Between Monday, June 23 and Sunday, June 28, the volunteer Emergency Medical Technicians of Escalante participated in 10 runs to Garfield Memorial Hospital! Hospi-tal! Each trip averages five to seven hours of personal time for these volunteers who must drop everything at a second's notice and leave jobs and families at all hours of the day and night! (Many thanks to Utah Forest Products and other employers who pay their staff who serve as EMT's while on the job.) While there may be moneys in the pipeline to eventually replace the "stiffest riding ambulance" Garfield County News article June 26, 1997) which must often traverse bumpy dirt roads, and there may be funds promised to pay EMT's at some point in the future, we are facing the 4th of July weekend with a very small lineup of volunteers already worn thin and only one vehicle. This means that if there is an ambulance ambu-lance on a run, there is no coverage cover-age until it returns hours later, and very little if any backup, because be-cause those who have served as EMT's in the past are burnt out, disgusted and not certified any longer. A feature writer of a financial magazine stepped into the door of our store recently with the opening open-ing words, "President Clinton just made you beach front property!" Perhaps the Bureau of Land Management Man-agement should therefore post signs along the highway warning people as they enter the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument that there is "No Life Guard On Duty. " This is a crisis that will not go away! These faithful few need more than our prayers. What will you do to help? Harriet Priska Retiring Executive Director Escalante Chamber of Commerce Com-merce P.S. If people are willing to go to Lake Powell for a week to pick up garbage along the shore line, could people be willing to come to the monument as EMT volunteers? Stanley Stowe is in charge of the EMT's for the Boul-der-Escalante area. 801-826-4472. (See Letters To The Editor On Page 6-A) Letters To The Editor From Page 2-A 'Utah Strikes Back9 Says Washington Times "Ah, Utah." exclaims a Washington Post story about the state's controversial new federal monument, the Grand Staircase-Escalante Staircase-Escalante National Monument. The writer waxes lyrical about the sweeping vistas and geological marvels he sees there. The irony, however, is that most of the scenery he describes isn't in the monument at all. Those sights that are in the monument are either in areas the state already wanted to protect or are miles away from a proposed coal mine that the monument was designed to stop. So nine months after President Clinton made a campaign stop at the Grand Canyon in Arizona, mind you to declare the Utah land a monument off limits to development, Utah lawmakers are, if anything, even more unhappy un-happy about the designation than they were before. "When he designated des-ignated the monument," complained com-plained Utah Republican Congressman Con-gressman Chris Cannon at a press conference this week, "president Clinton ignored the law, ignored the facts and ignored the people of Utah." Two state groups have since filed suit, charging that Mr. Clinton violated environmental laws and the federal statute providing for the designation of federal monuments, the 1906 Antiquities Act. The Utah Association Asso-ciation of Counties alleges the president illegally used the act to effect the preservation of wilderness, wilder-ness, an authority which Congress has reserved for itself. The designation des-ignation also violated the Federal Land Policy Management Act, according to the suit, which requires notice and comment beforehand. In a statement, Mr. Cannon said the White House briefed officials in ( Colorado, Nevada, Wyoming, Montana and New Mexico on the plan six weeks in advance and invited comment from them. Meanwhile, he said, the "people of Utah including our governor, our delegation, and even my Democratic predecessor, learned about the proposal in the pages of the Washington Post eleven days before the announcement. announce-ment. And, even then our delegation dele-gation and Governor were misled and substantively ignored." A second suit filed by the Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration charges char-ges that President Clinton has violated the promise he made at the time of the designation that the monument "will not come at the expense of Utah's children." Mineral development, including coal production, on the lands surrounded by the monument stood to generate millions of dollars for the education of Utah children. Projects planned for the lands have since been canceled. The president promised to appoint commission to trade the trust lands for federal lands considered equally productive but less environmentally sensitive. But a spokesman for Mr. Cannon says the president has yet to appoint anyone. Mr. Clinton, of course, can afford to ignore Utah and three electoral votes he wouldn't have gotten from the conservative state anyway. The monument also happens to put off-limits a coal source that might have competed with the coal operations of the now-famous Indonesian Friends of Bill, the family of James Riady. Perhaps it's just a coincidence. There is one other irony to this controversy worthy of note at this environmentally conscious time. Utah's coal reserves are the low-sulphur, low-sulphur, less-polluting variety. Knocking them out of production raises the cost of lowering emissions. One can only hope these lawsuits can help clear the air. Reprinted From The Editorial Section Washington Times Monday, June 30, 1997 |
