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Show Grand Stairease-Escalante NM Update Provided By Meredith BRYCE - After a recent meeting at Rubys Inn where Garfield Gar-field and Kane County Commissioners Commis-sioners heard a progress update on planning for the new Grand Staircase:Escalante National Monument, Garfield County Commissioner Com-missioner Louise Liston said, "It was a very positive beginning of a cooperative process." During the nearly three-hour meeting both the county and BLM planning team focused on the need to keep the public well-informed well-informed about the planning process, agreeing that periodic updates will be required. After each of 12 new planning team members spoke briefly, Interim Manager Jerry Meredith, focusing on communications, told the group that there would be updates from his office every four to six weeks. Meredith said it could be fall before the group really gets down to discussing substantive issues. By fall most of the county town meetings and the BLM scoping meetings will have been held and input received from multiple factions fac-tions interested in the manage- ment outcome of the monument. He stated they are settled into their offices in Cedar City and now have both an address and phone numbers, but that some of the furniture had not yet arrived. Meredith said he wants to make certain that all the data that they have is correlated and in a usable format for accessibility by anyone who needs it. He said they had been working extensively exten-sively with the state of Utah and a number of agencies and with the State of Utah's Automated Geographic Reference Center. AGRC had entered into a partnership with the monument planning team to help provide for data management. Meredith said that Jerry Sem-pek Sem-pek will be responsible, from the monument's perspective, to make certain that all pertinent data is in a digital form. He said that Dennis Gorham of , he has reported to Five County Association of Government meetings and SUPAC meetings. (See Grand Stairease-Escalante NM Update On Page 3A) Meredith Gives NM Update From Front Page He is our contact and the one we are working with there. Meredith said that he had groups of Congressional staffers and the US Geological Survey in the area. "We had staffers out here from both the House and Senate, both Republican and Democrat, on a week-long tour of the monument,," he said.. We had them in Kanab and we had them in Escalante. We had lunch at Ruby's Inn one day and down at Doug's in Tropic one day. We were able to cover quite a bit of the monument and see -a lot of that. Commissioner Judd joked with Meredith that they love to see Congress and the Governor come to visit because we always need the moisture. Meredith concurred that it had snowed every time they came and that he was getting tired of plowing snow. Unfortunately, just like when the appropriations staff visited, it snowed. Meredith acknowledge that probably the most controversial part of the monument is the Kaiparowitz region and it's the one they can never get out on when it snows. For one thing it would tear up the roads and another thing, it would cost an arm and a leg to get Ruby's to get out their new four-wheel four-wheel drive to come out and get me. So we were not able to get out there with them. We were able to cover the Skutumpah road with them and do some little short trips off of it. The weather broke and we got down through Cottonwood and showed them that area. And we did get out on gut where we could see out over Four Mile Bench and some of that country. We spent a lot of time in the Escalante area. We went out the Burr Trail, we hiked to Calf Creek Falls, we went out to Devils Garden. That's as far as we dared go done the Hole-in-the-Rock, it was really muddy the day We were down there. He said they had scientists from all four divisions of the US Geologic Survey. The Geologic Survey is organized so that the chain of command goes through their four divisions. They have a water division, a mapping division, divi-sion, a geologic division and they have a resources or biological resources division. But for coordination and local government gov-ernment coordination, they are also organized in regions. A final thought brought up by Meredith was that one of the things that is required in federal planning is what is referred to as a Notice of Intent to Plan. "It puts the world on official notice that we're going to start a planning effort," he said. "It does not contain a lot of detail but they hope to have some general information available for the public and that notice out something between now and the end of the month." He said he is eager to work out with commissioners the dates and times for scoping meetings. Meredith said that Pete Wilkins would be the "point man" for setting up those times and dates. Commissioner Liston acknowledged that in addition to some of the positions that Joe Judd mentioned, there are several state positions from the Governor's Gover-nor's Office of Planning and Budget, the Department of Community and Economic Development, Devel-opment, Utah Travel Council, State and Institutional Trust Lands and the Department of Natural Resources are some of the ones who will be on that economic development team, along with the county representation repre-sentation that is going to be there. Liston stated that it was her understanding that they will probably work through Ken Sizemore and hopefully Kathleen Truman in getting information that the strategy team comes up with to work with the planning team. Meredith stated that Sizemore will be their official liaison but that anyone on the planning team who can be of help to this group as they get going, or that commissioners feel they need access to, they are welcome to visit with or use the expertise or coordinate with any member of our team. |
