A special report by the Tri-City Herald
Published July 2-3, 2000
Stories by Mike
Lee
Photos by André Ranieri
- Southern Utah town split over Escalante's legacy
- Staking a claim to the New West
- Town struggles to merge past, future
- Old land agency trying to beef up for new era
- Land-use debate heats up near Escalante
- Utahns' advice for Mid-Columbia differs dramatically
- Water wars: Escalante ranchers square off against
environmentalists
- Where there's a monument, there's money
- Web resources
Local opposition to southern Utah's Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument still runs deep four years after the monument was created by President Clinton.
Utahns' advice for Mid-Columbia differs dramatically
Everybody around the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument seems to have some advice for the Tri-Cities when it comes to dealing with a new national monument at the Hanford Reach.
Here's a sampling of what they said:
-- "Sit quietly and see what your strong suits are. Figure out where you want to go and how to get there. Every town can do that. ... Rather than fighting and being negative about it, see what you can get out of it." - Susan Tixier, founder of Great Old Broads for Wilderness.
-- "Get everything in writing. Don't believe anything they tell you unless it is in writing. ... Get somebody that you can trust to stand up to the government, because they will run over you." - Marjie Lee Spencer, Escalante mayor.
-- "Show up at every (meeting) no matter what it is. ... You have to be involved, and if you don't like what you are hearing, you have to let them know and be public about it." - Steve Gessig, anti-monument activist.
-- "You are going to put in hundreds of hours ... studying the impacts and offering solutions. ... They want public opinion to show they were going through the process, but they had it all planned out from the beginning of what it was going to be like." - Louise Liston, appointed by the governor to a monument advisory team.
-- "I have found that the Secretary of the Interior has been willing to bend over backward during the planning process to make sure local concerns are heard and where possible, make sure they are addressed. The Sierra Club and others ... have been in the position of having to work pretty hard to make sure the Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Land Management don't bend too far backward." Lawson LeGate, Sierra Club senior official in Salt Lake City.
-- "They ought to fight it legally. ... They ought to organize and fight it. Let's challenge those rascals in every court in the land." - Clare Ramsay, Garfield County (Utah) commissioner.
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