From: Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance Subject: Utah celebration of our new national monument Date: 04 Oct 1996 10:57:34 -0600 (MDT) *************************************************** THIS IS A SUWA / UWC INFORMATION ALERT *************************************************** Folks-- The UWC is sponsoring a celebration of the creation of the new Grand Staircase - Escalante National Monument. We want as many of you to come as possible. We have a banner which says "UTAH THANKS YOU, MR. PRESIDENT." We hope to have all of you who come sign the banner which will then be sent to the White House. Please plan to come and bring your children if you can. We want to send the message loud and clear that the people of Utah do support the President's action and are happy to have Grand Staircase - Escalante National Monument here. Of course, many of you can't come since you live away. Please still tell the president of your support for the new monument and for Utah's redrock wilderness by sending him an e-mail message at PRESIDENT@WHITEHOUSE.GOV. Mr. Clinton needs to hear from as many of us as possible. Our work is still with us -- to protect 5.7 million acres of Utah's incomparable natural wildlands. WHAT: A celebration / rally for the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. WHEN: Monday October 7th @ 8:00 p.m. WHERE: The Art Barn, 54 S. Finch Lane, Salt Lake City, Utah. We will have refreshments, a slide show of areas within the new monument, conversation, and a lot of fun. The celebration will last a couple of hours, and everyone is welcome to come and go whenever its convenient. The main focus of the event is to show strong support for the President's action to establish the new national monument. Everyone can sign the banner which we will mail to the White House as a letter of support from Utah. This will be a lot of fun. We also believe this is important in light of the negative press this monument has received in Utah and the (what's new) negative response by the Utah Congressional Delegation. Americans love wildlands and we intend to send that message to the President. *** PLEASE COME IF YOU POSSIBLY CAN. LET'S SHAKE HANDS, CHEER, CLAP EACH OTHER ON THE BACK. AND LET'S THANK THE PRESIDENT -- THE FIGHT TO PROTECT UTAH WILDERNESS IS FAR FROM OVER!!! *** Questions or more information? Contact Greg Underwood at the Sierra Club in Salt Lake City at (801) 467-9294. ********************************************************************** This wilderness alert is produced by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) and the Utah Wilderness Coalition (UWC). We are dedicated to the preservation of Utah's redrock wilderness. You can learn more about SUWA from our web site at: http://www.xmission.com/~suwa/ Visit the Utah Wilderness web site at: http://acs1.byu.edu/~wildweb/welcome.html If you want to join our list, send e-mail to: utah_wilderness-request@xmission.com with the word "subscribe" (and only that word) in the body of your e-mail message. If you have any questions or problems regarding the mailing list, please send a message to suwa@xmission.com. ********************************************************************** For immediate information on Utah wilderness issues, contact: Tom Price, cloud@capaccess.org, (202) 546-2215 or Lawson LeGate, (801) 467-9294, lawson.legate@sierraclub.org@sfsi.sierraclub.org You can also phone the Salt Lake City SUWA office at (801) 486-3161, suwa@xmission.com . ********************************************************************** ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance Subject: Utah celebration for the new monument Date: 03 Oct 1996 12:13:05 -0600 (MDT) *************************************************** THIS IS A SUWA / UWC INFORMATION ALERT *************************************************** Folks-- The UWC is sponsoring a celebration of the creation of the new Grand Staircase - Escalante National Monument. We want as many of you to come as possible. We have a banner which says "UTAH THANKS YOU, MR. PRESIDENT." We hope to have all of you who come sign the banner which will then be sent to the White House. Please plan to come and bring your children if you can. We want to send the message loud and clear that the people of Utah do support the President's action and are happy to have Grand Staircase - Escalante National Monument here. Of course, many of you can't come since you live away. Please still tell the president of your support for the new monument and for Utah's redrock wilderness by sending him an e-mail message at PRESIDENT@WHITEHOUSE.GOV. Mr. Clinton needs to hear from as many of us as possible. Our work is still with us -- to protect 5.7 million acres of Utah's incomparable natural wildlands. WHAT: A celebration / rally for the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. WHEN: Monday October 7th @ 8:00 p.m. WHERE: The Art Barn, 54 S. Finch Lane, Salt Lake City, Utah. We will have refreshments, a slide show of areas within the new monument, conversation, and a lot of fun. The celebration will last a couple of hours, and everyone is welcome to come and go whenever its convenient. The main focus of the event is to show strong support for the President's action to establish the new national monument. Everyone can sign the banner which we will mail to the White House as a letter of support from Utah. This will be a lot of fun. We also believe this is important in light of the negative press this monument has received in Utah and the (what's new) negative response by the Utah Congressional Delegation. Americans love wildlands and we intend to send that message to the President. *** PLEASE COME IF YOU POSSIBLY CAN. LET'S SHAKE HANDS, CHEER, CLAP EACH OTHER ON THE BACK. AND LET'S THANK THE PRESIDENT -- THE FIGHT TO PROTECT UTAH WILDERNESS IS FAR FROM OVER!!! *** Questions or more information? Contact Greg Underwood at the Sierra Club in Salt Lake City at (801) 467-9294. ********************************************************************** This wilderness alert is produced by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) and the Utah Wilderness Coalition (UWC). We are dedicated to the preservation of Utah's redrock wilderness. You can learn more about SUWA from our web site at: http://www.xmission.com/~suwa/ Visit the Utah Wilderness web site at: http://acs1.byu.edu/~wildweb/welcome.html If you want to join our list, send e-mail to: utah_wilderness-request@xmission.com with the word "subscribe" (and only that word) in the body of your e-mail message. If you have any questions or problems regarding the mailing list, please send a message to suwa@xmission.com. ********************************************************************** For immediate information on Utah wilderness issues, contact: Tom Price, cloud@capaccess.org, (202) 546-2215 or Lawson LeGate, (801) 467-9294, lawson.legate@sierraclub.org@sfsi.sierraclub.org You can also phone the Salt Lake City SUWA office at (801) 486-3161, suwa@xmission.com . ********************************************************************** ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance Subject: Information update on Utah wilderness issues Date: 18 Oct 1996 11:46:19 -0600 (MDT) *************************************************************** THIS IS A SUWA / UWC INFORMATION ALERT *************************************************************** Folks-- Thought y'all would be interested in a couple of issues important to Utah wilderness. First, the State of Utah has brought a suit against the Department of Interior (DOI) in an attempt to stop the reinventory of wilderness lands in Utah that Secretary Babbitt announced last summer. The plan to re-examine Utah Bureau of Land Management (BLM) managed wild lands is a reasonable idea. During the initial inventory, the BLM identified a scant 3.2 million acres of land as potential wilderness. The original inventory was done under former Interior Secretary James Watt and was plagued with problems from the start. As you all know, Utah citizen activists have identified 5.7 million acres worthy of protection as outlined in HR 1500, the Utah Redrocks Protection Bill. Babbitt intends to have a staff of experts take a look at the 2.5 million acres left out of the original BLM inventory to see if these lands are indeed worthy of wilderness designation. No surprise, Utah's politicos were mostly against the idea of taking a closer look at these disputed lands. Utah Senators Hatch and Bennett, Reps Hansen and Orton, and Utah Governor Leavitt jointly announced the law suit at a press conference yesterday. It is hard to understand just exactly why these politicos should be against the idea of a reinventory. It appears that examining these lands has the potential to settle some of the disputes over their inclusion as BLM wilderness. The stance against such a reinventory likely means the Utah politicos are convinced much of this disputed land indeed has wilderness potential, something our politicians simply don't want to hear. We will provide more information as we get it on the reinventory issue. Second, Utah politicians still have their nose out of joint over the designation of our new national monument. All of the sitting national politicos have spoken out against the new monument. Senator Hatch has called the designation, "the mother of all land grabs"-- that even though the lands included in the new monument were federal lands. We continue to hear from some in Utah about the "lost jobs"--about the lost financial bonanza the Andelux mine scheme would have brought to the state. Fact is, Andelux most likely would never have mined any of that coal. And if they did, the financial infrastructure required from the state of Utah was around 100 million dollars with possible financial returns on that investment shaky at best. You would think the state officials would learn about this sort of deal from their involvement in the Micron fiasco in Utah County, Utah. The state lured Micron to locate in Utah and lost millions of dollars and some of the most beautiful open space along the entire Wasatch Front when the Micron dream burst in our faces. Now we hear from the Utah state geologist that the BLM does not have enough coal in the entire rest of the state to compensate the school-trust fund for potential revenues lost when the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument was created. Lee Allison called the BLM lands included in the new monument "a potential energy wonderland." Allison went on to say that "It would take less than 60 years to mine that total, whereas the Kaiparowits coal field in the monument "could supply our needs for more than 400 years." Trouble is, apparently no one has told Allison the coal to be mined on the Kaiparowits was never intended for "our needs" at all. As the story goes the Andelux scheme would have given the Dutch the money, the Japanese the coal and Utah the shaft. It simply seems silly that our Utah politicians are always in a hurry to let any sort of development proceed if the promise of any sort of return is present. But back to reality. SUWA's own Ken Rait has stated, "The state's figures for the monument's resources are grossly overestimated. They must be operating in some other world. Dozens of coal leases have been dropped out there [at the monument] because [mining companies] have found it uneconomic to develop. This pie-in-the-sky estimate is totally unrealistic." Ken's done his homework as always. New figures from the governor's office show that each of the seven state sections in the proposed mine would generate a maximum of $1,035,151 annually for the school fund. This is pretty small potatoes. As Ken said, "$2 per pupil on an annual basis -- a small price to pay for the protection of some of our greatest natural wonders.'' This is an important time for all of us working to protect Utah's wild lands. The tide may be turning in favor of resource protection versus unrestricted resource exploitation. For example, Greenwire today ran a piece on the changing west and President Clinton's understanding of western issues. Greenwire reports: "The Clinton campaign expects strong support from Western states next month, in part because Clinton has "caught up with a transformation of the West's environmental attitudes." Mountain states have been faring well economically as they are "rapidly being transformed from resource-based to technology-based economies." Colorado Gov. Roy Romer (D) agrees: "The environment is working well for the Democrats." Romer praised Clinton for creating a 1.7 million-acre national monument in Utah (GREENWIRE, 9/19), even over opposition from Utah lawmakers and some local officials. Romer: "Most people, even in Utah, wanted those canyons protected. We know that environmental policies are the key to our natural beauty, and our natural beauty is the key to our economy" (Joel Connelly, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER, 10/18)." That's all for now. Hope all is well... ********************************************************************** This wilderness alert is produced by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) and the Utah Wilderness Coalition (UWC). We are dedicated to the preservation of Utah's redrock wilderness. You can learn more about SUWA from our web site at: http://www.xmission.com/~suwa/ Visit the Utah Wilderness web site at: http://www.byu.edu/~srushfor/wildweb/ If you want to join our list, send e-mail to: utah_wilderness-request@xmission.com with the word "subscribe" (and only that word) in the body of your e-mail message. If you have any questions or problems regarding the mailing list, please send a message to suwa@xmission.com. ********************************************************************** For immediate information on Utah wilderness issues, contact: Cindy Shogan, (202) 546-2215 or Lawson LeGate, (801) 467-9294, lawson.legate@sierraclub.org You can also phone the Salt Lake City SUWA office at (801) 486-3161, suwa@xmission.com . **********************************************************************