Another email from Clif just now....
"I have bad news, and worse news, but a glimmer of hope.
The bad news is that today may be the last day to effectively comment, as the Emery County Commission just scheduled a meeting to vote on its support for the Emery County bill tomorrow (2/4/19) at 6:30am!
The worse news is that the bill would permanently close 74 miles of county Class D primitive roads, not just 50 miles as we had conservatively estimated (see map in first attachment, and example in second attachment)... not to mention untold other routes that (a) were created back when the area was open to cross-country travel, (b) have yet to be inventoried / analyzed / reviewed by the public, and (c) may be worthy of designating open for at least some kind of mechanized use, some seasons, etc.
The glimmer of hope is that there's yet another reason why our elected representatives should be compelled to send the Emery County bill back to the drawing board. Their job is to protect our interests, and when mechanized access to a quarter of the federal lands in Emery County is taken as a sacrificial lamb for the benefit of people hundreds of miles away, that is exactly the time to draw the line (see third attachment). Before I explain this claim, let me point out that you can see the Emery County bill / analysis / contacts for commenting at
http://www.sageridersmc.com/land-use-issues.html .
Now, the Emery County bill has been packaged with other public-lands bills into S. 47, which the Senate will vote on this Tuesday morning. Last week, three senators (from Colorado, Montana, and North Carolina) urged the Senate leaders to pass S. 47. Nowhere in the 660-page package could I find wilderness being designated in their states. What I did find was an existing wilderness designation in Colorado where S. 47 would grant non-motorized access to Bolts Ditch Headgate, a water diversion for a bedroom community of Vail. (Apparently towns need the blessing of Congress to access wilderness even without a motor.) Obviously the package is a good deal for Colorado, and I hope it passes for their projects, just with the Emery County parts left out.
Unfortunately the whole package appears to depend on the Emery County part because it provides the primary gains for the wilderness-expansion groups that have quite a grip on Congress. Nevertheless it's not Castle Dale's job to fix Vail's problem that apparently should've been addressed when the wilderness was initially designated surrounding its water supply. Further, if the Emery County bill becomes law, what will happen when non-motorized access is needed into the new wilderness? Will Utah have to convince Nevada to expand wilderness in another public-lands package? Leadership is urgently needed to keep Utah from entering into this sort of Ponzi scheme. Colorado apparently gave up too much land access, and now their water is being held ransom so that Utah will give up too much land access, including 74 miles of its own county roads. The benefits of the wilderness "rope it off" approach may be fleeting due to the inherently global nature of ecological processes, but the drawback of losing access will last. Prescribing this most restrictive designation to public land should be done prudently.
Of course the carrot of a $50M windfall from state-land consolidation tempts Utahn's to overlook the fact that the Emery County bill has become a surgery by sledgehammer. No wonder the state thinks it has to sacrifice mechanized access in order to trade its land with the fed's. The state just relinquished its right to develop state land in the area formerly proclaimed as Bears Ears National Monument. When it lays fallow like the wilderness-expansion groups want, then the state must find a new way to incentivize a federal trade, such as going along with excessive wilderness expansion. However, just five years ago in Grand County, the state got 35,000 acres of federal land for giving up 25,000 acres of state land and ZERO acres of wilderness designation. The fact is that the state could be trading land through a stand-alone bill, or hitching its wagon to some other bill that doesn't attempt to hide the fact that it'd close a bunch of roads and essentially deem every single sagebrush a "snowflake." Unwarranted wilderness is like selling the farm, as it eliminates the chance of a sustainable yield, other than a rather narrow slice of the tourism economy.
If I were Commissioner for a day, I'd say it's high time to take this bill back to the people for comment. First and foremost, that means the residents of Emery County. Also, though, it means consulting each adjacent county. Of the 115,000 acres of wilderness expansion that sneaked into this bill the morning of its Senate vote on 12/20/18, every acre is less than 20 miles from Wayne County while being at least 35 miles from Castle Dale. The Emery County Commissioners aren't beholden to Hanksville, but if they don't even consult Hanksville, it might come back to bite them. Emery County's watershed is in Sanpete County, which has its own interest in consolidating state land. With the revenue of state trades dangling in front of Sanpete County, would they bother to consult Emery County, and would they fight to ensure Emery County's access to its version of the Bolts Ditch Headgate?
These issues can be worked out but, considering that they result from a year of AstroTurf collaboration, they can't be fixed overnight. Fortunately there is no dire consequence to foregoing the current Emery County bill. SUWA won't get its Red Rock Wilderness Act. Trump won't proclaim a monument. The state won't lose its trading power. The BLM won't lack the authority or direction to conserve natural and social resources. And recreationists won't lack the leverage to defend access and volunteer their stewardship of public lands.
But it all starts with you politely persuading the Commissioners and Utah congressmen today (2/3/2019). Thank you for acting now! -Clif"
View attachment Emery County bill route closures 2018-12-11 v2.jpg