“There was a time I could go out and
ride a motorcycle cross-country,” says Ray Peterson, director
of the Emery County Public Lands Council. “And the next day I
could go back out and there wouldn’t be another track except
mine.” That’s no longer the case: Off-road
vehicle use in Utah has exploded during the past decade.
But while most of the state’s counties support unrestricted
off-roading, Emery County is bucking the trend.
In late
February, the Utah House passed legislation that would have allowed
off-road vehicles to travel the state’s roads and most
highways. (The bill later died in the Senate.) And last fall, when
the Bureau of Land Management closed
parts of Factory Butte Recreational Area to cross-country
travel to protect rare cacti, outraged Wayne County commissioners
amended their county plan to declare Factory Butte open “to
cross-country [off-road vehicle] travel 24 hours a day, 365 days a
year.”
But in Emery County, officials are taking a
different tack. This fall, the Emery County Public Lands Council,
an advisory body made up of representatives of public-land
interests, sent letters to local newspapers calling for curbs on
illegal motorized vehicle use. Describing how increased use harmed
roads, land and ranchers, they called for more educational efforts,
asked citizens to report illegal off-roading, and advocated higher
fines for rule-breakers.
Within Emery County, the Bureau
of Land Management already has some of the most stringent off-road
restrictions in Utah. Since 2003, travel in the San Rafael Swell
has been allowed only on designated routes. Even so, county
officials are concerned by the exponential growth in off-road
vehicle use. Ninety-two percent of Emery County is public, and
off-road enthusiasts are flooding in from the Wasatch Front and
southwest Colorado.
County officials don’t want to
stop this tourism, which brings dollars to local towns. But
Peterson says he doesn’t want the economy to become dependent
on it, either; the county has already suffered from the boom and
bust of the coal economy.
Members of the Public Lands
Council are also concerned about the county’s water supply.
The area, which receives only about eight inches of rain a
year,depends on a watershed that starts in the Manti-La Sal
National Forest, in the northeast corner of the county. Council
members worry that the erosion caused by off-roaders will cause
heavy runoffs and soil in reservoirs.
There have been no
studies to confirm the problem, but erosion was pronounced this
fall, when a wet hunting season prompted vehicles to drive around
ruts, resulting in the widening of roads. Illegal off-road driving
also left ruts and muddy swaths of ground. “You don’t
have to be a scientist,” says Sherrel Ward, president of the
Huntington-Cleveland Irrigation Company and a member of the Public
Lands Council. “You have soil coming down and that makes
water muddy.”
For now, the Lands Commission hopes
that public outreach, such as the letters, will help curtail
illegal riding when the off-roading season kicks into high gear
this spring. County Commissioner Gary Kofford quotes an old axiom:
“If you abuse it, you’re going to lose
it.”
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
