UTAH San Juan County officials recently removed federal “road closed” signs on three dirt roads they claim in the Grand Gulch area of southeastern Utah. The action could provoke a lawsuit to test who owns these roads – San Juan County or the Bureau of Land Management (HCN, 10/28/96: Utah counties bulldoze the BLM, Park […]
Jim Woolf
Posted inApril 27, 1998: The old West is going under
Nobody gives a damn about this dam
The Army has abandoned a small reservoir in Red Butte Canyon east of Salt Lake City, Utah, leaving federal, state and county agencies playing a game of political hot potato. Red Butte Reservoir is one of several refuges established in northern Utah to protect the June sucker – a fish native to Utah Lake, south […]
Posted inMay 12, 1997: Planning under the gun: Cleaning up Lake Tahoe proves to be a dirty business
No takers for wilderness trip
Last month, Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt tried a consensus approach to resolving the state’s rancorous wilderness debate: He suggested a camping trip, but no one wanted to come. Leavitt invited environmental leaders, county commissioners, federal land managers, ranchers and coal miners to eastern Utah. They would visit proposed wilderness areas on Bureau of Land Management […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 1996: Can this man break the right's grip on Idaho?
Will counties de(grade) wilderness?
If dirt roads in southern Utah suddenly seem free of ruts, washboards and washouts, you can thank Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt. Environmentalists believe Babbitt’s recent announcement of a new BLM inventory of wilderness led to a flurry of illegal road work by county crews. For if roads exist, the Bureau of Land Management can’t include […]
Posted inOctober 16, 1995: In the heart of the New West, the sheep win one
How the West was won, and won, and …
When did the following take place? A conservative wave sweeps the nation, and Republicans take control of the government. Western ranchers, furious about a proposed increase in the grazing fee on public lands, complain about the bloated federal bureaucracy. Members of Congress from the 12 Western states decide they have had enough of Eastern domination […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 1995: What a long strange trip it's been
Feds targeted by louder thunder from below
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – Met Johnson worried that no one would show up for the two-day Western Summit of conservative state legislators, county commissioners and public-land users he organized here in January. Johnson, the leader of the so-called “Cowboy Caucus” in the Utah House of Representatives, feared the “steam might have gone out of […]
Posted inNovember 28, 1994: Beauty eludes the beast
Farmers spin federal dollars into hay
When Utah environmentalists began complaining about new water-conservation proposals during a recent public hearing, farmer Howard Riley leaned toward the man next to him and muttered: “It depends on how you define conservation.” Riley, a director of the Central Utah Water Conservancy District, represents farmers in Juab County and southern Utah County who would receive […]