MOAB, UTAH — Call her a home-wrecker, and Jennifer Speers just laughs. But the title fits. In February 2003, Speers purchased the “Rio Colorado at Dewey,” a 115-acre commercial development near Moab, that included a new adobe home with spectacular views of the Colorado River. Just a few months later, she leveled the $600,000 house. […]
Lisa Church
Posted inMarch 26, 2001: Teach the children well
Luxury looms over Moab
A planned upscale resort has activists fearing “Aspenization”
Posted inJuly 3, 2000: A river resurrected
‘We haven’t got anything back’
Note: this article is a sidebar to the news story “Utah’s river kid takes on the water buffaloes.” Roscoe (Ross) Garrett, a lifelong resident of Nephi, Utah, has served on the board of the Central Utah Water Conservancy District for more than 35 years. Ross Garrett: “This community settled in 1852. About 15 years ago […]
Posted inJuly 3, 2000: A river resurrected
Utah’s river kid takes on the water buffaloes
Where is Utah’s water needed most: in fading farming towns or booming cities?
Posted inJanuary 31, 2000: Searching for pasture
Mountain of mine waste may move after all
MOAB, Utah – A decade-long battle over a 10.5 million-ton uranium mill tailings site near the Colorado River (HCN, 4/13/98) may finally be coming to an end. Here, on Jan. 14, U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Bill Richardson announced his support for a plan to transfer control of the abandoned Atlas Corp. mill site to […]
Posted inAugust 30, 1999: Who's stopping sprawl?
Second tram heads for Moab
The redrock desert around the tourist town of Moab, Utah, has been colonized by motels and mountain bikers for over a decade. Still, some locals never thought they’d have to worry about ski lifts. Now, less than six months after a controversial chairlift opened for business on the west side of Moab, the county planning […]
Posted inMay 24, 1999: The last weird place
Road ban stops a timber project
The Forest Service ban on road construction in roadless areas was proposed more than a year ago (HCN, 2/2/98) and went into effect at the beginning of March. Now, it’s finally having an impact on the ground. Last month, Dixie National Forest officials canceled a controversial timber sale because it conflicted with the 18-month nationwide […]
Posted inMarch 29, 1999: Wheeling and dealing
Officials seek the “complete’ Canyonlands
A new proposal by Canyonlands National Park superintendent Walt Dabney would more than double the park’s size, from 368,000 acres to about 852,000 acres. Dabney says the proposal “completes’ Canyonlands by drawing park boundaries along natural features. He hopes it will serve as a model for future park planning. “This is in the public arena […]
Posted inMarch 1, 1999: Working the land back to health
Locals rebel against road closures
Fierce opposition has delayed a Forest Service plan to close 210 miles of old logging roads in southwestern Utah. Local residents wrote letters, circulated petitions and turned out in large numbers for public meetings in Cedar City and Kanab last month, protesting the proposed limits on motorized access to the Dixie National Forest. “We’ve gotten […]
Posted inFebruary 15, 1999: Uncommon Bounty
No love for Lycra in Moab
For the third time since October, someone has fired shots into the empty fee booth at the entrance to Moab’s Sand Flats Recreation Area, which includes the popular Slickrock bike trail. The Bureau of Land Management and Sand Flats are offering a $2,000 reward for information leading to the culprits. Investigators have no leads, but […]
Posted inFebruary 1, 1999: Saving the Platte
Fun-hogs to replace cows in a Utah monument
As tourists flock to southern Utah’s new Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, ranchers are breaking camp and moving out. In December, the nonprofit Grand Canyon Trust announced it had brokered a deal between five ranching families and the Bureau of Land Management to retire or relocate grazing allotments on about 120,000 acres inside the monument. “There […]