The saying, “time heals all wounds,” may not apply to
Utah, at least not to its politicians. Though more than a year has
passed since President Clinton created the 1.7 million-acre Grand
Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah, the state’s
congressional delegation continues to try to dismantle
it.
Republican Rep. Jim Hansen told the Salt Lake
Tribune that memos recently subpoenaed from the White House show
that the decision to create the monument was “strictly political”
to help Clinton get elected and had nothing to do with the
environment.
Outrage over how the monument was
created, combined with pressure to exploit its minerals, means that
“eventually (the monument) is going to be totally taken back … or
Congress will have to go in there and change the boundaries,”
Hansen predicted.
The Utah delegation recently
convinced the House of Representatives to pass legislation limiting
the powers of the president to create national monuments. The bill,
which passed Oct. 7 on a partisan vote of 229-197, would change the
1906 Antiquities Act so that the president would need congressional
approval to create monuments greater than 50,000 acres. The
administration has promised a veto of the bill should it get by the
Senate.
Environmentalists say the Utah
delegation’s fight has set a poor tone for the ongoing planning
process for the monument, due for completion in 1999, and is out of
touch with public opinion.
“I think people have
left the politicians in the dust on this issue,” says Scott Groene
of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. “While Hansen is
screaming, people in southern Utah are figuring out how to live
with the monument.”
*Paul
Larmer
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Monumental conflict continues.
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