Ten Years Later: Grand Staircase-Escalante Still Elicits Both Cheers and Jeers from Utahns

By Amy Seigel, 9-20-06

This past Monday marked the 10th anniversary of the creation of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah. The 1.9 million-acre wilderness was signed over to the protective custody of the federal Bureau of Land Management by President Clinton on Sept. 18, 1996. Since that date, the monument has been a major point of contention between environmentalists and local activists concerned with the potentially negative impact of the monument on the regional economies of Garfield and Kane counties. Although a lot has changed in ten years, there is still plenty of emotion on both sides of this debate.

While a large part of the initial controversy stemmed from a perception that Clinton was playing politics with Utah’s land—the monument was created in the last months of Clinton’s reelection campaign against Bob Dole after unsuccessful attempts to get wilderness legislation through the GOP-led Congress—most of the animosity pertains to land use issues. The monument’s biggest casualty was the proposed Andalex coal mine on the Kaiparowits Plateau. Although President Clinton’s proclamation did not expressly prohibit development of existing mining leases, preserving the monument as a “unspoiled natural area” would necessarily mean limiting the implementation of roads, power lines, and other infrastructure required to operate the mine.

In an interview with the Salt Lake Tribune, then-congressman Bill Orton of Utah remarked that the decision to set aside the land for a National Monument was “shortsighted.” According to Orton, allowing for the Andalex coal mine might have been the more environmentally-friendly option in the long run: “The reality is, the world is going to be using coal for the next 50 or 100 years. Are we going to use the dirtiest coal in the world, creating acid rain and air pollution? Or are we going to use the cleanest-burning coal that could have been developed with the least environmental impact? That's what we're leaving in the ground on the Kaiparowits.”

Today, there are still plenty of people who agree with congressman Orton’s assessment. For Mike Noel, who, at the time of the monument’s creation was the Bureau of Land Management's environmental project manager for the proposed Andalex coal mine, the President’s hasty proclamation was enough to spur him into politics (he was elected to the Utah House in 2002) and make him a bitter opponent of the monument—even a decade after the fact. In another Tribune interview, Noel commented that his “feeling is that none of the supposed benefits [of creating the monument] outweigh the detrimental impacts to our county, Utah and the nation in terms of the loss of 4.5 billion tons of low-sulphur, high-btu coal - enough to run Utah for over 300 years - plus potential oil and gas and coal-bed methane and strategic minerals like titanium and zirconium.”

On the other side of the controversy, of course, are the environmentalists. While Noel, Orton, and others concerned with the economic growth of Garfield and Kane counties are convinced that allowing mining on the Kaiparowits Plateau would have insured a much brighter future for southern Utah than what the monument can contribute, there are plenty of people who categorically disagree. To begin with, the logistics of actually extracting the coal from the ground are problematic at best, and potentially enormously detrimental to the fragile surface ecosystem. One article on the land use history of the Colorado Plateau points out that aside from possible extraction damage, the traffic alone (double and triple trailer trucks, 130,000 pounds when loaded, leaving the mine every 3-10 minutes, 24 hours a day) that would be necessary to sustain the operation would create a significant and destructive impact on the surrounding wilderness.

But the truth of the matter is that while coal may have provided some short-term economic growth for Utah and southern Utah in particular, many environmental activists, like Grand Canyon Trust director Bill Hedden, are skeptical, not only of the environmental impact of mining ventures on the Kaiparowits, but also of the quality of life and sustainability of a coal mining-base economy. “I guess if you wished your kid was working in a coal mine, then maybe they lost something,” says Hedden. “But they also would have wedded themselves to that future. Take a drive through a place like Helper [a coal-mining city in eastern Utah]. They are the communities that time has left behind.”

Furthermore, the monument isn’t exactly hurting the economies of Kane and Garfield counties. According to a study in April by Utah State University's Institute for Outdoor Recreation and Tourism, 91 percent of Grand Staircase-Escalante visitors stopped in Kane and Garfield counties, spending $20.6 million at 21 different kinds of businesses—not to mention the additional $5 million from the more than 430 full-time jobs supplied by the monument. And it stands to reason that, along with protecting an impressive chunk of Utah’s most wild and unspoiled terrain, a national monument provides the sort of sustainable revenue that a coal mine can never hope to offer.

In her characteristically meditative style, Utah author and environmental activist Terry Tempest Williams told the Tribune that “Open space rarely has complainers after the passage of time. Instead, it becomes about the future. You look at the [national] parks and wilderness areas in Utah, and it really defines who we are. It cuts across class, gender and politics. It reminds us of what it is to be human and part of the larger community.” Williams added that the monument “provides breathing space. It's a sanctuary of stillness in what are deeply turbulent times. That's what I appreciate the most about it. It's a place of wholeness in a broken world. And never have we needed it more.”

Whether you agree with Williams’ assessment or not, the fact remains that Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is here to stay, so we might as well appreciate it. The way I see it, since only around 16 percent of the nation is federally protected land (and not all of it protected from certain forms of commercial exploitation), we’ve got more than enough land to destroy without tapping into the small percentage of land a few brave Presidents have decided to shield from damaging human endeavors. Whether or not President Clinton’s decision to create the monument was politically motivated—aren’t most of a president’s decisions politically motivated?—Utah gained a precious treasure on Sept. 18, 1996, one that should be celebrated and not lamented. So go on, head down to southern Utah this autumn. There’s 1.9 million acres down there just prime for exploration. And if you don’t make it down this year, don’t worry, it will still be there next year, and for a very long time to come.

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As a follow-up to this story, I will be attending the Western Oil Sands Conference at the University of Utah campus on Thursday Sept. 21. The conference is aimed at addressing current technical, environmental, legal, and financial issues surrounding the development of oil sands in the Western U.S. And while the controversy surrounding the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument revolved around coal mining, the very same debate between economy and environment is currently taking place with respect to extracting oil from these “unconventional” resources. Can oil be extracted from these deposits without incurring an energy deficit? Can it be done in an environmentally friendly fashion? What could be the economic benefits to Utah and the Nation?

If you can’t wait for part two of this story, consider attending the keynote address for the Western Oil Sands Conference. Dr. John McDougal, the President of Alberta Research Council, will give a presentation presentation titled “Producing Oil in a Carbon Constrained World”. It will begin at 7 p.m. on the sixth floor of the Rice-Eccles Stadium Tower. [End of article]