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New Yorker Should Butt Out
Growing from little more than a million acres 20 years ago, America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act of 2009 now encompasses 9.4 million acres of Utah. The brain child of Utah Congressman Wayne Owens, by today’s standards, his humble attempt at protecting some of Utah’s most unique landscapes has been hi-jacked by the out-of-state interests of New York Congressman Maurice Hinchey and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA).
Well-funded special-interest groups and a New York Congressman, in their quest to lock up nearly 20 percent of our state, do not understand the economic harm it will do to our citizens or our future.
As Utahns, we recognize there are pristine and wonderful places in our state that need protection. However, the Hinchey/SUWA approach is outdated and flawed. This bill carves out large blocks of land that do not meet the definition of wilderness as provided by Congress in the Wilderness Act of 1964.
Legitimate reasons have kept the Red Rock Wilderness bill from Congressional hearings for 20 years. Utahns don’t support it! Utah’s Congressional delegation, both Republican and Democrat, oppose it. Utah’s Legislature in 2008 overwhelmingly passed a bi-partisan resolution telling Congress to butt out. Wilderness was a major reason Wayne Owens lost his bid for the U.S. Senate to Bob Bennett in 1992.
As an alternative, Utah’s Congressional delegation has offered a locally driven model that has been successful. Community input, through often difficult debate and compromise, produced Cedar Mountain and Washington County land bills and wilderness designations. For some, too much. For others, not enough.
Twenty years of languishing all changed this year when Hinchey and his cohorts were able to get “America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act of 2009” before the House Natural Resources Committee. As the September hearing opened, Utah Congressman Rob Bishop, the committee’s ranking minority member, took exception to Hinchey closing down vast acreages of Utah. Bishop pointed out the dramatic negative effects it would have on education funding, employment, local and state tax revenues, energy production and quality of life in rural Utah.
Bishop was backed by fellow Natural Resources Committee member Jason Chaffetz, Senators Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett and Congressman Jim Matheson. The Hinchey bill received unanimous and unequivocal opposition in personally delivered comments from each member of Utah’s Congressional Delegation.
Hinchey advocates locking up 9.4 million acres without offering maps, descriptions or other important details saying “trust me.” As with other major pieces of legislation before this Congress – cap and trade, health care, economic stimulus – Utahns and Americans have grown skeptical of the unseen details. “Trust me” may be going just a bit too far from a Congress whose trust and approval rating according to Gallup sits at a dismal 14 percent – an all-time low.
Farm Bureau testimony pointed out that two-thirds of Utah is federal lands that for generations have been under multiple use management generating millions of dollars to educate Utah school children. Multiple use management provides jobs and economic opportunity today as well as for our children and grandchildren.
Change in Washington, D.C. is the only constant. Changing political agendas means Utah is unfairly subjected to the political whims of distant politicians. We in Utah and in the American West deserve stability and greater opportunity for self-determination.
Utah did not enter the Union equal to other states. Early acts of admission expressly provided that “state enter the Union ‘on an equal footing with the original states in all respects whatever.’” With more that 65 percent of Utah under federal control, and 43 percent of Utah lands defined as unreserved and under the management of the BLM, Utah and 14 other public lands states of the Western United States are treated as little more than colonies to be dictated to by distant political interests.
Texas vs. White (1868) upheld Constitutional doctrine of equal footing ruling that every state must possess the “same political rights and sovereignty” as the original states.
This historic inequity continues to provide the political catalyst for special interests and political carpet baggers to offer actions that would devastate our local economies and our future. The adverse economic impacts of a Hinchey/SUWA Red Rock Wilderness bill would be felt by farming, ranching, mining, recreation, energy development, schools and tax revenues for generations.
Further complicating the matter, Hinchey suggests Utahns should trust the wilderness inventory process conducted by the Bureau of Land Management between 1978 and 1991, beginning with President Carter and ending with Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt. Under Carter, 3.2 million acres were ultimately identified statewide as containing wilderness characteristics. Of importance, Utah participated fully in the process.
Babbitt’s later re-inventory and today’s basis for the Hinchey/SUWA 9.4 million acre bill is clearly flawed and illegal. The Federal Land Policy Management Act (FLPMA) requires full public input. Babbitt not only thumbed his nose at FLPMA and a local input process, he administratively changed the definition of wilderness and altered the “roadless requirement” as defined in the Wilderness Act of 1964. So broad was Babbitt’s definition of “wilderness characteristics” that nearly any parcel of land across America can meet the criteria, including New York’s Central Park.
Backing and pushing Hinchey is SUWA. Their self-proclaimed exhaustive field inventory by citizen volunteers is the foundation of the escalating acres proposed in successive Red Rock Wilderness Bills. Interestingly, SUWA wants Congress to trust them and act on these citizen wilderness claims, while at the same time opposing at every opportunity the state of Utah’s legitimate claims on R.S. 2477 roads.
As a group, SUWA is the state’s most radical and litigious environmental organization possessing a checkered past. A Swiss billionaire at the helm and two trustees convicted of bank fraud dominated the SUWA board for a generation. The Securities and Exchange Commission called the illegal activities of former Treasurer Mark Restow and Bert Fingerhut, “the largest and most sophisticated bank-conversion scheme ever uncovered.” With a reported U.S. membership of 14,600 and only 3,100 Utahns, only 4 of 11 board members from the Beehive State and their contempt for local input, Congress should not mistake SUWA’s political agenda as representing Utah values.
As with many politically motivated causes, Red Rock Wilderness will ultimately be used as a fundraising tool for liberal New York Congressman Maurice Hinchey and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. The United States Congress needs to drop the politically motivated and antiquated Hinchey/SUWA proposal and let a local process and Utahns prevail in the wilderness debate.
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