Utah legislators attack wilderness alliance
Paul Foy THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Website
SALT LAKE CITY -- A committee of Utah legislators that set out to discuss energy policy dealt first with an old nemesis: the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.
Legislators turned against a staff lawyer they invited from the preservation group, accusing SUWA of wielding too much clout and overstating the need for more wilderness.
The lawyer, Steve Bloch, is a member of the Legislature's Energy Policy Working Group and was invited to brief a standing committee.
The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance hasn't succeeded in more than a dozen years of trying to get Congress to adopt a 9.1 million-acre Redrock Wilderness Act for the southern half of the state. But it has fought encroachment of wild lands, helped defeat "bad" wilderness legislation and proven itself a worthy adversary at Bureau of Land Management proceedings.
Rep. Michael E. Noel, R-Kanab, said he was bothered that SUWA portrays Utah's open public lands of being in imminent danger from development, despite federal environmental laws governing energy exploitation.
Noel, a former Bureau of Land Management employee, asserted the alliance didn't deal honestly or credibly with facts, and another legislator complained SUWA avoided dealing with rural leaders.
In one tense exchange before the Public Utilities and Technology Interim Committee, Noel turned to Bloch and said: "You give the impression that the balance of public lands not protected under wilderness are going to be destroyed." They briefly debated the effectiveness of federal laws governing use of public lands.
This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page C4.
Its nice to see SUWA hang themselves now and then.
Paul Foy THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Website
SALT LAKE CITY -- A committee of Utah legislators that set out to discuss energy policy dealt first with an old nemesis: the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.
Legislators turned against a staff lawyer they invited from the preservation group, accusing SUWA of wielding too much clout and overstating the need for more wilderness.
The lawyer, Steve Bloch, is a member of the Legislature's Energy Policy Working Group and was invited to brief a standing committee.
The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance hasn't succeeded in more than a dozen years of trying to get Congress to adopt a 9.1 million-acre Redrock Wilderness Act for the southern half of the state. But it has fought encroachment of wild lands, helped defeat "bad" wilderness legislation and proven itself a worthy adversary at Bureau of Land Management proceedings.
Rep. Michael E. Noel, R-Kanab, said he was bothered that SUWA portrays Utah's open public lands of being in imminent danger from development, despite federal environmental laws governing energy exploitation.
Noel, a former Bureau of Land Management employee, asserted the alliance didn't deal honestly or credibly with facts, and another legislator complained SUWA avoided dealing with rural leaders.
In one tense exchange before the Public Utilities and Technology Interim Committee, Noel turned to Bloch and said: "You give the impression that the balance of public lands not protected under wilderness are going to be destroyed." They briefly debated the effectiveness of federal laws governing use of public lands.
This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page C4.
Its nice to see SUWA hang themselves now and then.
