Escalante: With the Stroke of a Pen

I am a Boomer from the word go! For the past 25 years living in Phoenix, Arizona, CEO of a large architectural design and fabrication company; one of over 76 million voracious consumers who have "had it all, want it all, expect it all, and will have it now, if you please!" An instant gratification chip was implanted in my brain at about age five by two wonderful and patriotic depression-baby parents of the "Saving Private Ryan" era. It was their sacrifices which pulled our civilization back from a world of tyranny as dark as the Spanish Inquisition.

It is a fact that each succeeding generation is removed farther and farther from the land – the agrarian nation of my grandfathers is gone. That is, with the exception of small enclaves of remote rural cultures where people still look you in the eye when they speak to you and who take the time to chat when they run into you at the Post Office. I grew up in such a place – Kanab, Utah.

So, I come home from 20 years of hard work in Phoenix expecting Nirvana, and what do I find? A community neck deep in the wake of the largest land grab ever anointed by presidential executive power; The Grand Staircase-Escalante Monument.

Clinton and Gore, cheered on by powerful green organizations for their "Pearl Harbor" style sneak attack, locked up nearly 3,000 square miles of Southern Utah on September 18, 1996. The illegal act took 74% of Kane County and a large chunk of Garfield County in an area that is already 95.7% controlled by big government.

With the stroke of a pen the Clinton Administration sealed the economic fate of this once booming region by ensuring no American citizen would ever again earn a decent living from these lands.

The local economy was already struggling under the administration’s oppressive natural resource policies. In fact, it was the relentless barrage of environmental group’s protests of a Forest Service timber sale that forced the closure of Kaibab Lumber Company, a 110 year-old family run sawmill business and the regions largest employer.

The ranching community was already fighting the Department of Interior’s rangeland reform program before the monument designation, but now ranchers are quickly being locked out and forced off the land. The federal agencies have reduced landowners access to private land, allotments and water sources. One rancher, Calvin Johnson, is being required to obtain a key from the BLM to a newly constructed BLM fence and gate across a public right-of-way which leads to his family’s ranch. Furthermore, Johnson will be held accountable for any unauthorized person found on his allotments and is forbidden to duplicate the key.

With the forest products industry all but dismantled and the ranching community now under attack, the monument also secured the demise of the regions last great economic hope — mineral production. The nation’s largest clean burning coal deposit this side of Indonesia is also located within the monuments boundaries.

The eminent Andalex Coal Mine was set to harvest almost 4 billion tons of high BTU, low sulfur, super compliance coal; coal that could meet the year 2000 clean air standards without scrubbers. Combined with high sulfur coal from other locations, it could have extended our nations energy reserves for 100 years. Two months prior to the monuments designation, the mine had passed its’ last hurdle, the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) which took 8 years to complete. The EIS concluded the environmental impact of the subterranean mine would be minimal and completely reclaimable.

Also locked within the heart of the monument are billions of cubic feet of coal bed methane gas that could reduce our dependence on foreign and Middle East oil. Unknown quantities of minerals such as vanadium, uranium, gold and silver and salable minerals such as sand and gravel for roads and construction were additionally locked up.

From the comfortable distance of the south rim of the Grand Canyon, President Clinton made the grand proclamation (where a few trees were cleared for the photo opt) and in his remarks claimed, "but we can’t have mines everywhere."

But the final blow came when Utah’s Washington-bound Governor Mike Levitt traded the world class mineral deposits lying under the state-owned school sections to the federal government for the pittance of $50 million and a token land swap.

In the same breath of announcing the Monument, the Clinton administration painted the rosy picture of economical gains flowing into the local county and city treasuries and thousands of pilgrim tourists traveling by land and by sea to arrive at Mecca – the Grand Staircase-Escalante. Local officials were told "all valid existing rights will be honored. Don’t worry about resource production, we can get all that from our foreign neighbors. You have to change your paradigm and become a world wide tourist attraction. This monument will bring people in from all over the world and it will be your pleasure to host them." Translation: wait tables, clean motel rooms, pump gas, clean toilets, all those great high paying jobs.

But the real irony is that the monument plan, three years in the making, has literally locked in "primitive status" to all but about 116,000 acres of a 1.8 million acre monument. After a thorough study of the management plan, a recreation specialist that has worked in the industry for over 40 years stated, "this is not a user friendly monument. It will not increase tourism in this area. It is designed to benefit only the most athletic and those with unlimited time." Meaning: the ones that come will bring a twenty dollar bill, and one pair of underwear and they won’t change either one during the two weeks they are in Kane County.

Fast forward three years later and we learn the official description of the monument is not tourism-oriented at all, but rather the administration considers it a scientific monument which cannot be "desecrated" by tourism. In fact, the greens and the BLM reverence it with a special sanctity. No longer will the "number" of people be counted who enter this holy ground, rather all life forms are accounted for and referred to as the number of "heart beats."

If I tried, I could not have come up with a more immediate way to achieve the evolutionist’s goal of instantly bringing man to the level of a lizard.

I am convinced the designation had nothing to do with preserving the environment for future generations. It was the federal government’s way to confiscate the valuable resources from those who currently hold the legitimate rights to the property – the private citizens, state and local counties. But, the monument designation was only "a good start."

The Kane County Commission was on the verge of handing over every access right-of-way (RS2477) in the county to the BLM for special use permits only a month ago. They were like most public officials, afraid to challenge the federal government as they watched it dismantle an entire region. When local citizens learned of their plans, they were outraged, and the commissioners were forced to delay their actions for 60 days. Right now, local citizens are working nonstop to gather enough signatures which will keep the commissioners from giving away the access rights. Without these rights, non-elected government officials will forever close access to these lands.

Looming in Congress is HR 1732, America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act of 1999, which would create a new wilderness Area that overlaps the monument boundaries and takes in another 7.5 million acres from the people of Utah. The Red Rock Wilderness is on the top priority list of environmentalists nationwide.

The BLM is pushing for a wilderness study area, which in many cases is more restrictive than a Wilderness designation, that would take even more land and would literally boarder the city limits of Kanab and Orderville, Utah.

Perched like vultures are the nation’s largest environmental groups, prepared to clean out what is left of Kane and Garfield County’s economy. The Sierra Club board of directors recently unanimously voted to push for removal of Lake Powell. That’s right, 2000 miles of shoreline drained like a bathtub which just happen to be located in Kane County. Lake Powell dam is also located in the county and produces a large percentage of the western regions hydro-electric power. The Nature Conservancy is prepared to offer pennies on the dollar for property of die hard inholders forced to sell what they have left. The Conservancy will then sell it back to the government for huge profits.

In a true David and Goliath battle to the finish, it is the Department of Interior versus 7,000-plus good residents of Kane County. The grand proclamation made by Clinton three years ago has not saved this unique piece of America for future generations, it has locked it up from all Americans and assured the prosperity of little known countries like Indonesia who has the only other assessable EPA rated coal.

In 1932, William Z. Foster, Chairman of the Communist Party USA explained how Point No. 1 of the Communist Manifesto, the abolition of private property, would be fulfilled. He said, "The establishment of an American Soviet government will involve the confiscation of large land estates in town and country, and also the whole body of forests, mineral deposits, lakes, rivers, and so on." The U. S. Communist Party Chief, Gus Hall, stated, "The battle will be lost, not when freedom of speech is finally taken away, but when Americans become so adjusted or conditioned to getting along with the group that when they finally see the threat, they say, ‘I can’t afford to be controversial’."

My observation — the honest people of Kane and Garfield Counties have looked themselves in the mirror and have collectively come to the conclusion that once a society loses its capacity to declare that some things are just wrong, per se, it finds itself forever building temporary defenses, drawing new lines in the sand, but forever falling back and losing its nerve. Their belief is that a society which permits simply anything will eventually lose everything.

The monument designation has also galvanized a culture of strong family-oriented citizens in two counties in the southwest. These southern Utah residents have drawn their line in the sand. Where once only 20 would show for a community meeting, now come 800 at a time. Many have given the widow’s mite.

These patriotic and valiant citizens need your help. The fight for our property, our way of life, our culture, our American values, is far from over. A legal defense fund has been established to collect the resources necessary to overturn the monument designation, the confiscation of property rights, the protection of RS2477 access rights, and every other injustice we will face in this fight. We know the Grand Staircase-Escalante designation is a test case, and if not stopped here, every American will be looking down the same barrel we now face. Even if you are a CEO living in metropolis, what is ahead for this country no American can escape.

Standing in the wake of Escalante we are reminded of the words of Edmund Burke: "The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."

Editors’ Note: For a complete copy of the Chamberlain article go to www.libertymatters.org. For more information about the issues facing landowners in the monument area contact Mark Habbeshaw at (435)644-8091. To make a contribution to the Color County Legal Defense Fund, please send your support to 260 East 300 South, Kanab, Utah 84741.