A Democrat in a sea of red fighting for public lands

Being a Democrat in a sea of red is not what most Democrats would want to do. But that’s exactly what former Democratic Utah Attorney General Paul Van Dam agreed to do to help protect Washington County’s Red Cliffs Desert Reserve and Red Cliffs NCA. He agreed to travel to D.C. to testify in a May 22 Federal Lands Subcommittee hearing against Congressman Stewart’s H.R. 5597, which would force a highway through the protected areas. With the 115th Congress House of Representatives being 55 percent Republican and the House Federal Lands Subcommittee tilted to the right and under the House Natural Resources Committee chaired by Utah’s Congressman Rob Bishop — a leader committed to undermining our public lands — it did not seem a pleasant endeavor for Van Dam.

Van Dam was asked by Conserve Southwest Utah, Washington County’s only conservation organization on which he currently serves as a board member and advisor, to carry their message to D.C. for the May 22 hearing. The organization has been tracking and opposing the highway for many years. Their testimony presented by Van Dam challenged Stewart’s bill head on in an effort to protect the threatened Mojave Desert tortoise and other threatened or endangered species in an area established in 1996 for that purpose.

This was not Van Dam’s first involvement with this issue. He served as Conserve Southwest Utah’s executive director from 2008 to 2010 when the nascent organization was known as Citizens for Dixie’s Future. During his time as executive director, he had to deal with another bill that was trying to force the highway, too, but the sponsors, Senator Robert Bennett and Congressman Jim Matheson, withdrew the highway language before the bill was included in an Omnibus Public Land Management Act bill passed in 2009. The omnibus bill gave the BLM direction to identify several road routes but not necessarily “approve” the highway. In fact, prior to their withdrawing the language, Van Dam had had a very long and contentious discussion with Matheson’s staff about the issue and the fact that the organization would not support the bill with the highway included. Matheson’s staff person stated that the language was not a big deal, but here we are ten years later fighting the same battle.

Local leaders say the highway has been in the plans for years, but the current route doesn’t even match what was first proposed in the 2006 bill, so it’s difficult to determine what route they feel has been in the long-term plans. Nor do minutes from early Red Cliffs Desert Reserve meeting minutes and a statement by first reserve administrator Dr. William Mader support leaders’ assertion that the highway has been planned for many years. The Reserve/NCA’s Habitat Conservation Plan clearly states no new roads.

Republicans were loaded for bear at the May 22 hearing to support a bill that would effectively cut environment laws, ESA and NEPA, out of the process, setting a terrible precedent. Nine of the subcommittee members are Democrats but failed to show up with the exception of ranking member Congresswoman Hanabusa and Congressman Lowenthal. Of course, less Democratic members present meant less opportunity for them to ask Van Dam questions to help him bolster his and his organization’s position, while Congressman Stewart’s subcommittee supporters peppered county commissioner Dean Cox with plenty of softball questions giving him the opportunity to push the county’s agenda and Stewart’s bill with Van Dam having little opportunity to challenge Cox’s “facts.”

Stewart ran another bill in 2017, H.R. 2423, “Washington County, Utah, Public Lands Management Implementation Act” that also attempted to force the highway through the Reserve/NCA. It passed in the Natural Resources Committee on a 19–15 vote.

This statement from the Natural Resources Committee H.R. 2423 markup statement caught my eye: “St. George’s rapidly growing population is straining current infrastructure and forcing local officials to develop new transportation alternatives.” Now, maybe it’s just me, but if this highway has been in the plans for decades as proponents assert, why does the bill’s statement reference “forcing local officials to develop new transportation alternatives”? This statement from the committee’s dissenting vote comment supports how Van Dam and many in Washington County’s conservation community felt about H.R. 2423: “We are opposed to H.R. 2423 because it threatens the balancing act between conservation and development and is a misrepresentation of congressional intent; the purpose of the RCNCA is conservation, not a conduit for traffic.”

The 2017 bill was placed on the House calendar in September 2017 but had no movement after that. Now Stewart is back again, this time with a “sweetener” that he hopes will move this bill along. The new bill’s sweetener is the addition of over 6,000 acres of land to the west of Bloomington, named Zone 6, that would be additional Reserve tortoise habitat. That land would be used to mitigate for using land in the existing Reserve/NCA for the highway.

Stewart’s bill also proposes to have Zone 6 serve as a “land bank” and here’s what the bill states: “The Secretary shall manage the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve, Zone 6 as a land bank to provide mitigation credits for future disturbances of the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve, including utility disturbances and the construction of the Northern Transportation Corridor.”

So exactly what does this mean? What “future disturbances” do the author and our county commissioners along with other leaders, who, let’s face it, penned the legislation for the congressman, mean? This language is so audacious and unclear that anyone in their right mind would reject it. Does it mean that the existing five Reserve/NCA zones would be open for development just by balancing that with acres from the new Zone 6? That’s certainly how it appears to me.

There is much more in the bill (congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/5597) that I could challenge and which Van Dam and CSU did in their official testimony, but I’ll let readers read the bill for themselves and come to their own conclusions.

Although Van Dam was testifying for CSU, a key point he made referenced a letter submitted to Congressman Bishop by the Desert Tortoise Council, the definitive desert tortoise organization containing biologists dedicated to furtherance of the tortoise. Their letter clearly states that the council believes that construction of this new highway would create new impacts and threats that cannot be mitigated by enlarging the existing reserve. In fact, the area proposed as mitigation, Zone 6, is already a protected area under law due to the presence of the threatened Mojave Desert tortoise, which the Council argues should be listed as endangered because of a diminished population.

Van Dam made the point that undermining Southern Utah’s Red Cliffs Desert Reserve and NCA sets a very bad precedent nationally, but apparently, other subcommittee members, some of whom have NCAs in their states, care little about those important lands or due to the subcommittee being lopsided decided their time would be better spent on other activities.

But meeting challenges aside, the preparation by CSU and other partnering organizations did result in a well-written testimony and two sign-on letters — one for organizations and one for citizens — that were submitted to the subcommittee in addition to Van Dam’s oral testimony. Forty-eight conservation and environmental organizations signed on to the organization letter, and over 200 residents of the area signed on to the citizen sign-on letter.

All of CSU’s and Van Dam’s good work supports Washington County residents who oppose a highway through the reserve/NCA. Local informal polls reveal that 75 percent of participants oppose the road. That is in keeping with the 75 percent who voiced opposition in written comments at the county’s 2018 Transportation Expo.

So in the end, CSU, through its champion Paul Van Dam — a lone Democrat in a vast sea of red — communicated the thoughts that many have. A highway planned through a protected area, while using another protected area to serve as mitigation, is not only a bad idea; it’s a terrible idea and deserves to be stopped. The May 22 hearing is not the only opportunity CSU and others will have to fight this. It was but one of many battles ahead.

Articles related to “A Democrat in a sea of red fighting for public lands”