December 1996: The New National Monument: taking the long view

by Jim Stiles

         I was one of those who met President Clinton's Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument announcement with mixed feelings. Certainly, if I had to choose, I would have sided with Clinton and I hope the new monument puts an end to the Andalex Coal Mine silliness, once and for all. But I worry that, like other beautiful parts of the West that have received a lot of attention, hordes of well-meaning recreationists will descend upon the place and ultimately love it to death. It's happening every day.

     I feel sorry for the residents of Kanab and Kane County, not because they have been deprived of vital jobs and revenue that they think Andalex would have provided...it wouldn't have.

     No...I feel bad that they, like so many other rural communities across the West, continue to delude themselves with these kinds of pie-in-the-sky schemes as a way to prosperity. Times are changing and I don't like it any more than they do. But coal mines are not their salvation.

     I read an assessment recently in the Salt Lake Tribune of the coal potential for the Kaiparowits Plateau by State Geologist M. Lee Allison. He told the Energy, Natural Resource and Agriculture Interim Committee that the coal reserves inside the newly designated monument "could supply our needs for more than 400 years."

     Now think about that a minute. The coal on the Kaiparowits Plateau could keep us supplied until past the year 2396 AD.

     Does anyone with half a brain think that this planet is going to be depending on coal as a basic energy source in 400 years?

     Let's look at that concept in reverse. Imagine someone in the 16th Century proclaiming that he had enough leaches for bloodletting (the most common method at the time for treating practically every ailment) until well past the year 2000 AD.

     Do you see what I mean? If human beings are still on this planet in 400 years, it will only be because they will have become a hell of a lot smarter than we are now. They will have learned to control and reduce the human population and they will have learned to develop cleaner and more efficient energy sources. And they will have learned, hopefully by studying the mistakes we made, that prosperity is measured by the quality of life and the respect we have for Life, not by the goddamn bottom line of some multinational corporation.

     So let's throw out this 400 years of coal concept at the outset. If the mine were to be developed, it might have a useful life of 50 years or so. What would have been the benefit to Kane County?

     Most of the jobs would not have gone to local residents. But there would have been a demand for new construction to house all the new workers who would have moved to Kanab from elsewhere. Local contractors would have benefitted for a while. The massive coal trucks running through their town would have resulted in the accelerated destruction of the road surface. Repair work and resurfacing would have been an economic plus. And the local funeral home would have benefited as well from the fatalities that were sure to occur when those trucks started running from the mine to Hurricane, Utah, every five minutes, 24 hours a day, for the next 50 years.

     Other businesses, mostly in the service industry, would have cropped up as well. Again, it would have provided short term construction revenues and all those wonderful minimum-wage jobs that the service industry creates. Most likely Kane County parents might have lived to see their children serve Big Macs to the newly arrived coal miners as they return home at the end of the day.

     And for all these positive aspects, there would be a downside. The town  would swell with strange and unfamiliar faces, often people who are clueless about what life in a small town is all about. Congestion would increase. Crime would increase. Old timers would fondly remember the days when their kids played baseball in the street and they knew and trusted their neighbors and they'd wonder whatever happened to their quiet little community.

     But the bewilderment won't just be a result of the mine. Another factor will turn Kanab inside-out, whether the mine is ever developed or not. Quite simply, the rural West is about to be urbanized. We are sitting on the tip of the iceberg. The U.S. population is expected to increase by 12 million people by the year 2000 and swell to 335 million by 2025.

     California alone is expected to grow by 17.7 million in the next 30 years and half of that number will come from immigration. Where are Americans going to flee to? The rural American West. It's happening here, it will happen in Kanab, it will happen in small communities from the 100th meridian to the Sierra Nevada. And all the grandiose dreams and schemes of coal mines and oil fields will not alter that scenario.

     The new residents will enjoy the peace and quiet of small town life, relative to what they left behind, but they will soon also demand the services and comforts they left behind. And the costs of providing those services will increase as well. And all the old timers will wonder whatever happened to their little community (deja vu?).

     The people who will profit from such booms, whether they are coal mine-generated or urban exodus-generated fall into two groups. Foremost, they will be the out-of-town investors who will see a profit to be made and will have the resources to exploit the opportunity. They will have the cash and the capital to invest in new business. Second, there is always the small group of local citizens who are already wealthy, who will have the resources to take advantage of the boom.

     But for the most part, remember this: When the governing body of an economically-depressed community sets a course of action to improve it, the advantages of those actions will mostly fall upon the citizens of that community's future, not the ones who are struggling to survive in the present.

     One thing is certain. All those millions of displaced/relocated Americans who will move to the rural West in the next century will descend on places like Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in droves. It may take a while. It may be decades before places like the Kaiparowits start to feel crowded. But it'll happen...someday it's going to happen.

     And so I'm ambivalent about the Monument. I'm grateful for the protection it will offer in the short-term. I hope it puts an end to ridiculous notions like Andalex. But I worry what damage the spotlight of such a designation means when we look a bit farther down the road.