New West Microcosm #3

In my last entry I argued that there is a fundamental and irreconcilable difference in worldview between those clinging to the ideas of the Old West and those advancing the New West. If I am right, I am not going to change anybody's mind by arguing the salience of any particular point. Like how a gravel pit is a destructive and economically backward way to use the SITLA land in the Torrey-Teasdale gateway to Capitol Reef National Park community.

Instead of arguing I want to envision other possible uses of the SITLA land currently in line to be turned into a hole in the ground.

New pit in paradise

Oddly, there is another ongoing pit being dug in sight of my home. I understand it is on private land so perhaps there is nothing that could have been done to prevent this scar. To the Old West mindset the land is only a resource to be dug up, mined, logged, drained or grazed. If it can't be used up, it is not a resource. In this case, a private land owner was offered a lease to mine and accepted the offer in order to make some income from the land. Sadly, they have also ruined their land and undoubtedly badly damaged their personal balance sheet. That is the way of unsustainable extraction. A little income today in turn for the long term liability of hole in the ground, mine tailings and ruined land left for future generations to suffer.

The SITLA land could go another direction. Across the West, gateway towns to national parks are prospering. They are experiencing the best sustainable economic performance of any rural area. The areas committed to the boom and bust cycles of extraction industry lag further and further behind. Torrey Teasdale is at the juncture where it could become a model gateway community or decide, for some misguided sense of custom, to dig itself up.

Future gravel pit?

The SITLA land was originally designated to be used for residential development as the most valuable. This designation mysteriously was dropped. One suggestion is that there is a lack of water. One glance at the semi-arid environment and one is inclined to shrug and say it seems to be so. But it is not so. There is plenty of water. The problem is how we use it. 85% of the water in the state of Utah goes to agriculture and industry. Most to agriculture. And in high elevation Wayne County it all goes on hay, 24/7 from early spring to late fall the massive sprinklers never stop. It takes about one acre foot of water to take care of a one family for a year. Hay requires at least five acre feet for hay. Mostly more. And hay is a low cash value crop. The only way farmers can make a go of it is that the water is provided to them basically free and a few dollars per acre feet. But this is the same Colorado River drainage area water that Las Vegas sometimes pays $5,000 and acre foot for, Los Angeles as much as $10,000. Economically, it is almost catastrophically inefficient to waste the water pouring it on hay.

An economically arrangement with urban downstream users to lease the water rights, and save a little to use for homes on the SITLA land would be a vast improvement. There is plenty of water. Just don't pour it on hay. The water would need to be treated, but a wise land developer could arrange for the treatment of enough water for 20 or 30 homes easily, efficiently, economically. There is plenty of water. All that is lacking is the vision and will. The farmer would benefit, SITLA would come out ahead, the county would come out hugely ahead, the valley's natural integrity and beauty would be sustained, the home owners would be lucky to have such a location.

I would be happiest to move into a place like Torrey and close the gate behind me to any more development. An unjustifiably entitled position, to be sure, but a typical one. Now I see that my closing the gate is going to leave the land unprotected. Better to plan and develop the are with people who are there for the natural beauty.

In upcoming posts I want to talk about local town annexation, about the Wayne County airport (38U), and dark skies. I want to envision what this exceptional gateway community could be.

New West Microcosm #2 - a fundamental divide

I am proposing with these "microcosm" posts that the Torrey-Teasdale Fremont River valley is a microcosm of the divide between the Old West and the New West. The area is a microcosm for the economic strain between the Old West and New.  It is also a microcosm of the whole country ideologically and politically. There are elements in tiny Wayne County of the pervasive and archaic practices of the extraction industry versus the modern information economy and of the non-economic political divide between Trump followers and progressives. The polarization in the county around the proposed gravel pit brings the divide into stark relief.

SITLA land in Wayne County

One would be forgiven for assuming the question of the gravel pit proposed by Wayne County commissioners for the front porch of residential Teasdale in Wayne County was one of economics. Again, its a microcosm example of the greater strife in the entire nation. Matthew Yglesias at Vox argued recently that Trump supporters are not primarily motivated by an "economic anxiety" as is commonly assumed. Instead Yglesias suggests they harbor a racial resentment and are understandably upset about their declining white privilege. Just as Trump people face that the social and cultural clout of nonwhite people has grown in the United States, locals in Wayne County are facing changes in their custom and culture of living off the land by extraction (mining, logging, irrigating, damming and draining streams, and grazing, grazing, grazing).  Locals' values are being challenged by the clout of move-ins who value the land for its natural, intact, spiritual and wild beauty. The fundamental divide over values and cultural identity is surprisingly deep and wide, like the canyons in this country. The argument over the gravel pit is a case in point and is not a simple matter of economics. Economically, locals are often their own worst enemy. An intractable sense of "way of life" and "custom and culture" gets in their way.

The Wayne County move-ins tend to have urban, cosmopolitan backgrounds and worldviews. They are often highly educated and progressive politically. They prize diversity, tolerance, pluralism, and most of all, here high on the relatively intact Colorado Plateau, environmental protection and conservation. Locals, on the other hand, tend to divide the world into us vs. them and are intolerant of anything perceived as a threat to their existing lifestyle. As the conflict over the proposed gravel pit in our front yard reveals, there is a bitter, acrimonious divide characterized by fundamental and irreconcilable difference in worldview between the average local and the average move-in. Much the same as for the average Republican and Democrat today. Wayne County is a microcosm of the political divide in the West and in the nation.

In upcoming posts I want to create a vision for a win-win approach to protecting the National Park gateway community of Torrey-Teasdale. What to do with the SITLA land? What are possibilities for annexation? Of improving and growing the tax base? Of utilizing the airport? The scenery? Our dark skies? Of getting two of three county commissioners to have a more progressive point of view?

And what to do about the fundamental divide?

New West Microcosm

Serving the world

Shauna Sudbury is the recent owner of Castle Rock Coffee in Torrey. Shauna is a "move-in," like Kirsten and me, and we like to go to her place for breakfast to say hi, grab a baked good, a couple of egg sandwiches and lattes--Kirsten always gets an extra dark roast coffee to top off the already large lattes--and sit out front with a view of Torrey and Boulder Mountain. Castle Rock sits at the junction of two of the most scenic highways in the world and in the summer the locals are outnumbered here by the tourists. As we ate a loud group of eight Harleys pulled up, many with a couple on board. As the painful roar subsided and the helmets came off German floated our way. A Boss 5.0 Mustang pulled up with the top down. Again German. In a few moments a BMW motorcycle with a sidecar pulled up. This time Italian.

The Europeans know what is here and come from around the globe to enjoy it. Perhaps they know it better than the locals. I mentioned us move-ins. In Wayne County there are move-ins and there are locals and between the two there is a deep divide.

The gravel pit I mentioned in the previous blog remains in Wayne County Commissioners plans in spite of fierce opposition and a backed up chain of lawsuits. To my mind, like all the move-ins, a gravel pit in our Torrey-Teasdale front yard is a bizarre and intensely unwelcome offense. That we take offense in turn deeply offends the locals. Gravel pits, and extractive industry in general they say, is their way of life, their custom, their culture.

The world does not come to gateway communities like ours to suffer gravel pits.

When I built my home in Torrey in 1999 I was concerned that I would be the leading edge of a flood of baby boomers like me doing and seeking the same thing. I figured that if too many moved in I would have to sell and go find another quieter place. Fortunately too many did not move in because I have grown deeply in love with this place. And now I am changing my tune about welcoming more move-ins. I can see we need more move-ins to protect the place from itself. And I have a vision for what this valley could be that would be a very good thing.

I see Torrey-Teasdale as a microcosm of the New West and the win-win way of what it could be.

More about that in upcoming posts.

Killing the golden goose

In Wayne County, Utah this week the decision was made to go ahead and put a gravel pit in the county's most desirable residential neighborhood. It is backward economically and an amoral thing to do and I am wondering how such a thing happens.

Double rainbow, and then some, in Wayne County

The gravel pit is on Utah School and Institutional Trust Land Administration (SITLA) land, one of the myriad checkerboard pieces of state land that is scattered geometrically but not politically across the state. SITLA had previously earmarked the parcel of land in Teasdale as best suited to sell for residential use. The land all around the parcel is zoned by Wayne County as residential and agricultural. The property values in the area are high and getting higher and are much greater than any other place within 100 miles. That is because the valley Teasdale and Torrey are situated in boasts of an unparalleled natural beauty. Torrey is the gateway community to Capitol Reef National Park and was considered at one point to be included in the Park given its environmental splendor. Many of the residents in the valley are so called "move-ins" and second home owners, people who are here for the scenery and outdoor recreation. I am one. As such, we pay full property taxes unlike most of our "local" neighbors who take 90% property tax greenbelt exemptions. Because of this, a minority of the property owners in the county pay a majority of the taxes. All the same, we are greatly resented.

I was told a story a couple of years ago about a public Wayne County Commission meeting held to review the county's bi-annual resource utilization plan. Most of  Capitol Reef National Park is in Wayne County and the Park superintendent was invited. The superintendent thumbed through the proposed plan and noticed that the National Park was not mentioned as a county resource. He asked the commissioners about the omission. The commissioners reportedly stared at him, stony faced, before one finally responded, "Son, you can't mine it, you cannot log it, you can't graze it, hell you cannot even get the water out of there. It ain't a resource." The superintendent, dumbfounded, walked out. Rural politicians are known to believe that all conservation is bad and all extraction is good. It is an archaic belief, one that is on the wrong side of history, and one that holds their counties back.

SITLA is about raising money for public schools. As good state residents their policy is to go along with county zoning and leadership wishes. For instance, when the Wayne County Commissioners objected to The Nature Conservancy buying a conservation easement from SITLA on lands within the county, an easement to protect the endangered sage grouse, SITLA relented and did not sell the easement. Never mind the imperiled sage grouse. If Wayne County were to say the Teasdale parcel is zoned residential and that a gravel pit would be absurd there, as it will be, SITLA would agree. That is until recently. When challenged by the Utah County Association, SITLA backed off and no longer pressed for a zoning variance from the county. And even though the county would make more money collecting property taxes from the parcel should SITLA sell it for residential use, the county insists on a gravel pit. Local residents have banded together with petitions, packed the meeting halls, sent in letters, filed lawsuits, and even offered to subsidize the gravel pit contractor to use another site, all to be stonewalled by Wayne County commissioners.

What is going on here? Is it a simple minded ideology that all conservation is bad and all extraction good? That is hard to believe, but it could be. Or are there backroom dealings? The politically connected gravel pit extraction company, Brown Brothers Construction (BBC), is said to want the gravel pit in Teasdale. Residents have noted that there are closer, more appropriate SITLA lands available for gravel that are not in a residential community and that would save Brown Brothers money, but BBC does not budge. It is said that the Utah County Association is Koch brothers supported. My guess is that BBC is just a small fish in an even smaller pond. My bet is that politicians at the level of U.S. Senator Hatch have passed down the word that all resistance to extraction is to be squashed and that SITLA and Wayne County are happily obeying, smiling on the way to the bank with their Koch gratuities in one hand and goose feathers in the other.

Moving back

I started this site to see if I could generate some traffic and to see what online ad revenue was about. In 10 days I made two cents. Thus I am moving back to my original Wordpress site where I will be eclectic once again in subject including conservation, New West, and astro and landscape photography galleries. See ya there:

Thots and Shots

NIMBY, better yet, nowhere

Red Rock gateway or "Gravel Pit Point?"

At the Bicknell Bottoms in Wayne County, southbound Utah Highway 24 turns west and passes through the Red Gate of the red rock Velvet Cliffs on the north and a toe of Boulder Mountain on the south. Here it enters the gorgeous Fremont River valley and the gateway communities to Capitol Reef National Park. I was at a gathering of friends and neighbors to celebrate the life and mourn the loss of the good man who built my home in the valley in Torrey. John came down from the city in the late 90's to build my home, fell in love with the surroundings, and never left.

It was there, talking about John and why he loved this place, and why we did too, that I learned that Wayne County is proposing to rezone nearby undisturbed land to allow the building of a gravel pit. Extractive industry like this is a good example of Old West thinking that is having a hard time going away. In the Old West the land was seen for the taking. Plunder and prosper. Mining, logging, grazing, drilling, road building, damming and stream draining, all were viewed as improvement and progress. In the New West we have learned, or are beginning to learn, that the land is often more valuable when left in its natural state. By value in this case I am speaking of economics. But there are other ethical and cultural values that are part of the New West way of seeing and being.

I changed my voting district years ago to go with my property in rural Wayne County primarily in order to vote against Mike Noel, a powerful political paragon of the Old West in Utah. If I told Mike I was against building a gravel pit in this gorgeous gateway valley he would ask me how I got here. Did I drive on a road? Where did I think the road came from? Mike talks in disingenuous ways like that but he is right, I drive here on a road. But does that mean we need another gravel pit, and a gravel pit in a paradise like this? When I point out to Noel that today in Utah all of agriculture, natural resources and mining, including oil and gas, add up to less than four percent of Utah's economy he simply denies the facts. He says something like, "Everybody has to eat." He is right, we all eat, but he is wrong on the state of the State. Extraction is a very small part of the modern economy. The woman on the bike in the tourist photo above is looking almost directly at where the gravel pit would be. She is very likely from somewhere in the other 96% of the economy that live and work and play in Utah because it is beautiful and she is not here to gaze at the destruction of extraction.

When I object to opening a nearby gravel pit am I just pushing the problem elsewhere by insisting "not in my backyard?" I don't think so. In economics there is a useful concept called comparative advantage. In this case it would say there are some places that are better for gravel pits and some places that are better as gateway communities to National Parks and that when each place is put to its highest use, and not to every possible use, the world is a better place. But the concept still assumes a gravel pit needs to be dug somewhere. But does it? Aren't there enough gravel pits? Are there better substitutes from existing resources, like the scrapings that come from existing road resurfacing? Building a gravel pit in the Fremont River Valley is a good Old West example of a private party, in this case a construction company and the politicians like Noel it supports, benefiting at the public's expense. It is a special interest wins, we lose proposition. A new gravel pit does not need to be here and in fact it does not need to be anywhere.

"War" on coal: moving assets the wrong way

Todd Wilkinson at the Jackson Hole News & Guide has a good piece out this week on Wyoming and their self-induced energy industry related wounds. Wilkinson identifies the strange "fist of defiance" the state Republicans raise when faced with the 21st century. It is a head scratcher for me until I accept that the politicians are wholly owned by the energy industry and behave like it. There is no other explanation.

High Speed Rail in the West: Bring in people instead of climate change

It is too bad. Wyoming citizens outside the Jackson Hole area might be inclined to believe that the only real industry is the extractive industry. It is one they can see, one their state has history in, and yet one that in the end has always treated the state badly. It is too bad because these folks could use some true statesmen to guide them out of the vicious cycle of boom and bust and and landscape laid to waste as a result.

Timothy Egan, a man of the West and astute observer and writer about the New West has an editorial in today's New York Times in which he wonders what is happening to his home town of Seattle. The West coast large cities from San Francisco north are boom towns. One result is real estate costs and congestion are spiraling up and out of control. What does Wyoming have? Plenty of real estate and very little congestion. In addition much of the state is still beautiful. If the right wing statesmen in charge of the place could look in a different direction, they might attract some of this business. But this would mean they need to protect the land instead of trying to graze, mine, damn, drill and log it. Old West is the wrong side of history. Wyoming, drop your energy extraction habit, quite trying to ship fossil fuel west to the coast. Try turning things the other way.

Instead of coal ports, how about, say, a high speed rail moving the real assets, people, in and out of your state?