COLUMN: Reject ski area growth
When asking Cache County citizens why they choose to live here, a large proportion will invariably cite the rural atmosphere and high quality of life.
We recognize Cache County has not yet hurled itself into the infinite spiral of development that has swallowed and destroyed so many other communities across the country. Many of these causalities, unfortunately, are along the Wasatch Front.
Under the guise of ski resort development, Wasatch and Salt Lake County planners have elected to sell their heritage and birthright, and arbitrarily declared the Wasatch Mountains, as we know them, shall not exist for future generations. Snowbasin, Park City and “The Canyons” are now euphemisms for bulldozers and asphalt, displacing vegetation, soil, water and wildlife. This expansion occurred despite a declining population of downhill skiers, and is more related to elite, four-season recreational development than skiing.
Unfortunately, certain Cache County officials are determined to ensure a similar fate for our communities. Powder Mountain Reserve Holdings, a Park City developer, seeks a radical expansion of Powder Mountain Resort including a rezoning of more than 10,000 acres to facilitate condos, townhouses, golf courses and several new lifts.
Attendant to this project would be an improvement and expansion of the dirt road from Avon to Liberty. PMRH has also been reported as possibly building a new reservoir for snowmaking machines, drawing water sources that feed farmers and ranchers down the Bear River.
Apparently developers receive first priority over farmers and ranchers in the hierarchy of democracy. Or maybe it’s just those with deep pockets. The most incriminating statement comes from Brent Ferrin, representing PMRH, who said, “Ultimately, Powder Mountain will be in the same league as Deer Valley.” That thought should give all Cache County citizens serious pause. Do we wish to trade our enviably rural present for a Deer Valley future?
Despite the five-to-one rejection from the Planning Commission, the County Council has signaled intent to approve the project, raising deep questions of what our democracy has become. Commission Chairman Lamar Clements said PMRH officials even requested to write the necessary rezoning ordinance, leaving the Cache County government to simply rubber-stamp it.
Clements said, “We’re more concerned if the proposed zone is good for citizens and the county.”
In the era of big money, Clements’ admirably simple definition of civil service is a radical and subversive concept.
Commissioner Grant Nelson, the single member to vote in favor, has a different concept of public duty. “The people in Paradise and Avon have the mentality of … unincorporated Cache County. They think, ‘We’re here on our four of five acres and there’s not room for anything else.'”
Ferrin also chimed in on the collective intelligence of local citizens by observing, “Their fears are just fears, not realities.”
The Cache Valley Green Party applauds the residents of Avon and Paradise who don’t see any “room” for this boondoggle in their mountains, and are willing to say so.
Perhaps inadvertently, Clements, Nelson and Ferrin have embodied the archetypal question facing rural communities across the nation, and that which faces us. Who controls development in Cache Valley – private development interests or the will of the community?
Citizens with a vested stake in our long-term integrity or transient economic opportunists, salivating at the prospect of another bucolic landscape to profitably transform and subvert? Powder Mountain won’t be Ferrin’s last conquest. His proud announcement, “If we can’t do it in Cache, we’ll start developing in Weber,” is the same blackmail tactic developers always have used to place towns in fiscal competition with one another.
For our leaders to swallow the tax revenue argument and slick boosterism is to accept the same cynical, ad hoc, self-defeating argument that has justified too many destructive developments. Furthermore, even if tax revenue were the sole consideration, most of the land is in Weber County, and Cache County’s gain is uncertain. At the least, utilities, roads and services must be provided, including new sewer connections and a fire substation.
Overcoming out-of-town interests with deep pockets is a harsh challenge for any community. However, recent letters to the editor from residents of Avon and Paradise show that, liberal or conservative, defending our community is a common value, and is now imperative if we wish to not become simply another upscale ski resort town.
The Standard Examiner wrote in an editorial, “If history is any guide, that expected $9 million in tax revenue will be too much money for government to turn its back on.”
The Standard forgot one thing – Cache County citizens, vested with its sovereignty, can forbid our county government from auctioning our landscape to the highest bidder on the fiscal treadmill. We can send the developers packing. We can turn down the legalized bribery in favor of clean water, farms and pastures, verdant wildflower fields, and a night sky to die for.
The choice is ours. Show up at the County Council hearing on Tuesday, look your elected officials in the eye and insist that your backyard is not for sale – say no to the Powder Mountain expansion.
Rob Morrison of the Cache Valley Green Party contributed to this column.