Letter: Who really benefits in this 'best managed' state?

This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Gov. Gary Herbert and the Utah Legislature are proud to be the "best managed" state in the nation.

But I'm concerned that their decisions to spend more than $50 million on a coal port in Oakland, Calif., which no one there wants, to protect a coal industry that is in decline (according to the Huffington Post, coal has lost two-thirds of its value in the last five years), and to spend another $14 million attempting to pry U.S. public lands out of the hands of the feds, presumably for profitable development, at the expense of the American public, are both unwise and futile.

In the corporate world, these would be poor investments with extremely high risk. Considering that Utah can boast having considerable potential in renewable energies, e.g., solar (over 300 sunny days/year), wind (enough breezy days to generate power over 70 percent of the year), geothermal (among the largest geothermally active land in the U.S.), biodiesel, algae (active USU research program), and biomass (crops and manure), why aren't we investing in converting our coal labor force to develop these energy alternatives of the future?

So one must ask the question, who really benefits from these investments of taxpayer monies?

Michael Feldman, Ph.D.

Salt Lake City