This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
A bill in Congress that would allow public lands that are part of Salt Lake City's fragile watershed to be sold to developers of a ski gondola connecting two canyons is the worst kind of federal interference. That Utah's Republican Sens. Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee and Reps. Jason Chaffetz and Rob Bishop are sponsoring the bill reeks of hypocrisy.
The Republican mantra is that the federal government is too big and intrudes too much into the lives of Americans and their local governments. But obviously corporate interests trump all those concerns for Utah's quartet of GOP legislators in Washington, who are pushing this initiative with no public input whatsoever.
The bill, the Wasatch Range Recreation Access Enhancement Act, ignores the opposition of Salt Lake City's public works department to the plan to link Canyons Resort in Park City with Solitude resort in Big Cottonwood Canyon, the source of drinking water for Salt Lake City residents.
The legislation would remove protection from 30.3 acres of National Forest land in Big Cottonwood Canyon and allow the parcel to be sold to a subsidiary of Talisker Mountain Inc., a Canadian company that owns Canyons Resort. The company wants to construct a tram to take eight-passenger gondolas from the Canyons resort over a ridge into Big Cottonwood, then over the canyon road to a Solitude lift.
A company spokesman makes the stunning claim that the tram would be good for the environment because skiers would no longer have to drive from Canyons to Solitude, so traffic would decrease. Not surprisingly, nothing is mentioned about the added ski traffic in the sensitive watershed, except to hail it as an economic boon to the state.
The U.S. Forest Service, recognizing the fragility of the Cottonwood canyons, in 2003 prohibited ski area expansion in the central Wasatch Mountains. So the developers are disingenuously calling it a "transportation initiative" instead of an expansion. Pure hogwash.
The bill should be called the Talisker Mountain Development Act.
Members of a ski and snowboard industry subcommittee of the Governor's Office of Economic Development unanimously signed a letter opposing the legislation and the sale.
Rep. Jim Matheson, Utah's lone congressional Democrat, who has proposed protecting more lands in the Central Wasatch as wilderness, says he will not vote for the bill and predicted it would not pass Congress. We can only hope that is true.