“The problem with a beautiful place is that everyone with a car will want to come here,” said Dan Miller, leader of the volunteers who comprise the Sustainable Design Assessment Team, or SDAT. The group, made up of U.S. and Canadian planning experts, visited Cache Valley last week to explore ways to nourish - amid inevitable growth - the valley's economy, environment and cultural systems.
“These are the most difficult issues this country has ever faced,” said Miller.
The American Institute of Architects (AIA) selected Cache Valley to be the first of five communities nationwide to receive assistance from the inaugural SDAT program. The event, dubbed “Valley on the Verge” kicked off Tuesday with a bus tour and evolved into public study sessions and workshops. The team wrapped up its visit in the historic Wellsville Tabernacle with a set of recommendations from SDAT members.
A report due out in 30 days will thoroughly address growth issues including water and air quality, wetlands and wildlife habitat, open-space and agricultural preservation, and access to jobs and traffic congestion.
“It has to be planned,” Miller said. “If you just wait for it to happen it will cost more and it will not be the same place that you love - and you may not want to be here.”
E. Ann Clark, agriculture professor at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, urged northern Utahns to preserve farmland by using creative solutions, such as offering incentives or transferring development rights.
“Priority should be given for protection of the south corridor,” Clark said referring to the valley gateway near Wellsville and U.S. Highway 89/91, from 1000 West in Logan to State Route 101 in Wellsville.
Agriculture is more than a means of producing food, generating an income and raising a family, Clark said. It is associated with landscape management, promoting water infiltration and many other positive things for the environment.
“If you lose your agriculture to development, you're going to lose more than farm families,” Clark said. “You're going to lose environmental protection, as well.”
Diversifying agriculture enterprise would make it viable economically and impose a much-lesser ecological footprint than relying on one or two commodities, Clark said.
“You have a green, clean image that you can capitalize on,” Clark said urging locals to promote the market value of goods produced with a unified Cache Valley logo. “If they (tourists) come here, then you don't have to ship it out. And if they come in a bus, you don't have to deal with smog.”
Jay Nielson, Logan City community-development director, said the SDAT visit was cosponsored by the Cache Chamber of Commerce and valley municipalities that bought into the effort with $15,000 to match grant money from the AIA.
Getting Cache Valley to buy into a long-term growth plan is the next goal, Nielson said.
“The one thing that's clear is, we cannot solve any of these problems community-by-community," Nielson said. "We won't make any progress at all if it's business as usual and we continue to make our own isolated decisions.”
ajbrunson@comcast.net
