Last week, one major item was being discussed by members of both the Park City Council and the Summit County Council—that was climate change and its impacts on both the environment and Park City’s resort industry.
County council members expressed their feelings in a letter they’re sending to the Bureau of Land Management. Meanwhile, the city council talked about revising the schedule to reduce their carbon footprint.
The council has previously announced that city operations would achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2022.
The net-zero goal for the entire city was 2032. Now, they’re pushing that deadline to 2030—which the city hopes will be the year it is once again hosting the winter Olympics.
Council member Becca Gerber said that objective was warmly received by the city staff and in public input last Thursday.
“Such great feedback from our community that are telling us to go ahead and push it. We’re hearing from our sustainability department that they feel comfortable pushing. That really, we need to do this. With the reports that have come out recently from our federal government, and from different groups of scientists that there is an urgency that is only growing greater. We have a real opportunity to lead amongst ski towns and to provide an example for different ways that we can reach our goals. Become a truly net-zero carbon neutral community. We heard from business entrepreneurs with ideas of how we can reach our goal. We heard from ranchers.”
Meanwhile, county council members drafted a letter to be sent to the BLM, about prospective Resource Management Plans for Grand Staircase Escalante and the Bears Ears Monuments—both significantly reduced under a directive from President Trump.
The council has already agreed to support a lawsuit against the reductions.
Last week, council members asked Deputy County manager Janna Young to add language to the letter saying that, given the findings of the recent Climate Assessment report, climate change and warming could kill off the ski industry.
Glenn Wright said that fossil-fuel production doesn’t belong in the monuments.
“Last year I had dinner with a Garfield county commissioner. The point he made to me was that he was really mad at President Clinton for establishing Grand Staircase-Escalante because it prevented them from opening a gigantic coalmine in Garfield county and Kane county. That was a negative for him. For me, if there was no other reason whatsoever to establish that monument, that would’ve been a good idea. Because we do need to keep that coal in the grand.”
Council member Roger Armstrong said that the efforts in Utah, and in other states, to “claw back federal land” results in thinking that is lazy and short-sighted and overlooks the economic benefits of tourism.
“Many of the counties, in the southeastern part of this state are struggling economically. They’re casting about trying to find a way to remain economically sustainable. The old habits die hard. They remember the days when those were sustainable, but the coalmine that Glenn is referencing would not be economically sustainable today because industry is moving away from coal. They would be faced with the same kind of challenges except they would have an open pit that was used for a coal mine that now cannot be recovered for other purposes. It would kill alternative sources of energy that might contribute to our economy. Whether it’s solar farms, wind farms.”
He said the county was affected by the Uintah Basin, when the Tesoro pipeline was proposed and jeopardized water quality in the Weber River. And the Basin still affects this area.
“If you drove through the Uintah basin four years ago it smelled like San Pedro, California. It was choking with methane and other byproducts of drilling and extraction. That warms the atmosphere, that has an impact on our snowpack. That has an impact on the entire water system of the Wasatch Front. Which flows through our county. So those extractive industries, not just the material coming out and being burnt by people in other way. The actual setting up of drilling rigs, the trucks going through it all has an impact on our environment and our snowpack.”
