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Letter: Rep. Stewart, and his bill, should be defeated

(Steve Griffin | The Salt Lake Tribune) Rep. Chris Stewart, R-Utah, makes his opening remarks during his town hall meeting at the West Valley City Hall in West Valley City Wednesday May 2, 2018.

Rep. Chris Stewart has a clear pattern of hostility toward public lands, conservation laws, threatened wildlife and democratic processes. The latest example is his HR5597, written by Washington County commissioners, and misleadingly-titled “Desert Tortoise Habitat Conservation Plan Expansion Act.”

This legislation would force construction of the controversial Northern Corridor highway through the heart of the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve. This Reserve was established through a Habitat Conservation Plan under the Endangered Species Act. The purpose of the reserve is to protect habitat for threatened Mojave desert tortoises and other vulnerable species as mitigation for the massive, ongoing human development on those habitats elsewhere.

HR5597 would abrogate the HCP, renege on the county’s previous commitment to protect the reserve, and destroy and fragment reserve habitat. It would also violate conservation provisions, adopted after an extensive environmental review and public involvement process, in the final BLM Plans for both the Red Cliffs and Beaver Dam Wash National Conservation Areas. And it would allow the county to revise the HCP for another twenty five years under its own biased anti-conservation terms.

Rep. Stewart’s legislation would substitute crass congressional fiat for the current legal processes under the National Environmental Policy Act and ESA for an objective environmental analysis, fair evaluation of feasible alternatives, application of scientific information and meaningful opportunities for public involvement with respect to the county’s requests. HR5597 deserves defeat in Congress, as does its author at the polls in November.

Richard Spotts, St. George