Sedona AZ (July 27, 2016) – The following is a letter to the SedonaEye.com editor from Arizona Liberty which also sent the letter to the editor of Arizona Highways Magazine. This letter was written at the request of, and with the knowledge of, the Governor of Arizona as well as the leadership of the Arizona State Legislature:
[Note to AZ Highways Editor: This letter is written as a result of conversations between Arizona Governor Doug Ducey and Arizona Delegates to the RNC, Dwight and Andrea Kadar while at the Republican National Convention. You will see Dwight Kadar’s name as a signatory below in as much as he is a partner in Arizona Liberty who is responsible for the authoring of this letter to you and to the Governor and the leadership of the Arizona State Legislature].
*LETTER TO THE EDITOR*
July 27, 2016
Arizona Highways Magazine
2039 W. Lewis Avenue
Phoenix, AZ 85009
Phone: 800-543-5432
Editor, Ladies and Gentlemen:
In your August 2016 issue is found an article entitled “What’s New? Arizona is home to more that 20 sites that are administered by the National Park Service and several others that are run by the Bureau of Land Management. If proponents get their way, there could be three more.” by Kayla Frost
On page 9 (first full page of article), second column, subtitled “SEDONA VERDE VALLEY RED ROCK NATIONAL MONUMENT” (hereinafter the “SVVRRNM”) everything written by Ms. Frost after the first 23 words is misstated and misleading, as well as outdated by almost a year, not to mention ignorant of both state and federal law affecting the likelihood of the implementation of the SVVRRNM. This issue was decided last November, 2015.
Throughout the latter half of 2015, the 80,000 residents of the Verde Valley’s Red Rocks Country decided by an 86% majority, including 100% of it’s indigenous city councils and unincorporated township managers, that federally forced implementation of the proposed Sedona-Verde Valley Red Rocks National Monument designation was NOT in our best interests for a number of valid reasons. Now, we have to read in your current August issue an article by Kayla Frost which undermines the will of a vast majority of people who live here, not to mention the Arizona state officials mentioned below. The long hard fight to expose the downside of the Red Rock National Monument issue was led by hard-working government watchdog groups such as Arizona Liberty and Concerned Citizens For America, as well as Arizona Representative Bob Thorpe, Arizona Senate President Pro Tempore Sylvia Allen, United States Congressman Paul Gosar, the Arizona Game and Fish Department, and the Arizona State Land Department, all of whom were vehemently opposed to the SVVRRNM which was originally a concept of Sedona’s Keep Sedona Beautiful, the Sierra Club, and former City of Sedona Councilor Angela LeFevre. The latter parties supporting the SVVRRNM, in their zeal to get an Executive Order signed by President Barack Obama to implement the SVVRRNM proclamation, never mentioned a single downside fact to the public that should have been disclosed by their pro-National Monument designation movement. Once the opposition disclosed to the public the considerable potential downside consequences to the NM designation, it was doomed! Kayla Frost would have known this if she had done her homework instead of just latching on to the oft-repeated standard “protection of our beautiful natural resources heritage” argument which is false in so many ways.
First of all, the 160,000 acres mentioned in the Frost article is largely already managed as a U.S. National Forest or as U.S. Wilderness Area. What the proponents were trying to accomplish was to have the subject acreage re-designated to a different federal land management designation…not an all-together “first time ever” designation. The re-designation classification to a National Monument would have had draconian consequences for our Verde Valley.
Meanwhile, in November of 2015, Arizona 4th District U.S. Congressman Paul Gosar introduced legislation into the United States House of Representatives, H.R. 3946, entitled the “Protecting Local Communities from Executive Overreach Act,” which updates the 1906 Antiquities Act in order to protect property rights, water rights and jobs from Presidential abuse of the Antiquities Act of 1906.
H.R. 3946 was supported by all five Arizona Republicans and blocks two misguided monument proclamation efforts in the Grand Canyon Watershed and the Sedona-Verde Valley Red Rocks area, both of which had significant local opposition thanks to Arizona Liberty. The bill accomplished this task by explicitly prohibiting NM declarations in Coconino, Mohave and Yavapai counties by abusive Presidential executive fiat.
Congressman Gosar’s appropriations language request made a number of reforms to the 1906 Antiquities Act. This effort also explicitly prevents three misguided monument efforts in the Grand Canyon Watershed, the Sedona-Verde Valley Red Rocks area and in the Northwest Sonoran Desert from circumventing Congress, preventing public input and failing to comply with NEPA. Please take notice of the fact that the U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations Committee has now passed the Gosar-Stewart Amendment Blocking Proposed Grand Canyon Watershed and Sedona Monuments. This is now the law of the land!
Concurrently, Arizona Governor Ducey has signed Rep. Bob Thorpe’s bill, namely House Bill 2585, which is now law in our State, and which requires the Arizona State Land Department to “determine whether the limits of a parcel comprising a national monument” in our state “are confined to the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected by the national monument.” Please keep in mind that national monuments in the western U.S. average 175,000 acres in size whereas national monuments in the eastern U.S. average 50-100 acres (that is not a misprint)! Notwithstanding Angela LeFevre’s demonstrated inability to understand U.S. Constitutional Law, the State of Arizona does have the right and Constitutional sovereign authority to hold the federal government to the restrictive language contained within the very law that President Obama uses to create national monuments. Even the Arizona Game and Fish Commission has come out against the creation of more national monuments in Arizona.
We here in Arizona have already lost more than 100,000 acres of State Trust land to the creation of federal land management and oversight entities which have severely limited state land trust revenues that were earmarked to support our schools. The worst hypocrisy I’ve heard in years is the claim by the supporters of the subject three new National Monument designations that they are for education in our state. How does cutting the State’s ability to fund school programs help education?
Yet, the then proposed National Monument Proclamation (NM) effort morphed into one of demonization of Arizona legislators and agencies of Arizona State Government, of the professional environmental management practitioners working with AZL, of educated voters and sincerely concerned residents of the Verde Valley, not to mention of all the municipal and township Councils of the Verde Valley including the Mayor and five Councilors of the City of Sedona.
Nowhere was it ever mentioned in the Keep Sedona Beautiful/Sierra Club NM proposal that Sedona and the Village of Oak Creek can’t endure any more traffic congestion occasioned by greater hordes of tourists since we only have two paved passages into the area, State Routes 89A and 179. To make matters worse, entrance to Sedona from the north on 89A is further congested with traffic from Slide Rock State Park by people who are just forced to pass through Sedona and aren’t Sedona-bound tourists, while people coming from I-17 northbound are still channeled into a tortuous “one lane each way” funnel that barely moves on a weekend day. How will the National Park Service resolve this potentially catastrophic problem? KSB’s solution was to provide shuttle-bus parking lots in which the public would be required to park their cars in distant undersized parking lots in order to board a shuttle to whatever trailhead from which one would like to start his/her hike. Is this how the Feds would protect our community values?
Keep Sedona Beautiful and The Sierra Club both claimed that the then proposed National Monument Proclamation would prevent capricious land trades.
The opponents pointed out to the voters that there are several mechanisms available that can prevent lands trades at the state level, such as Conservancy Fiduciary Trusts like those used in the eastern U.S., notwithstanding that National Monuments can be partially or in their entirety rescinded, anyway, as has happened at the Grand Canyon. Meanwhile, the current Amendment 12 Resource Management Plan that the USFS operates under only allows for another 300 acres to be traded of the proposed 160,000 acre NM.
“Paralysis by Analysis and Management by Litigation” characterize federal land management while handcuffing local land resource stewards which results in one-size-fails-all consequences for western communities, and our nation. Meanwhile, Federal land management is demonstrably catastrophic. In a Forbes Magazine article dated 4/07/2009 by Terry L. Anderson and Reed Watson entitled “Public Land Mismanagement,” it is stated that “Decades of fire suppression by the Forest Service have disrupted natural fire cycles and turned many western forests into tinderboxes waiting to burn. Dense stands of spindly deadfall and underbrush now occupy land once characterized by open savannahs and large, widely spaced trees. One result is larger, more intense fires that burn the publicly owned forests to the ground. Indeed, by the Forest Service’s own estimates, 90 to 200 million acres of federal forests are at high risk of burning in catastrophic fire events. Bans on thinning and salvage harvesting have not only exacerbated the fire danger in public forests but it has also left them more susceptible to disease, insects such as bark beetles, and high winds…” Haven’t we seen the proof of this assertion right in front of our own eyes in the Rodeo-Chideski fire, the Wallow Fire, and the Brin’s Mesa and Slide Fires?
And, finally, and worst of all…Arizona Liberty had to face the relentless untruthful denial of Keep Sedona Beautiful and The Sierra Club, as follows:
The U.S. Supreme Court and Appellate Courts have consistently ruled that under the Property Clause of the U.S. Constitution, U.S. CONST., Art. IV, § 3, d. 2., and the the National Park Service Organic Act, 16 U.S.C. § 1 (1994), that the power of Congress over the public lands is without limitation.
Private and state lands subject to regulations under statutes pursuant to the extra-territorial application of the Property Clause must be within the perimeter area of a designated conservation unit or ENTIRELY SURROUNDED by federal lands (as would be Sedona and the Village of Oak Creek) under various management agencies. This is known as the “inholders rule.” Under the “inholders rule” a property owner within federal unit perimeters falls subject to potential regulation automatically. The “inholding rule” gives reasonable notice to potentially regulated parties that the application of agency rules may be extended “extra-territorially” towards them, but it does place an absolute limit on the extra-territorial extension of the Property Clause. Thus, the City of Sedona, Arizona, could have become the first and only municipality in the United States to be entirely surrounded by a National Monument which would subject it to the “inholder’s rule” which would have a similar effect to partial or quasi-martial law, if implemented.
Thus, the following question, from an ethical if not legal perspective, was presented to Keep Sedona Beautiful, The Sierra Club, and the pro-SVVRRNM designation websites, as follows:
Is it possible, that it could be interpreted under the above mentioned “inholding rule” that the federal jurisdiction within the Sedona-Verde Valley Red Rock National Monument would extend into the Village of Oak Creek and the unincorporated environs of the Verde Valley and possibly into the incorporated municipalities of Sedona, Camp Verde, Cottonwood and Clarkdale that would be immediately adjacent to the proposed SVVRRNM designated boundaries? If the “inholding rule” had been applied to the extra-territorial areas just mentioned if the NM proclamation had been signed by the President, the fact of local self-governance could have been impaired and we could have found the place in which we live, and that we love, under indirect federal authority. At the minimum, if the “inholding rule” does apply in our case if the subject National Monument designation is accomplished, this could give the Federal government a choke-hold on our local economy. The Sierra Club, KSB, Angela LeFevre, and the proponents of the SVVRRNM refused to answer this question in their presentations to all local City Councils and township managers.
All of us who fought and won this titanic struggle request that Arizona Highways Magazine either publish this letter, in full, or retract the subject article written by Kayla Frost.
Most Sincerely,
ARIZONA LIBERTY
J. Rick Normand, Partner
Mike Schroeder, Partner
Dwight Kadar, Partner
cc: Govenor Doug Ducey c/o Tom Van Flein, Chief of Staff
U.S. Congressman Paul Gosar
Arizona State Legislature Rep. Bob Thorpe
Arizona State Senate President Pro Tempore Syvia Allen
Arizona State Legislature Rep. Brenda Barton
Arizona State Land Department, Lisa A. Atkins, Commissioner
Arizona Game and Fish Department, Larry D. Voyles, Director
Read www.SedonaEye.com for daily news and interactive views!
Nice job and congratulations. Let us remain hopeful that through Arizona Liberty, our local government watch dog group, (see related articles “Arizona Takes A Necessary Right Turn!” and “How Much Abuse is Sedona’s Voting Public Willing to Take?”) we may look towards equal success in pursuit of city violations subject to investigation with the passage of SB 1487.
Sincerely,
Eddie S. Maddock
City of Sedona Legitimate Registered Voter
How many of you nutjobs actually read the piece in Arizona Highways? I did and it wasn’t worth making a stink about.
good
Response to Big Ideas –What? My interpretation paralleled the analysis of Arizona Liberty. So does that make us both nutjobs? I’m capable of living with that. Are you?
@Big Ideas
They needed to do that to prove to themselves and others how important they are……..kinda like a tea party circle jerk…
JRM
I see you listed you name first in the letter, the largest ego in the circle …
@West sedona resident
No, ignoramus! Protocol requires the actual writer of a Letter to the Editor to list his/her name first. Otherwise, when I mention my partners, I always list my name last. Try checking back through two years of articles and comments.
J. Rick Normand
Thank you for all that you do for our community how did our fair city ever manage without your presence in our lives. If we had any lakes in Sedona I’m sure that you and your over bulked body would be able to walk out in the middle of it.
No, ignoramus! Protocol requires the actual writer of a Letter to the Editor to list his/her name first. Otherwise, when I mention my partners, I always list my name last. Try checking back through two years of artic
Notice how j,rick starts his reply, No ignoramus…..and he wants people to read his posts? He needs to get a job, but posting on a third rate blog is all he can get .
Nasty is all rick can do when asked a real question , go back look at his past stuff real crap but he does do Long well.
Ss
J. Rick Normand and his partners in the Arizona Liberty is just what we need. An independent watchdog group.Thank you!!!!!!
We appreciate you!
Don’t need the control, don’t need fed incompetence, bad idea gone wild, NO monument! Diane Joens is in favor of it. Vote for the other guy.
No, Diane Joens does not support the Sedona Verde Valley Red Rock National Monument. I just asked her last night.
@Steve segner,
You say “Notice how j,rick starts his reply, No ignoramus…..and he wants people to read his posts? He needs to get a job, but posting on a third rate blog is all he can get .” I write articles ss and the AZ state legislature and your own City Council, including your City Attorney, reads everything I write…meanwhile, you just post unintelligible comments with mostly misspelled words that no one takes seriously. And, if this is a third rate blog, how come you post almost 100% of your time posting comments at The Eye and none of it posting at Sedona.biz and the Red Rock News? Maybe you should have mentioned that nobody reads Sedona.biz or Red Rock News online.
JRN
Rick, just look at the ads on this page…two, and one is yours, look at Red Rock news.
People read it and advertise in it .
e sedona is like the funny pages to city officials , they read it and smile,
Everyone know it is a house blog for the T Party.
Just for the heck of it I counted Segner and there’re 12 ads before I got tired of the game…btw maybe it just means the Eye hasn’t sold its soul to the Sedona Devils????
Lovin the house blog Sedona times , keep them laughing all the way to jail . good one earl ! headed to vino come on over
Joens must have changed her position?
If it weren’t for the city’s public notices in the RRNews they would probably go broke. No wonder theRRN publisher and editor were whining when consideration was being given to using on-line publication of mandatory public notices. RRNews along with regional C of C are gobbling up quite a chunk of Sedona’s tax revenue.
Steve segner,
You say that e sedona is like the funny pages to city officials , they read it and smile. How do you know so much about the inner workings of the City Council unless you’re (deleted by editor) to them? You’re a (deleted by editor) ss and everybody in Sedona knows it including the CofC.
Who would make someone mad enough to have someone make a website about their screw ups? Obviously not only a bad attitude but incompetence.
The editor of the Sedona Eye knows. J Rick Normand knows, Julianna knows, I’ll bet half the city staff know, now that she has admitted the website was about HER !
Ya gotta admit, with half the town knowing who she is and laughing behind her back, she does provide entertainment.
I wonder how she shows her face 4 days a week at City Hall?
@i see thru you
Wow your so full of rage that you had to be edited twice by SE in you last post
You are one angry rage full person…please call that consuling number and get some help….. Watch out SS. She may be dangerous …
Call that number….
Madam Publisher,
Relative to my last comment, can I at least mention that the first deleted words formed a verb and the second deleted word formed an adjective? I’m sure your more intelligent readers will eventually deduce what the last two sentences said without resulting in a liability for you. Needless to say, though, that ss will NEVER figure out what I said.
Once again the comments have wandered so far from the subject of the article it’s absurd. Rage is rage – no matter the source. Stick to the point, folks, and deal with your personal attacks privately, as adults (if possible), and refrain from using Sedona Eye for vindictive warfare against personalities as a method of diversion from issues at hand.
@julianna
@i see thru you@julianna
I thought you were going to use electronic detection to find my email address and divulge my true person
You to or three morons don’t have a clue you’re about as dumb as they come …
You rageful hateful people keep spinning your wheels man you not even in the right ballpark much less the right state duh
Enough. From this point on the personal is to be separate from the topic at hand. NO ONE needs or should be replying to anything BUT THE TOPIC POINTS.
Understood? Thank you.
let the sanity begin.
@Solomon,
THANK YOU SOLOMON. Have you ever noticed that hecklers at this site never actually read the articles written by Eddie or me, they just troll for any mention of our names or the names of any other troll they don’t like? They do no research, never make academic comments about what was written, and never contribute even the simplest of suggestions as to how to illuminate any of the topic points in the article subject to the blog. But, still, they all want all the legitimate readers and commenters to think that they care about our town.
JRN
Interesting
Good luck with that.
Sedona Eye | Local News From All Points of View
If Sedona eye is all about All Points of view then you should read this
Last month, high level Obama administration officials, including Interior Secretary Sally Jewell and Agriculture Under Secretary Robert Bonnie, recently held a public listening session in Bluff to discuss potential national monument status for the Bears Ears area in southeastern Utah.
As an avid angler, I have spent many hours fishing on the San Juan River, Lake Powell and elsewhere in southern Utah. That’s why I was proud to see the American Fly Fishing Trade Association, for which I serve on the board of directors, join a large, diverse coalition of stakeholders led by the Bears Ears Intertribal Coalition (BEITC) supporting permanent protection for these majestic lands and waters.
Encompassing 1.9 million acres of public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service and National Park Service, the Bears Ears area is the most significant unprotected cultural landscape in the United States. In addition to protecting traditional Native American land use and tens of thousands of cultural sites, a monument designation for Bears Ears would ensure the conservation of the area’s diverse natural resources — including its waters, plant and animal life — and the outdoor recreation they support.
In particular, the lakes, streams and reservoirs in and around the Abajo Mountains west of Monticello, and the San Juan River running between Bluff and Lake Powell, offer a myriad of fishing opportunities. While Lake Powell itself would fall outside of the Bears Ears Monument, the lake’s future depends on an abundant supply of fresh water flowing from its tributaries, including the San Juan River.
With its access to world-class fishing, Bears Ears is an important contributor to Utah’s $12 billion outdoor recreation economy, which drives $856 million in state and local tax revenue and $3.6 billion in wages and salaries yearly and supports 122,000 direct Utah jobs. The most recent National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife Associated Recreation by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service showed that fishing in Utah accounts for over $451 million in yearly spending alone.
The new monument would also have great potential to spur economic growth in Bluff and surrounding areas. A recent study from Headwaters Economics assessing the economic performance of counties adjacent to and containing national monuments — including Utah’s own Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument west of the Bears Ears area — found that two-thirds of these communities (13 of 17) grew at the same or a faster pace compared to similar counties in their state.
National monument status for Bears Ears would help to safeguard our outdoor heritage and sporting traditions and the economic opportunities they support. But even more importantly, permanent protection would ensure that these pristine lands and waters remain healthy and accessible for our communities and future generations of Americans to enjoy.
I applaud Secretary Jewell, Undersecretary Bonnie, and other administration officials for coming to Utah to meet with stakeholders. I urge all Americans — and especially sportsmen and women — to raise their voices in support of permanent protection of this one-of-a kind place.
Dustin Carlson is a board member of American Fly Fishing Trade Association (AFFTA) and partner of Green Drake Outdoors. AFFTA represents America’s 4.5 million fly-fishing anglers and thousands of outfitters and guides. He lives in Sandy. http://news360.com/article/363734516
With due respect, what does a national monument status for Bears Ears or any other place have to do with the National Monument proposed here, which includes taking over an incorporated city – Sedona. To simplify, aren’t you comparing apples to oranges?
@steve Segner,
Some how, I don’t hardly think our own Steve Segner wrote this. It does read like a KSB/Sierra Club propaganda piece. We’ve seen this same argument before here in Red Rock Country Mr. Carlson (aka steve Segner) and it’s not going to fly any better now than it did a year ago.
JRN
I call BULL (word deleted by editor)
I can honestly tell you that I hated the idea of the Natl Mt. That being said, when you say “which includes taking over an incorporated city – Sedona” that is just BS, NO ONE EVER SAID that they wanted to take over Sedona and they couldn’t because it’s not the Fed’s property. Please stop spewing BS on this topic there is enough real reasons against it and this is not one of them.
RE @@steve Segner.
Wise up. Are you saying incorporated City of Sedona would remain an island in the center of a National Monument? Dream on. And since you are so against the idea of a NM, what difference does it make? Didn’t some famous person just use those words? “What difference does it make.” Hillary Clinton maybe?
So a National Monument wouldn’t impact Sedona City. HA, HA, HA, HA!
What? How could anyone be so naive to think an incorporated portion of a National Monument (City of Sedona) wouldn’t be vastly impacted by such a designation? @@steve Segner. What planet are you living on?
to: @@steve Segner –
I’m very impressed at your newly found command of the English language and full sentences and spelling that actually spells a word.
I totally agree with JRN – it for sure is not “our” Steve Segner.
Why is it wrong to want to protect the natural beauty of this place, from having a couple of dozens of 1%’rs ruin the Sedona area by privatizing the land for the use of developers, builders, and real estate agents…..Once they make their millions, they are out of here, and us that live here have to deal with the aftermath of light pollution, traffic,,gated communities cutting up access to our trail system…the over burden of our water system….hire taxes to pay for the increase needs in police and fire and public works…………..
The third paragraph in the letter states “Throughout the latter half of 2015, the 80,000 residents of the Verde Valley’s Red Rocks Country decided by an 86% majority…that federally forced implementation of the proposed Sedona-Verde Valley Red Rocks National Monument designation was NOT in our best interests for a number of valid reasons.”
86% of the Verde Valley’s residents? Where did you come up with this statistic? I’ve talked to many of my colleagues and friends who live in the “Verde Valley Red Rocks Country”. None of us remember a ballot or vote or survey on the SVVRRNM issue, much less one that had a result like that. Maybe you got your numbers from the little online polls run by the Sedona Red Rock News for entertainment – you know, the ones where you can vote over and over for the same thing.
Given that you are publishing this misleading statistic without citing your source, I am assuming your other statistics are just as misleading, invalid and biased.
@earthrat 11,
Perhaps you missed this sentence in the article: “Meanwhile, the current Amendment 12 Resource Management Plan that the USFS operates under only allows for another 300 acres to be traded of the proposed 160,000 acre NM.” Your hysteria is misguided.
@Laurel Romm,
You said “None of us remember a ballot or vote or survey on the SVVRRNM issue, much less one that had a result like that.” Perhaps you should remember that 100% of Verde Valley City Councils and unincorporated Township boards voted against the Sedona-Verde Valley Red Rock National Monument which trumps any poll taken at any time, anywhere. Meanwhile, you sound like a malcontent KSB or Sierra Club member.
JRN
Laurel,
He just mad it up!, he is our local Trump,in fact 13,000+ people signed a petition saying they are for the monument.
There are over 100 NM in America and all seem to be doing well it is only Sedona that all the terrible things will happen to.
This is because this is a T party no government issue to some , The tide is turning.
ss
JRN….
Now this is the second time in days you have thrown out insults to the Sierra Club ?
Is a group that is about saving the environment really that bad? We wouldn’t have our largest tourist destination without them….
I love fishing, and time to time I hunt….I want our lands clean as I eat what I catch…..See how that works?
I am far more worried as to where your money and backing comes from….That would be the ” the few the proud, the elite”….
We see who you carry the water for, so be careful who you go around insulting because you have a lot of explaining to due if its brought up…..
@West Sedona Dave,
You said “…so be careful who you go around insulting because you have a lot of explaining to due if its brought up.” OK Dave, I’ll do my explaining right here and now and then you better have a well-evidenced reply. The Sierra Club filed at least 17 lawsuits over several decades to prevent clearing of underfall and emergency vehicle roadways into USFS managed forest properties. Fires like the Rodeo-Chideski fire in eastern AZ, the worst in U.S. history burned over 467,000 acres of prime Ponderosa, and the Wallow fire was almost as big, when prior to the filing of the first of The Sierra Club’s lawsuits, the average size of an Arizona wildfire was about 15-17% of the acreage burned in fires of the last two decades. Thanks to Sierra Club lawsuits to hold off USFS recommended tree thinning by private subcontractor loggers, as well as performing required brush clearing and underfall clearing before taking cut trees, the USFS will tell you that at the time of the R-C fire Ponderosa density was just under 700 trees per acre. Prior to Sierra Club lawsuits the normal density was about 50 trees per acre. It would appear that the scope of the problem is obvious, but it isn’t. Why? Because the Sierra Club lawsuits designed to stall proper logging techniques to accommodate good forestry management practices had another consequence. That consequence was that The Sierra Club lawsuits prevented the cutting in of wide-thoroughfare emergency roadways to handle not only logging trucks but EMERGENCY VEHICLES TO FIGHT FIRES when the day came for their needed use. And, the day did come. The cost to fight that single fire was $41.3 million, almost another $10 million for cleanup. $28.3$ million in homes were destroyed and nothing good ever came of the Sierra Club’s lawsuits although they will not, to this day, take responsibility for the unnecessary severity of these fires across Arizona but, instead they blame debunked climate change theory for the increased intensity of wildfires. Any half-wit can stand in the charred remains of those Ponderosa stands and see what the problem was. BTW, Dave, at the time of the R-C I had a ranch-home in the Carefree-Cave Creek area, and I took pictures spaced at an hour apart the day of the fires maximum intensity. Every hour the massive boiling smoke clouds doubled in size until over a half-day period the clouds had boiled up to 35,000ft. The fire was bearing down towards me. Are you brave enough to meet me in person at a local coffee shop so that I can show them to you? Of course you’re no,t since you’re the type of troll who prefers to shoot off his/her mouth before having done any evidentiary research. But, if you were to see them, then you could speculate to me what a great service The Sierra Club has provided to Arizona. One other thing…I would suggest you never take a vacation to our eastern mountains while expressing your point of view. You might be tarred and feathered before you can get out.
JRN
Obama leaves DC without pulling the trigger on the Antiquities Act of 1906 to establish the Red Rock Verde Valley National Monument – OR the Grand Canyon Watershed National Monument.
The efforts of AZL and our legislature AND the efforts of Representative Gosar were KEY to
stopping this insanity.
PRESIDENT TRUMP will not be creating any monuments, and the Antiquities Act of 1906 WILL be modified to protect Antiquities as originally designed but NOT through the stoke of a pen by
any president trying to make a name for himself or trading support from environmental groups for votes.