Dear concerned environmentalists,
Come to the Moab City Council meeting on Sept. 12 to protest the destruction of a vital wetlands habitat for the construction of a concrete, steel and rip-rap bike commuter bridge over Pack Creek.
Miki and I attended a Moab City Council meeting last week when several local police officers were given commendations. Families were present and the brave deeds recited for proud wives and excited children produced a most blessed hometown moment. The story of disarming a dangerous tourist was indeed impressive, but it’s the drama at the dead end past the state liquor store that routinely brings us into contact with Moab’s finest. We are always glad to see them coming. Dead-drunk, falling-down folks on foot and on bicycles usually require the assistance of a patrol car, and our local cops are very competent in restoring the peace, but Moab is more than its truly fine police department and when the jubilance of the smiling police families departed the council chambers, the ensuing city council meeting became a rubber stamp party in support of development. Our mayor spoke of “the builders” and the new building projects being “held up by little details.” He didn’t mention these details, but I assumed they were endangered birds and black bees, our peace and quiet and the incredibly fragile and rare ecology of the wetland habitat itself, or perhaps he was thinking of the very precious and limited water resources below ground in a proposed massive gated resort on Sand Flats Road. But fantasies of the rich and famous aside, Moab has actually placed its sewage treatment plant and a recreational “park” for dogs, cyclists, drinking, drugs and “camping out” in the middle of the most vital wildlife habitat for thousands of miles, a place called Bullick Cross Creeks Park that was once more accurately referred to as Bullick Cross Creeks Nature Preserve.
If you think another giant costly cement, steel and rip-rap culvert bike bridge situated in a key wildlife habitat in wetlands that can become a deadly dam causing extensive erosion far outside the channel during a dangerous flood on Pack Creek – well, if you think this is very a bad idea, please sign the petition at Moonflower. If you are outside of Moab and have related knowledge you want to share or simply want to stand up for wetlands habitat, write our city council members and Moab City Manager David Everitt, or better still, come to the Moab City Council meeting on Tuesday Sept, 12, at 6:30 p.m. Request to speak by calling the city offices.
