As our community faces ever-growing threats to our favorite wild spaces and our local self-determination, I would like to invite my neighbors and allies to join me in opposing the housing and nightly rental developments along Kane Springs Road in the area known as Egg Ranch. This project, under the name Kane Creek Preservation and Development, is moving along quickly. I believe it’s our duty as residents to mobilize against it.
As readers probably recall, occupants of Egg Ranch were evicted upon transfer of land ownership in late 2021. Since then, trailer homes have been removed and cave structures demolished. Surface-leveling and road-building on the Navajo Sandstone above the road forecasts the construction of upscale houses. Random piles of fill have been dumped into the floodplain.
I would love to say that this development is a pipe-dream. To build on the floodplain between the road and the river will require eight vertical feet of infill. As this development is outside of city limits, developers will have to install their own sewage treatment system. The list of earth-moving and infrastructure required for these projects ought to make them impractical, but I’m afraid that these developers — as developers tend to do — will persist. From what they’ve told us at County Commission and Planning meetings, their pockets are deep and they are determined to expand into this “recreation market” — or as we call it, our home.
Fortunately, the Utah Department of Environmental Quality has granted a public hearing regarding the wastewater treatment permit. Mark your calendars for August 3, 2023 at 6 p.m. at the Grand Center. More information on this hearing and the development can be found at https://deq.utah.gov/water-quality/kane-creek-preservation-and-development-llc.
Development is not inevitable! With your help, we can stop the sprawl and protect Kane Creek.
Sincerely,
Sarah Stock
Moab
