Montrose Co. swerves river monument

By KATHARHYNN HEIDELBERG

Montrose Daily Press

Montrose County commissioners, who last week strongly indicated they would not back a proposed national monument designation for the Dolores River Canyon, made it official Wednesday. They unanimously passed a formal resolution opposing the designation.

“I think with this resolution, we’re going to be supporting the West End and their wishes to not have a national monument,” Commissioner Keith Caddy said. “We got a lot of people who live out of the area who would like a national monument there, but I think it will directly affect the people that live in the region of the West End in Montrose and Mesa county, Dolores and San Miguel.”

Commissioners strongly hinted at an official action during their work session last week, when Scott Braden of Colorado Wildlands Project presented a briefing on the proposal. The project is working with the Protect the Dolores Coalition to have about thousands of acres of public lands in the Dolores River Canyon, within Montrose and Mesa counties, declared a national monument — necessary, Braden said, to have firmer protections than the current “patchwork” of interim regulations by federal land management agencies.

The national monument proposal includes lands in Montrose and Mesa counties because of current legislation for a National Conservation Area that would apply to the canyon river area in San Miguel, Dolores and Montezuma counties, if it goes through. Montrose County previously withdrew from the NCA discussions, so the legislation to create the NCA would not apply here.

About 95% of current active mining claims would be excluded from the monument; grazing would continue and trails and roads would stay open, Braden said. The goal of designation is to consistently protect scenic, environmental, habitat and economic values.

Commissioners during the briefing said they were left out of conversations that would affect western Montrose County, although Braden later said the briefing wasn’t an end point in conversations. The commissioners expressed a lack of trust in the federal government and worries about economic woes, as well as how mining in the Uravan Mineral Belt could be limited.

As well, Nucla resident Sean Pond spoke against the designation, saying it would logically affect mining, causing the West End to lose billions of potential vanadium and uranium extraction revenue. West End Economic Development Corp. President Aimee Tooker objected to designation, saying locals felt as if they’d been given no say in their own front yard. She said the West End needs well-paying jobs that can make up for those lost to a previous coal and power plant closure — not just service industry jobs generated by tourism.

The commissioners’ Wednesday resolution cites a previous town hall at which Nucla and Naturita residents aired their concerns; the importance of the Uravan Mineral Belt’s ore; economic worries in the already struggling West End, and the loss of local control.

The area proposed for designation, further, “is already protected from unfettered development by designation as a potential wilderness area, and by other management plans adopted by the responsible federal agencies, including the Bureau of Land Management,” and thus, it isn’t necessary to designate it as a monument.

Commissioner Sue Hansen said Wednesday that monument designation would not just affect the West End, but the other side of the county, too. Commissioner Roger Rash reiterated some of the concerns he had expressed at the work session, during which he grilled Braden about a survey the coalition conducted showing respondents favored a monument.

“What bothers me most about this is these folks inquired of about 1,700 people. They did not talk to the 42,000 Montrose County citizens and get a true voice of what we want in our community. That’s just outside interests trying to jam something down our throats,” Rash said Wednesday.

“As a county commissioner, I don’t think it’s prudent or good for our

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West End folks, who have taken a lot of economic damage from the political winds that are currently blowing right now. For that, I am proud to carry this resolution.”

When reached for comment, Braden said he was disappointed in the resolution. “I’m disappointed that the elected leaders of Montrose County once again refuse to engage in a discussion about how to conserve the Dolores Country. But I’m not surprised; they did the same thing in 2018 when they walked away from the NCA process,” he said. “This short-sighted resolution is just the latest failure of leadership and imagination when it comes to the future of the West End.”