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Leavitt
and The Utahnization of America
by
Richard Oxman
Dissident
Voice
November 1, 2003
From
the very first, when we told people of our intentions to relocate to Salt Lake
City they asked the inevitable question:
"Why there?". That can
be variously translated (and was, at times) to "Are you Mormon?" Or... "Isn't it mostly Mormons
there?" Or..."How are you
going to fit in with the Mormons?"
Those mormonic comments were often followed by expressions of
concern regarding the well-known conservative climate. If I had said we were moving to New York, no
one would dare underscore the fact that a lot of Jews live there, or think of
pointing to its liberal bias. But with Mormons and Utah, people don't seem to
think it matters. And --with their
pigeonholing-- they really think they have a handle on what's going on
there. We did.
I
won't go into the nooks and crannies surrounding the take on Mormons. Rather, the focus here is what really is a
problem for the Beehive State and the rest of us. First noticed something strange driving through the desert,
coming over a crest, crossing over the Nevada/Utah line. The unearthly pink glow stretching as far as
the eye could see near Wendover made me instinctively reach for imaginary
protective gear. That's Wendover as in
Wendover Range (No Access). The
familiar glare of casino lights was on our backs, but a ghastly, ghostly sight
before us was unlike anything I had ever seen.
What had they tested there?
Better yet, how did they ever get away with it? And...why isn't it the only topic on the
table in town? At twilight, that
American Moonscape was very scary.
Moving
along 80 east toward the so-called Great Salt Lake, the Dugway Proving Grounds
and Tooele County provide a very strong whiff of things to come. However, having come all the way from comfy
Santa Cruz, California, I guess we were holding out hope for something down the
road, downwind.
According
to the Utah Legislative Fiscal Analyst, in 2000, Utah accepted 97% of the
radioactive waste sent to commercial radioactive waste landfills. Utahns speak of "low-level" waste
to calm their nerves. And they seem to
be doing a good job; I've never seen people anywhere who more resemble
characters from the first version of "Invasion of the Body
Snatchers." But, in fact, the term
"low-level" is very misleading.
It does not mean low-hazard. The
term includes everything but spent nuclear fuel rods, transuranic wastes from
nuclear weapons production, and uranium mill tailings. And it has to be monitored for at least 500
years. Not a good scenario for a
population that's asleep at the wheel.
I
went to a Task Force Meeting of Legislators at the State Capitol a few days
after arriving. All of the information
above was laid out for the representatives by eloquent members of HealUtah. The legislators were actually rude, very
dismissive. And it hit me immediately,
these guys (and that one gal) on the dais (behind the solid oak barrier) have
known these facts for a long time. And
yet, in spite of the public interest (ISOTPI), they're pushing to bring in more
waste, and more dangerous waste. This
in spite of the fact that there have been only six other commercial radioactive
waste dumps licensed in the U.S. besides Utah's Envirocare. Each has leaked radiation into the
environment. Four are now shut
down. It's really sad that HealUtah has
been convinced by the powers-that-be that they must only play within the usual
paradigms. Oh, where is Phil Berrigan
when you need him? To touch the
state....
It
would be totally comical, if it weren't so serious, to contemplate Leavitt as
the nation's Environmental Chief at the Wheel.
The lesson here, however, is that in the Land of Leavitt it has long
become unlivable. There are no birds to
speak of, no butterflies. One doesn't see any on a normal walk in the
inversion-plagued capital. Or hear any.
Even the remaining bees are of the so-called aggressive African variety, not
what used to populate the Beehive State.
Well, I think it's time to change that to Ostrich State anyway.
On
the shores of the Not So Great Salt Lake -- one can now drive to Antelope Island!
-- USMagnesium, formerly MagCorp, is facing problems: it is being sued by EPA,
it is accused of stealing minerals from federal lands, magnesium prices are
tumbling and it is called the nation's biggest air polluter. That from Steve Wilson of the Associated
Press in very conservative Salt Lake Tribune.
Coal and Chlorine production, incineration of waste, military testing
and the residue of years of neglect and actions ISOTPI have created what's the
true Dumping Ground Zero of the U.S.
Utah
is home to five national parks with visibility concerns (to say the very
least). The problem is the
approximately 85% emissions from the burning of fossil fuels and
pollution-related haze. Ben Fulton of
the City Beat says that the "technology for removing almost 90 percent of
sulfur from smokestack emissions has existed for the last quarter of the
century.... But the political will from
electric companies lags. In
fact...they'd rather go to court than change their filtering system." And in Utah, the government must prove that
power plants contribute to haze before the industry is saddled with
regulations.
As
legislators in Utah contemplate pushing through a plan whereby the state would
haul in hotter radioactive waste than it's ever seen, people are leaving the
state quietly, having lost faith in the possibility of positive change. But where are they going? As Utahns debate whether or not to allow
Class B&C radioactive waste into the state, they avoid the main issue. To wit, it doesn't matter much if the opposition
has their way --very unlikely-- and the disgusting stuff is plopped down in
adjacent Idaho, Wyoming, Arizona, Nevada or New Mexico. That accomplished the threats would still
exist. It's clear that the problem of
radioactive waste must be tackled at its source. Whether one has roughly 3000 truckloads traveling part of the way
on two-lane roads to Nevada --roughly 12 shipments a day for more than a year
of workdays OR one hauls it to Envirocare (ISOTPI) with involving only 17
trips, with strings of 60-odd flatbed railroad cars, over as little as eight
months, the scenarios are clearly a terrorist's dream.
Although
Leavitt insists he has made great progress, unprecedented strides, toward
establishing Utah as the nation's recreation capital, the Outdoor Industry
Association (OIA) said on October 26th that it was "immensely
disappointed" with the governor's results. The OIA is once again on the verge of pulling their big trade
show out of the state, and taking 34,000 visitors and $24 million with them. In spite of this, the Bureau of Land
Management is poised to auction more oil and gas leases on Utah's scenic
wilderness landscape. The destructive
wheels of bureaucracy have turned forward without so much as a "boo"
from the governor.
It's
a no-brainer to see that Leavitt should have been left out from the start;
that, in spite of the incessant bickering back and forth about his
qualifications that took up so many precious heartbeats. The question remains: What are we going to do about the Utahnization
of America? It's not just them. It's all of us. And as long as people from progressive quarters such as Santa
Cruz (and elsewhere across the nation) focus on the superficial questions
("Isn't the place wall-to-wall with Mormons?") instead of zeroing in
on what should be the important concerns, we are lost. To pigeonhole, to label, is to remove the
unpleasantness of confronting something or someone.
Sylvie,
my partner, and I worked for the better part of a year to organize a huge
nonprofit, international event (OneDance: The People's Summit) in Utah. It was slated to take place in January
12-14, 2004 at the new Salt Lake City Main Library, and we actually relocated,
in great part, to make it easier to direct traffic leading up to the summit. Everyone from al-Jazeera and AK Press to
Mickey Z and Z Magazine is on board.
But perhaps for the first time ever, what will, arguably, be an historic
gathering had to relocated because of concerns over pollution. In fact, I can't think of many events of any
kind or degree of importance that were rescheduled because of pollution
considerations. Oh yes, there was the
Three Mile Island Corporate Picnic that had to be relocated on March 28, 1979. Sorry.
For our part, we won't let Michael Parenti or Cynthia McKinney be
subjected to the disgusting health hazard that is Salt Lake City. For that matter, we won't allow strangers
from Maine or Mississippi wanting to join hands at the summit to do so in the
ghostly glow of God-knows-what.
Certainly, our three-year-old, Marcel, will be happy that we decided to
make the excruciating and expensive effort to relocate back to Santa Cruz for a
OneDance on the coast. That'll do for
now, but it's a bandaid.
"Either
everyone dances or no one dances," warned the Tupamaros of Uruguay in the
60s. It's time to help the Utahns and
ourselves from succumbing totally to the horrors fast overtaking us all. The problems of Utah are a national problem As Arundhati Roy has made clear, "The
American way of life is no longer sustainable." We must take radical action, and take it soon. Weak measures like the McCain-Lieberman
Climate Stewardship Act are only a distraction from our focus on how little
time we have to reverse the apocalyptic flood.
And Hillary's recent comment that she looks "forward to working
with Gov. Leavitt" is the eco-counterpart to her husband's bombing of four
countries in a few months. New
paradigms must be utilized. And it
matters not how great the task, how daunting the prospects. As Michael Parenti notes, "fighting
against the current is always preferable to being swept away by it."
Richard
Oxman is co-organizer of OneDance: The People's Summit and the
"Hunger for Peace Strike," both of which, hopefully, will make it
unlikely for the likes of Bush/Cheney to rule in 2004, and where radical action
strategies will be proposed/implemented.
He can be contacted at mail@onedancesummit.org.
Other Articles by Richard Oxman
* Michael
Moore Apologists Are Not What We Need
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