Candidate Name: Ross C. “Rocky” Anderson
Preferred Pronouns: he/him
Mayoral Municipality: Salt Lake City
Party Affiliation: Democratic
Are you a Sierra Club member? Yes. I’m a Lifetime Member.
Campaign Committee Name: Rocky for Mayor
Address/Zip: 418 Douglas Street, Salt Lake City, Utah 84102
Phone: 385.234.0489 (c) 801.349.1690 (o)
E-mail: rockyanderson.justice@gmail.com
Campaign Website: www.rocky4mayor.com
Facebook page: www.facebook.com/Rocky.Highroad ; www.facebook.com/YourFriendRocky
Twitter handle: @RockyAnderson
Name of individual completing this questionnaire: Rocky Anderson
1. PERSONAL BIOGRAPHY.
Please give a brief biography outlining relevant experience, public offices held, involvement in
environmental causes, and membership in any environmental organizations. You may submit an
existing bio from your campaign website or other source.
Attached is a biographical sketch.
Preferred Pronouns: he/him
Mayoral Municipality: Salt Lake City
Party Affiliation: Democratic
Are you a Sierra Club member? Yes. I’m a Lifetime Member.
Campaign Committee Name: Rocky for Mayor
Address/Zip: 418 Douglas Street, Salt Lake City, Utah 84102
Phone: 385.234.0489 (c) 801.349.1690 (o)
E-mail: rockyanderson.justice@gmail.com
Campaign Website: www.rocky4mayor.com
Facebook page: www.facebook.com/Rocky.Highroad ; www.facebook.com/YourFriendRocky
Twitter handle: @RockyAnderson
Name of individual completing this questionnaire: Rocky Anderson
1. PERSONAL BIOGRAPHY.
Please give a brief biography outlining relevant experience, public offices held, involvement in
environmental causes, and membership in any environmental organizations. You may submit an
existing bio from your campaign website or other source.
Attached is a biographical sketch.
2. PERSONAL PRIORITIES
Identify your top environmental concerns:
The climate crisis; desiccation of the Great Salt Lake; local air quality; preservation of open spaces and wild lands.
Describe your environmental achievement(s) and/or your actions which you believe have had the most impact on protecting the environment:
As Mayor of Salt Lake City, I was determined that our city would be a leader in the global climate protection movement so that we could inspire and inform effective action by other municipalities across the nation and around the world. Our aggressive climate protection program resulted in a 31% reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in our city’s operations in three years.
I served on the Advisory Board of the International Council on Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI), which developed software for use by cities in setting baselines for GHG emissions and then measuring increases or decreases of emissions over time. While I was Mayor, Salt Lake City was the first city to implement that software. Then I presented about the availability and use of the software, and about our successes in significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions, in several states and nations, including New York, Alaska, Washington, D.C. (at a U.S. Conference of Mayors event), Wyoming, Nevada, New Mexico, Indiana (University of Notre Dame Law School), Sweden, Australia, China, Bali, Argentina, and India (the latter three at side meetings of UN COP meetings). I later filmed one of my presentations about the crucial need for climate protection leadership and have made it available for viewing on YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MKcHOqJp6Y.
We extended our reach in the U.S. dramatically when Robert Redford, ICLEI, and I hosted dozens of mayors each year for three consecutive years at Sundance, Utah, at the “Sundance Summit,” where the mayors learned about the science of “climate change,” best practices in reducing GHG emissions, and how best to communicate to constituents about the climate crisis.
To bring international attention to the failure of the U.S. to commit to the Kyoto Accords, to put pressure on the U.S. government and other cities and states to join the rest of the industrialized nations in committing to the goals of the Accords, and to demonstrate that the goals of the Accords were achievable, I announced before the 2002 Winter Olympic Games that we committed to reaching at least the goals of the Kyoto Accords. We far surpassed that goal, seven years ahead of schedule.
I lobbied Governor Huntsman to commit to combat climate disruption, noting that several prominent Republicans were becoming climate protection advocates. He formed a Blue Ribbon Advisory Council on Climate Protection, on which I served. Arising out of that Council was a remarkably clear and unequivocal scientific report authored by 15 top Utah academics in fields related to climate disruption. The Executive Summary of that report is entitled “Climate change and Utah: The Scientific Consensus” (September 2007), found at https://collections.lib.utah.edu/details?id=1158936. That report made clear the regional threats we are facing because of the burning of fossil fuels and resulting warming, including projections of a shrinking Great Salt Lake and increasing salinity of its water.
I’ve pushed relentlessly for greater recognition that the climate crisis is resulting, and will continue to result with more devastating consequences, in massive human rights abuses. I’ve made that case before numerous organizations and audiences, including the International Human Rights Funders Group in New York, at Notre Dame Law School, and in a legal journal article, Anderson and Thronson, “Achieving Climate Protection: Fostering an Essential Focus on Human Rights and Human Impacts,” 27 Notre Dame J.L. Ethics & Pub. Pol’y 3 (2013).
For my work on combating the climate crisis (as well as my other environmental work), I received the Sierra Club’s Distinguished Service Award (in San Francisco); the EPA’s Climate Protection Award, the World Leadership Award (in London) from the World Leadership Forum, the Respect the Earth Planet Defender Award, and was named by Bloomberg BusinessWeek as one of the top 20 activists in the world on global climate change. I also served on Newsweek’s Global Environmental Leadership Advisory Committee. Bill McKibben once stated that “Rocky Anderson is maybe the best example in any place in America of great local leadership.”
I was also proud to join with the Sierra Club and Utahns for Better Transportation in a lawsuit and public campaign to stop the original, illegal plan for the Legacy Highway. I’ve been criticized repeatedly by the current mayor for challenging the Utah Legislature or Governor, but this lawsuit set a crucial precedent and resulted in a an environmentally improved Legacy Parkway. It’s important to have leadership that will stand firm on important principles, particularly when the public health and our environmental stewardship are concerned. It’s often not enough to simply call oneself an “advocate” if that advocacy is not backed up by meaningful action and real-world results.
Much of my work and environmental achievements were described in several publications, including “The Salt Lake City mayor is doing amazing green things,” Grist, January 4, 2007, https://grist.org/article/rocky-anderson/; “An interview with Salt Lake City mayor and green innovator Rocky Anderson,” Grist, February 7, 2007, https://grist.org/article/anderson1/; and a Nation magazine cover article, Sasha Abramsky, “The Other Rocky,” December 17, 2006.
As of the date of submission of this questionnaire, what are your campaign’s fundraising and voter contact goals? How much progress have you made toward accomplishing these goals so far?
Our fundraising goal is to raise $375,000 or more. We have almost accomplished that and expect we’ll surpass that goal. We operate the campaign very cost-effectively, with only one paid staff person, a candidate who has worked extremely hard and productively every day for over a year, and with incredible, passionate support from a wide variety of people.
As with my other winning elections in Salt Lake City (I won the majority of SLC votes when I ran for Congress in 1996 and I won consecutive races for SLC Mayor in 1999 and 2003), I depend largely on passionate, hard-working volunteers who do everything from assembling yard signs to walking with me door-to-door (which I’ve been doing in every part of the city for almost a year), organizing and working at events, stuffing envelopes, and replacing stolen yard signs. Many hundreds of thousands of contacts are being made with persuasive, winning messages through door hangers, pamphlets, door-to-door contacts (for over a year), mailers, an aggressive digital media buy, newspapers, and radio. For over a year, we’ve also reached a wide audience with persuasive, informative social media posts on TikTok, Facebook, Twitter (now X), LinkedIn, and Instagram, as well as through numerous mass emails, each of which are sent to over 60,000 people.
2. PERSONAL PRIORITIES
Identify your top environmental concerns:
The climate crisis; desiccation of the Great Salt Lake; local air quality; preservation of open spaces and wild lands.
Describe your environmental achievement(s) and/or your actions which you believe have had the most impact on protecting the environment:
As Mayor of Salt Lake City, I was determined that our city would be a leader in the global climate protection movement so that we could inspire and inform effective action by other municipalities across the nation and around the world. Our aggressive climate protection program resulted in a 31% reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in our city’s operations in three years.
I served on the Advisory Board of the International Council on Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI), which developed software for use by cities in setting baselines for GHG emissions and then measuring increases or decreases of emissions over time. While I was Mayor, Salt Lake City was the first city to implement that software. Then I presented about the availability and use of the software, and about our successes in significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions, in several states and nations, including New York, Alaska, Washington, D.C. (at a U.S. Conference of Mayors event), Wyoming, Nevada, New Mexico, Indiana (University of Notre Dame Law School), Sweden, Australia, China, Bali, Argentina, and India (the latter three at side meetings of UN COP meetings). I later filmed one of my presentations about the crucial need for climate protection leadership and have made it available for viewing on YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MKcHOqJp6Y.
We extended our reach in the U.S. dramatically when Robert Redford, ICLEI, and I hosted dozens of mayors each year for three consecutive years at Sundance, Utah, at the “Sundance Summit,” where the mayors learned about the science of “climate change,” best practices in reducing GHG emissions, and how best to communicate to constituents about the climate crisis.
To bring international attention to the failure of the U.S. to commit to the Kyoto Accords, to put pressure on the U.S. government and other cities and states to join the rest of the industrialized nations in committing to the goals of the Accords, and to demonstrate that the goals of the Accords were achievable, I announced before the 2002 Winter Olympic Games that we committed to reaching at least the goals of the Kyoto Accords. We far surpassed that goal, seven years ahead of schedule.
I lobbied Governor Huntsman to commit to combat climate disruption, noting that several prominent Republicans were becoming climate protection advocates. He formed a Blue Ribbon Advisory Council on Climate Protection, on which I served. Arising out of that Council was a remarkably clear and unequivocal scientific report authored by 15 top Utah academics in fields related to climate disruption. The Executive Summary of that report is entitled “Climate change and Utah: The Scientific Consensus” (September 2007), found at https://collections.lib.utah.edu/details?id=1158936. That report made clear the regional threats we are facing because of the burning of fossil fuels and resulting warming, including projections of a shrinking Great Salt Lake and increasing salinity of its water.
I’ve pushed relentlessly for greater recognition that the climate crisis is resulting, and will continue to result with more devastating consequences, in massive human rights abuses. I’ve made that case before numerous organizations and audiences, including the International Human Rights Funders Group in New York, at Notre Dame Law School, and in a legal journal article, Anderson and Thronson, “Achieving Climate Protection: Fostering an Essential Focus on Human Rights and Human Impacts,” 27 Notre Dame J.L. Ethics & Pub. Pol’y 3 (2013).
For my work on combating the climate crisis (as well as my other environmental work), I received the Sierra Club’s Distinguished Service Award (in San Francisco); the EPA’s Climate Protection Award, the World Leadership Award (in London) from the World Leadership Forum, the Respect the Earth Planet Defender Award, and was named by Bloomberg BusinessWeek as one of the top 20 activists in the world on global climate change. I also served on Newsweek’s Global Environmental Leadership Advisory Committee. Bill McKibben once stated that “Rocky Anderson is maybe the best example in any place in America of great local leadership.”
I was also proud to join with the Sierra Club and Utahns for Better Transportation in a lawsuit and public campaign to stop the original, illegal plan for the Legacy Highway. I’ve been criticized repeatedly by the current mayor for challenging the Utah Legislature or Governor, but this lawsuit set a crucial precedent and resulted in a an environmentally improved Legacy Parkway. It’s important to have leadership that will stand firm on important principles, particularly when the public health and our environmental stewardship are concerned. It’s often not enough to simply call oneself an “advocate” if that advocacy is not backed up by meaningful action and real-world results.
Much of my work and environmental achievements were described in several publications, including “The Salt Lake City mayor is doing amazing green things,” Grist, January 4, 2007, https://grist.org/article/rocky-anderson/; “An interview with Salt Lake City mayor and green innovator Rocky Anderson,” Grist, February 7, 2007, https://grist.org/article/anderson1/; and a Nation magazine cover article, Sasha Abramsky, “The Other Rocky,” December 17, 2006.
As of the date of submission of this questionnaire, what are your campaign’s fundraising and voter contact goals? How much progress have you made toward accomplishing these goals so far?
Our fundraising goal is to raise $375,000 or more. We have almost accomplished that and expect we’ll surpass that goal. We operate the campaign very cost-effectively, with only one paid staff person, a candidate who has worked extremely hard and productively every day for over a year, and with incredible, passionate support from a wide variety of people.
As with my other winning elections in Salt Lake City (I won the majority of SLC votes when I ran for Congress in 1996 and I won consecutive races for SLC Mayor in 1999 and 2003), I depend largely on passionate, hard-working volunteers who do everything from assembling yard signs to walking with me door-to-door (which I’ve been doing in every part of the city for almost a year), organizing and working at events, stuffing envelopes, and replacing stolen yard signs. Many hundreds of thousands of contacts are being made with persuasive, winning messages through door hangers, pamphlets, door-to-door contacts (for over a year), mailers, an aggressive digital media buy, newspapers, and radio. For over a year, we’ve also reached a wide audience with persuasive, informative social media posts on TikTok, Facebook, Twitter (now X), LinkedIn, and Instagram, as well as through numerous mass emails, each of which are sent to over 60,000 people.
3. GREAT SALT LAKE PROTECTION
The Great Salt Lake which predates Salt Lake City by over 10,000 years has been used as a recreation area for over 100 years and for brine shrimp harvesting for over 50 years. Despite generating revenue for Utah, decades of negligence and mismanagement of water rights allowed the Great Salt Lake to reach its lowest water level on record in July 2021. This is exceptional for a terminal lake, which accumulates water (and deposits) from all along its watershed. Toxic chemical introduction from mining and smelting; upset of the balance of nutrients from urban and agricultural runoff; disappearing habitats for wildlife including migratory birds; and reduced wetland protections in favor of further development have all contributed to the decline of ecosystems in the Great Salt Lake
A. Do you support legal protection of water rights afforded to the Great Salt Lake?
(X )Yes
( ) No
Explain:
The desiccation of the Great Salt Lake would be devastating to Salt Lake City residents and businesses because metals, including antimony, mercury, selenium, copper, zirconium, and arsenic, from the dry lake bed will blow into the city, resulting in heightened risks of severe respiratory illnesses, heart disease, lung disease, and cancers. The cascading effects would undermine, and perhaps entirely destroy, our neighborhoods, economic vitality, and overall quality of life.
The dust could lead to degradation of soil and speed snow melt, shortening winter sports seasons and reducing water supply later in the year. It would severely damage valuable wetlands, eliminate brine flies (vital to the ecosystem), devastate the conditions upon which brine shrimp can exist, and threaten millions of migratory birds.
Although individual conservation efforts are important for dealing with droughts, the Great Salt Lake will survive only if far less water is diverted for agricultural purposes. Under my leadership, Salt Lake City will work to build a coalition with surrounding communities to pursue legal remedies, legislation, and public policy changes to protect the public interest in water conservation. I will also engage in an aggressive public education campaign about the nature and severity of the risks, the measures by which those risks can be avoided, the necessary timing for taking those measures, and what is at stake for every person, every family, and every business in our community if the necessary solutions are not urgently pursued.
To achieve necessary changes for saving the lake, we must recognize that even if every household permanently stopped watering lawns, that would not be a sufficient factor in saving the Great Salt Lake. While alfalfa farming represents only 0.2% of the Utah economy, it uses 68% of available water.
The most critical action that residents can take is to effectively persuade elected officials and other policymakers at every level of government to take necessary measures immediately to sufficiently reduce the diversion of water for agricultural purposes.
I fully support and, if I’d have standing, would join in the lawsuit, asserting entitlement to sufficient run-off water to the Great Salt Lake under the public trust doctrine. In light of the severe risks of devasting consequences to our city and region as a result of the desiccation of the Great Salt Lake, we should pursue every good-faith legal measure to achieve sufficient flow of water to fully restore the Great Salt Lake. Our goal should be to maintain the Great Salt Lake to about 4,200 feet above sea level.
B. Do you support measures to limit household and industrial water usage?
( X) Yes
( ) No
Explain:
As I did at my own home in the early 2000s, turf should be eliminated or minimized to the extent practicable at residents, businesses, and on government-owned properties. We should do everything possible to create a public and personal ethic of water conservation, including advertising campaigns and public challenges, raising awareness of the disastrous impacts of continued poor stewardship of the Great Salt Lake. Our water pricing should be structured in a fair, effective manner to reduce unnecessary water use, as we did when I served as mayor.
We should also prohibit, and resist in every way necessary, any high water industrial uses that will divert significant amounts of water from the Great Salt Lake, such as the proposed I-80 South Quarry, a limestone mine in Parley’s Canyon, which would require 200,000 to 1 million gallons per acre of water for dust control each year.
As I noted above, alfalfa farming should be terminated wherever water is being diverted for such farming from the Great Salt Lake, with a transition to low-water use of the land now used for alfalfa farming. That is an urgent responsibility of the state and federal government, which must be persuaded to take emergency action without further delay.
C. Will you commit to protecting waterways within your municipality, including cleanup and source diversion of contributing polluting material?
( X) Yes
( ) No
Explain:
First, there should be more aggressive preventative measures to protect against oil pipeline leaks, such as the Red Butte Creek oil spill in 2010. I would convene representatives of the federal, city, county, and state governments, environmental advocacy organizations, and industry to carefully review the findings and recommendations of the Pipeline Safety Trust that was commissioned by Salt Lake City following the Red Butte Creek oil spill and determine what commitments will be made to better ensure pipeline safety. There is much that can be done to provide greater protections against pipeline spills, as set forth in the report by Carl Weimer, Executive Director of the Pipeline Safety Trust, entitled “Pipeline Safety in the Salt Lake Valley.” https://www.slcdocs.com/oilspill/PipelineReport1.pdf I would make certain that Salt Lake City’s first responders are fully prepared to respond to any pipeline emergencies. I’d also ensure that the city’s planning and zoning staffs implement the recommendations of that report.
Salt Lake City government is responsible for protecting the high quality and safety of our water supply at every point. We must also hold any polluters fully accountable––through legal action if necessary––and provide effective deterrence from any practices that might endanger the quality and safety of our water supply.
The Great Salt Lake which predates Salt Lake City by over 10,000 years has been used as a recreation area for over 100 years and for brine shrimp harvesting for over 50 years. Despite generating revenue for Utah, decades of negligence and mismanagement of water rights allowed the Great Salt Lake to reach its lowest water level on record in July 2021. This is exceptional for a terminal lake, which accumulates water (and deposits) from all along its watershed. Toxic chemical introduction from mining and smelting; upset of the balance of nutrients from urban and agricultural runoff; disappearing habitats for wildlife including migratory birds; and reduced wetland protections in favor of further development have all contributed to the decline of ecosystems in the Great Salt Lake
A. Do you support legal protection of water rights afforded to the Great Salt Lake?
(X )Yes
( ) No
Explain:
The desiccation of the Great Salt Lake would be devastating to Salt Lake City residents and businesses because metals, including antimony, mercury, selenium, copper, zirconium, and arsenic, from the dry lake bed will blow into the city, resulting in heightened risks of severe respiratory illnesses, heart disease, lung disease, and cancers. The cascading effects would undermine, and perhaps entirely destroy, our neighborhoods, economic vitality, and overall quality of life.
The dust could lead to degradation of soil and speed snow melt, shortening winter sports seasons and reducing water supply later in the year. It would severely damage valuable wetlands, eliminate brine flies (vital to the ecosystem), devastate the conditions upon which brine shrimp can exist, and threaten millions of migratory birds.
Although individual conservation efforts are important for dealing with droughts, the Great Salt Lake will survive only if far less water is diverted for agricultural purposes. Under my leadership, Salt Lake City will work to build a coalition with surrounding communities to pursue legal remedies, legislation, and public policy changes to protect the public interest in water conservation. I will also engage in an aggressive public education campaign about the nature and severity of the risks, the measures by which those risks can be avoided, the necessary timing for taking those measures, and what is at stake for every person, every family, and every business in our community if the necessary solutions are not urgently pursued.
To achieve necessary changes for saving the lake, we must recognize that even if every household permanently stopped watering lawns, that would not be a sufficient factor in saving the Great Salt Lake. While alfalfa farming represents only 0.2% of the Utah economy, it uses 68% of available water.
The most critical action that residents can take is to effectively persuade elected officials and other policymakers at every level of government to take necessary measures immediately to sufficiently reduce the diversion of water for agricultural purposes.
I fully support and, if I’d have standing, would join in the lawsuit, asserting entitlement to sufficient run-off water to the Great Salt Lake under the public trust doctrine. In light of the severe risks of devasting consequences to our city and region as a result of the desiccation of the Great Salt Lake, we should pursue every good-faith legal measure to achieve sufficient flow of water to fully restore the Great Salt Lake. Our goal should be to maintain the Great Salt Lake to about 4,200 feet above sea level.
B. Do you support measures to limit household and industrial water usage?
( X) Yes
( ) No
Explain:
As I did at my own home in the early 2000s, turf should be eliminated or minimized to the extent practicable at residents, businesses, and on government-owned properties. We should do everything possible to create a public and personal ethic of water conservation, including advertising campaigns and public challenges, raising awareness of the disastrous impacts of continued poor stewardship of the Great Salt Lake. Our water pricing should be structured in a fair, effective manner to reduce unnecessary water use, as we did when I served as mayor.
We should also prohibit, and resist in every way necessary, any high water industrial uses that will divert significant amounts of water from the Great Salt Lake, such as the proposed I-80 South Quarry, a limestone mine in Parley’s Canyon, which would require 200,000 to 1 million gallons per acre of water for dust control each year.
As I noted above, alfalfa farming should be terminated wherever water is being diverted for such farming from the Great Salt Lake, with a transition to low-water use of the land now used for alfalfa farming. That is an urgent responsibility of the state and federal government, which must be persuaded to take emergency action without further delay.
C. Will you commit to protecting waterways within your municipality, including cleanup and source diversion of contributing polluting material?
( X) Yes
( ) No
Explain:
First, there should be more aggressive preventative measures to protect against oil pipeline leaks, such as the Red Butte Creek oil spill in 2010. I would convene representatives of the federal, city, county, and state governments, environmental advocacy organizations, and industry to carefully review the findings and recommendations of the Pipeline Safety Trust that was commissioned by Salt Lake City following the Red Butte Creek oil spill and determine what commitments will be made to better ensure pipeline safety. There is much that can be done to provide greater protections against pipeline spills, as set forth in the report by Carl Weimer, Executive Director of the Pipeline Safety Trust, entitled “Pipeline Safety in the Salt Lake Valley.” https://www.slcdocs.com/oilspill/PipelineReport1.pdf I would make certain that Salt Lake City’s first responders are fully prepared to respond to any pipeline emergencies. I’d also ensure that the city’s planning and zoning staffs implement the recommendations of that report.
Salt Lake City government is responsible for protecting the high quality and safety of our water supply at every point. We must also hold any polluters fully accountable––through legal action if necessary––and provide effective deterrence from any practices that might endanger the quality and safety of our water supply.
4. ADVANCING BOLD CLIMATE LEADERSHIP THROUGH CLEAN ENERGY
Climate disruption is the greatest environmental challenge of this century and is the Sierra Club’s number #1 priority. Science demands that we take bold action to reduce carbon pollution. For the health of the planet, the public, and the economy, Utah must continue to transition to a 100% clean energy future, and do so in ways that advance economic, racial, and gender justice and create family-sustaining jobs. We must consistently choose clean energy over the dirty fuels of the past.
A. Indicate in detail your understanding of the seriousness of climate change and what you believe Salt Lake City should do about it.
I have presented about the causes of and severe risks resulting from climate disruption, and about measures that can be taken to mitigate the climate crisis during the course of many years in dozens of cities across the United States and around the world, including at three side-meetings at UN COP meetings (in New Delhi, Buenos Aires, and Bali), at meetings of the US Conference of Mayors, at EPA events (including the EPA Earth Technologies Forum in Washington, D.C.), and at events sponsored by ICLEI, governmental entities, or environmental organizations, including a forum for mayors and vice-mayors in China at the invitation of Joint US China Collaboration on Clean Energy (JUCCCE)).[1]
Because of rapidly worse climate disruption, all living inhabitants on earth, now and in the future, are at extreme risk of increasingly severe droughts, starvation, increasing poverty, national and international security disasters, forest fires, killer heat waves, extinction of species, acidification of the oceans (and the death and extinction of sea life), water scarcity, rising sea levels, flooding, melting polar ice and glaciers, melting of the tundra, more severe and catastrophic storms, and such disasters as the desiccation of the Great Salt Lake. We’re already experiencing many of these harrowing consequences of climate disruption. The increasing intensity and frequency of them are a certainty. We must take urgent, radical measures to prevent the very worst consequences, which include a mostly uninhabitable world.
A filmed presentation I produced and narrated about climate disruption is found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MKcHOqJp6Y. A journal article I co-authored about the climate crisis and the vast, devastating human rights implications is found here: https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1031&context=ndjlepp.
Because climate disruption and its effects are global in nature, every person and organization must do what they can to contribute toward mitigation of the most devastating long-term effects. Salt Lake City should re-assume the leadership in the climate protection movement we provided when I was mayor (2000-08), achieving massive reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and then inspiring others to do the same by communicating broadly our successes and the measures we took to reach them. Salt Lake City should end the use of electricity produced by the burning of fossil fuels (primarily coal and natural gas) and achieve, as rapidly as possible, a goal of 100% of our electricity being produced by renewable sources (primarily wind, solar (photovoltaic or thermal), hydroelectric, or geothermal).
The current mayor promised four years ago to negotiate with Rocky Mountain Power to achieve 100% renewable energy for Salt Lake City by 2023 and, having failed to do that, now promises to reach that goal by 2030, the same goal set by her predecessor and previous City Council, and by the Utah Legislature in the Community Renewable Energy Act. In light of the gravity of climate disruption, caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels, we should give top priority to transitioning the sources of electric production so that we will achieve 100% renewable energy at the earliest possible time. To achieve that, we must use Salt Lake City’s authority in negotiating the franchise agreement with Rocky Mountain Power to step up the transition. Failing cooperation by Rocky Mountain Power to do that, Salt Lake City should do what it can to form its own municipal electric utility powered exclusively by renewable sources.
I was excited when I served as mayor to have the city achieve methane recovery at our wastewater treatment plant, contributing significantly to our 31% reduction of GHG emissions in a three-year period. Then, in 2005, I witnessed how methane recovery from a landfill (where methane was previously flared off) could be utilized by Murray City Power to provide electricity for hundreds of homes. The contract entered into by Murray City Power with Salt Lake Energy Systems LLC was for the production of 3 megawatts of electricity generated from the methane for ten years. We can, without any doubt, produce all of the electricity needs for the people and businesses in Salt Lake City from renewable sources.
One of the solutions to expanding renewable energy is through energy freedom. Energy freedom seeks to expand microgrids, community solar, get rid of the cap on net metering, as well as improve rates that customers receive for power sent back to the grid through rooftop solar.
B. What steps will you take to ensure increased efficiency and sourcing of renewable energy for city buildings?
Explain:
I have had a lengthy experience as an individual with renewable energy for my home. Fundamental to what I did was the fact that we have a vast majority of sunny days, with tremendous opportunities for the utilization of solar power. I first installed thermal solar panels, with a small photovoltaic panel to run a circulation motor, to heat water at my home. Then I installed 42 photovoltaic panels, with the help of certain federal tax credits and state and utility incentives. I’ve stayed current on changing Utah laws and regulations concerning net metering and rates for power I provide to the grid. The reduced incentives for consumers to install solar panels have been inadequate and make little sense, particularly when considering the need to incentivize people to utilize solar energy. The incentives are upside down, with payments for power provided to the grid being less than what we pay when we take power from the grid. As mayor, I will engage in a public education and lobbying campaign to ensure that there is no cap on net metering and that the rates paid to customers for contributing power to the grid be high enough to incentivize far more utilization of household solar power.
As mayor, I will have installed solar panels on all Salt Lake City public buildings that will accommodate them. I’ll also utilize such alternative sources of energy as heat pumps and geothermal energy. Every city-owned building that is built or renovated shall be LEED v5-certified. We will also electrify everything, including the use of heat pumps, induction stoves, and a shift to electronic vehicles.
We should also provide public education about how each home in Salt Lake City can electrify everything and obtain incentive payments or tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act. An informative article about that, “Electrify Everything,” is found in the Summer 2023 issue of Sierra magazine, at 72.
C. Do you support SLC’s goal for 100% renewable energy 2030? What steps will you take as Mayor and with municipal and civil partners to ensure that goal is met?
(X ) Yes
( ) No
Explain:
At a minimum, I support that goal, but strongly believe we need to step it up significantly, in terms of the timing and the level of participation, as explained in answer to question 4.A. above.
In 2019, 23 Utah communities adopted resolutions to achieve net-100% renewable electricity by 2030, becoming eligible to participate in the Utah Renewable Energy Program. Of those 23 eligible communities, only 18 joined the Community Renewable Energy Agency by the deadline of May 31, 2022. Salt Lake City should work to allow an extension of the deadline and collaborate with other communities to ensure that as many as possible join the Community Renewable Energy Agency to expand significantly the commitments to 100% renewable energy.
At the same time, Salt Lake City should explore the creation of its own electric utility company, which would produce all electricity from renewable sources. Even under the Utah Renewable Energy Program, customers can opt out of the renewable energy option. We can get every home and business using electricity produced by renewable sources if we create our own power utility that produces only renewable energy.
D. Do you support the right of ratepayers to produce their own clean, renewable energy at a fair rate?
(X ) Yes
( ) No
Explain:
Every ratepayer should have the right to produce clean, renewable energy not only for the ratepayer’s use, but to contribute to the grid for a fair rate—at least the amount that ratepayers pay to take electricity out of the grid. It’s not only about fairness; it’s also about incentivizing the production of clean energy.
I was amazed when, several years ago, I first noticed solar panels on homes and farms throughout Germany, even in small villages in the Black Forest. I was aware of what large solar arrays cost here at the time after Salt Lake County installed solar panels to provide the electricity for the parking lot at the Salt Palace. I visited a farm where an entire side of the roof on a huge barn was covered with solar panels. I inquired of the farmer how he could afford to put such a huge array of solar panels on his barn and he responded, “I could not afford not to. They pay me twice as much for the power I put into the grid than what I pay to take it out.” I told him we do it just the opposite here—that ratepayers who produce solar energy get paid less for putting it into the grid than what it cost to take it out.
It was obvious that the incentives then paid in Germany had resulted in solar panels being installed at a tremendous pace. We should do the same here, particularly in light of what is at stake by producing so much electricity with coal and natural gas.
Climate disruption is the greatest environmental challenge of this century and is the Sierra Club’s number #1 priority. Science demands that we take bold action to reduce carbon pollution. For the health of the planet, the public, and the economy, Utah must continue to transition to a 100% clean energy future, and do so in ways that advance economic, racial, and gender justice and create family-sustaining jobs. We must consistently choose clean energy over the dirty fuels of the past.
A. Indicate in detail your understanding of the seriousness of climate change and what you believe Salt Lake City should do about it.
I have presented about the causes of and severe risks resulting from climate disruption, and about measures that can be taken to mitigate the climate crisis during the course of many years in dozens of cities across the United States and around the world, including at three side-meetings at UN COP meetings (in New Delhi, Buenos Aires, and Bali), at meetings of the US Conference of Mayors, at EPA events (including the EPA Earth Technologies Forum in Washington, D.C.), and at events sponsored by ICLEI, governmental entities, or environmental organizations, including a forum for mayors and vice-mayors in China at the invitation of Joint US China Collaboration on Clean Energy (JUCCCE)).[1]
Because of rapidly worse climate disruption, all living inhabitants on earth, now and in the future, are at extreme risk of increasingly severe droughts, starvation, increasing poverty, national and international security disasters, forest fires, killer heat waves, extinction of species, acidification of the oceans (and the death and extinction of sea life), water scarcity, rising sea levels, flooding, melting polar ice and glaciers, melting of the tundra, more severe and catastrophic storms, and such disasters as the desiccation of the Great Salt Lake. We’re already experiencing many of these harrowing consequences of climate disruption. The increasing intensity and frequency of them are a certainty. We must take urgent, radical measures to prevent the very worst consequences, which include a mostly uninhabitable world.
A filmed presentation I produced and narrated about climate disruption is found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MKcHOqJp6Y. A journal article I co-authored about the climate crisis and the vast, devastating human rights implications is found here: https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1031&context=ndjlepp.
Because climate disruption and its effects are global in nature, every person and organization must do what they can to contribute toward mitigation of the most devastating long-term effects. Salt Lake City should re-assume the leadership in the climate protection movement we provided when I was mayor (2000-08), achieving massive reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and then inspiring others to do the same by communicating broadly our successes and the measures we took to reach them. Salt Lake City should end the use of electricity produced by the burning of fossil fuels (primarily coal and natural gas) and achieve, as rapidly as possible, a goal of 100% of our electricity being produced by renewable sources (primarily wind, solar (photovoltaic or thermal), hydroelectric, or geothermal).
The current mayor promised four years ago to negotiate with Rocky Mountain Power to achieve 100% renewable energy for Salt Lake City by 2023 and, having failed to do that, now promises to reach that goal by 2030, the same goal set by her predecessor and previous City Council, and by the Utah Legislature in the Community Renewable Energy Act. In light of the gravity of climate disruption, caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels, we should give top priority to transitioning the sources of electric production so that we will achieve 100% renewable energy at the earliest possible time. To achieve that, we must use Salt Lake City’s authority in negotiating the franchise agreement with Rocky Mountain Power to step up the transition. Failing cooperation by Rocky Mountain Power to do that, Salt Lake City should do what it can to form its own municipal electric utility powered exclusively by renewable sources.
I was excited when I served as mayor to have the city achieve methane recovery at our wastewater treatment plant, contributing significantly to our 31% reduction of GHG emissions in a three-year period. Then, in 2005, I witnessed how methane recovery from a landfill (where methane was previously flared off) could be utilized by Murray City Power to provide electricity for hundreds of homes. The contract entered into by Murray City Power with Salt Lake Energy Systems LLC was for the production of 3 megawatts of electricity generated from the methane for ten years. We can, without any doubt, produce all of the electricity needs for the people and businesses in Salt Lake City from renewable sources.
One of the solutions to expanding renewable energy is through energy freedom. Energy freedom seeks to expand microgrids, community solar, get rid of the cap on net metering, as well as improve rates that customers receive for power sent back to the grid through rooftop solar.
B. What steps will you take to ensure increased efficiency and sourcing of renewable energy for city buildings?
Explain:
I have had a lengthy experience as an individual with renewable energy for my home. Fundamental to what I did was the fact that we have a vast majority of sunny days, with tremendous opportunities for the utilization of solar power. I first installed thermal solar panels, with a small photovoltaic panel to run a circulation motor, to heat water at my home. Then I installed 42 photovoltaic panels, with the help of certain federal tax credits and state and utility incentives. I’ve stayed current on changing Utah laws and regulations concerning net metering and rates for power I provide to the grid. The reduced incentives for consumers to install solar panels have been inadequate and make little sense, particularly when considering the need to incentivize people to utilize solar energy. The incentives are upside down, with payments for power provided to the grid being less than what we pay when we take power from the grid. As mayor, I will engage in a public education and lobbying campaign to ensure that there is no cap on net metering and that the rates paid to customers for contributing power to the grid be high enough to incentivize far more utilization of household solar power.
As mayor, I will have installed solar panels on all Salt Lake City public buildings that will accommodate them. I’ll also utilize such alternative sources of energy as heat pumps and geothermal energy. Every city-owned building that is built or renovated shall be LEED v5-certified. We will also electrify everything, including the use of heat pumps, induction stoves, and a shift to electronic vehicles.
We should also provide public education about how each home in Salt Lake City can electrify everything and obtain incentive payments or tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act. An informative article about that, “Electrify Everything,” is found in the Summer 2023 issue of Sierra magazine, at 72.
C. Do you support SLC’s goal for 100% renewable energy 2030? What steps will you take as Mayor and with municipal and civil partners to ensure that goal is met?
(X ) Yes
( ) No
Explain:
At a minimum, I support that goal, but strongly believe we need to step it up significantly, in terms of the timing and the level of participation, as explained in answer to question 4.A. above.
In 2019, 23 Utah communities adopted resolutions to achieve net-100% renewable electricity by 2030, becoming eligible to participate in the Utah Renewable Energy Program. Of those 23 eligible communities, only 18 joined the Community Renewable Energy Agency by the deadline of May 31, 2022. Salt Lake City should work to allow an extension of the deadline and collaborate with other communities to ensure that as many as possible join the Community Renewable Energy Agency to expand significantly the commitments to 100% renewable energy.
At the same time, Salt Lake City should explore the creation of its own electric utility company, which would produce all electricity from renewable sources. Even under the Utah Renewable Energy Program, customers can opt out of the renewable energy option. We can get every home and business using electricity produced by renewable sources if we create our own power utility that produces only renewable energy.
D. Do you support the right of ratepayers to produce their own clean, renewable energy at a fair rate?
(X ) Yes
( ) No
Explain:
Every ratepayer should have the right to produce clean, renewable energy not only for the ratepayer’s use, but to contribute to the grid for a fair rate—at least the amount that ratepayers pay to take electricity out of the grid. It’s not only about fairness; it’s also about incentivizing the production of clean energy.
I was amazed when, several years ago, I first noticed solar panels on homes and farms throughout Germany, even in small villages in the Black Forest. I was aware of what large solar arrays cost here at the time after Salt Lake County installed solar panels to provide the electricity for the parking lot at the Salt Palace. I visited a farm where an entire side of the roof on a huge barn was covered with solar panels. I inquired of the farmer how he could afford to put such a huge array of solar panels on his barn and he responded, “I could not afford not to. They pay me twice as much for the power I put into the grid than what I pay to take it out.” I told him we do it just the opposite here—that ratepayers who produce solar energy get paid less for putting it into the grid than what it cost to take it out.
It was obvious that the incentives then paid in Germany had resulted in solar panels being installed at a tremendous pace. We should do the same here, particularly in light of what is at stake by producing so much electricity with coal and natural gas.
5. TRANSPORTATION
Utah as a state has attracted many new residents due to its outstanding outdoor access, diverse culture and unique career opportunities. Municipal areas strive to maintain or improve living conditions despite not having more space for a growing population. Historically, the automobile has been a primary mode of modern transportation due to convenience and cost. More drivers has meant more congestion and pollution along heavily-trafficked routes, not just during peak hours. With the impact that internal combustion vehicles have on our environment, particularly during the inversion, we must help people get where they are going while preserving the quality of our air and living spaces.
A. As mayor, would you shift transportation toward methods focused on moving people and away from moving cars? What city infrastructure and services would support this?
(X) Yes
( ) No
Explain:
We could do so many things to reduce polluting vehicle traffic. Among them are:
1. Fight against and stop (even if it takes a lawsuit) the expansion of, and construction of new, highways, as the Sierra Club and I did when we joined forces against the original plan for the Legacy Highway. Building or expanding highways is a losing strategy for moving more people in, out of, and around our city. Highways simply promote more sprawl development, more traffic (usually one-person-per-car), more pollution, more isolation for those who drive longer distances, and more public mental and physical health problems.
2. Create safe and welcoming pedestrian, scooter, bicycle, and skating trails in areas like our downtown. Promote their year-round use by doing such things as protecting against inclement weather with retractable glass ceilings, as suggested by Moshe Safdie in his outstanding book, The City After the Automobile. (I suggested doing that along Main Street when I was mayor, while I was vigorously opposing the gerbil-tunnel-pedestrian-skybridge, which serves to obstruct pedestrian flow throughout the entire downtown area. I shared the idea and images of the retractable glass ceiling with several people. It was ultimately (and ironically) incorporated into the City Creek mall.)
3. Ensure that all buses in our city are electric or, at the least, natural gas. Coordinate a flawless experience for any person, regardless of the level of ability, to arrive in Salt Lake City by commuter rail and make convenient connections with light rail or buses that will get them to their destination quickly, without long connecting times. Coordinate this carefully between UTA, UDOT, and city streets, engineering, and planning staff.
4. I want SLC to be known as the safest pedestrian and bicycling community in the nation. When I was mayor, we initiated several innovative measures for pedestrian safety, leading us to be named the most improved city in the U.S. for pedestrian safety. (“Salt Lake City achieved the greatest improvement of any American metropolitan area, cutting its pedestrian death rate 44 percent in ten years. The [Surface Transportation Policy Project] report attributed much of the improvement to Rocky Anderson, who, upon being elected mayor of Salt Lake City in 1999, ‘elevated pedestrian safety and walkability to among his administration’s highest priorities.’” https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/america%E2%80%99s-streets-remain-mean-places-pedestrians)
We should provide for greater safety for bicyclists and those using skateboards, scooters, and other similar means of transportation by providing segregated paths for them, adjacent to sidewalks, even on neighborhood parkstrips, wherever possible. We should move away from bike lanes that are divided from traffic lanes by nothing more than a stripe of paint. The city owns the park strips, which should be utilized for designated bike/skate/scooter lanes parallel to existing sidewalks. This is done with great success in other nations and some other U.S. towns. The following images reflect the great advantages and feasibility of this approach:
Utah as a state has attracted many new residents due to its outstanding outdoor access, diverse culture and unique career opportunities. Municipal areas strive to maintain or improve living conditions despite not having more space for a growing population. Historically, the automobile has been a primary mode of modern transportation due to convenience and cost. More drivers has meant more congestion and pollution along heavily-trafficked routes, not just during peak hours. With the impact that internal combustion vehicles have on our environment, particularly during the inversion, we must help people get where they are going while preserving the quality of our air and living spaces.
A. As mayor, would you shift transportation toward methods focused on moving people and away from moving cars? What city infrastructure and services would support this?
(X) Yes
( ) No
Explain:
We could do so many things to reduce polluting vehicle traffic. Among them are:
1. Fight against and stop (even if it takes a lawsuit) the expansion of, and construction of new, highways, as the Sierra Club and I did when we joined forces against the original plan for the Legacy Highway. Building or expanding highways is a losing strategy for moving more people in, out of, and around our city. Highways simply promote more sprawl development, more traffic (usually one-person-per-car), more pollution, more isolation for those who drive longer distances, and more public mental and physical health problems.
2. Create safe and welcoming pedestrian, scooter, bicycle, and skating trails in areas like our downtown. Promote their year-round use by doing such things as protecting against inclement weather with retractable glass ceilings, as suggested by Moshe Safdie in his outstanding book, The City After the Automobile. (I suggested doing that along Main Street when I was mayor, while I was vigorously opposing the gerbil-tunnel-pedestrian-skybridge, which serves to obstruct pedestrian flow throughout the entire downtown area. I shared the idea and images of the retractable glass ceiling with several people. It was ultimately (and ironically) incorporated into the City Creek mall.)
3. Ensure that all buses in our city are electric or, at the least, natural gas. Coordinate a flawless experience for any person, regardless of the level of ability, to arrive in Salt Lake City by commuter rail and make convenient connections with light rail or buses that will get them to their destination quickly, without long connecting times. Coordinate this carefully between UTA, UDOT, and city streets, engineering, and planning staff.
4. I want SLC to be known as the safest pedestrian and bicycling community in the nation. When I was mayor, we initiated several innovative measures for pedestrian safety, leading us to be named the most improved city in the U.S. for pedestrian safety. (“Salt Lake City achieved the greatest improvement of any American metropolitan area, cutting its pedestrian death rate 44 percent in ten years. The [Surface Transportation Policy Project] report attributed much of the improvement to Rocky Anderson, who, upon being elected mayor of Salt Lake City in 1999, ‘elevated pedestrian safety and walkability to among his administration’s highest priorities.’” https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/america%E2%80%99s-streets-remain-mean-places-pedestrians)
We should provide for greater safety for bicyclists and those using skateboards, scooters, and other similar means of transportation by providing segregated paths for them, adjacent to sidewalks, even on neighborhood parkstrips, wherever possible. We should move away from bike lanes that are divided from traffic lanes by nothing more than a stripe of paint. The city owns the park strips, which should be utilized for designated bike/skate/scooter lanes parallel to existing sidewalks. This is done with great success in other nations and some other U.S. towns. The following images reflect the great advantages and feasibility of this approach:
5. Push for UDOT to transfer to SLC some of its roads, such as Redwood Road, where we can provide for bicycle and pedestrian lanes and calm traffic with engineering and devices well known for slowing down traffic and making streets safer for all.
6. Expand light rail on busiest roads, such as Foothill Drive, Redwood Road, and 700 East. Connect to electric shuttles that can get people to their destinations.
7. Encourage more use of bicycles by ending the rampant bike thefts throughout the city through enforcement of the laws, utilizing sting operations and bicycle identification so stolen bicycles can be identified.
8. A man living at a condominium on 300 East between 100 and 200 South told me he was going to meet someone two blocks away at Oasis, but because of all the people encamped on 300 West, as well as all the people living in the Magnolia and other apartments on the block, who hang out shooting up heroin and smoking meth (undeterred by the laws or the police because of the lack of enforcement at the mayor’s behest), he went to the parking lot of his condominium building and drove his car instead of walking.
We can encourage walking, bicycle riding, and the use of scooters, skateboards, etc., by making the city safer and cleaner. A significant measure in achieving that would be to enforce drug laws, diverting offenders from jail to drug or mental health treatment whenever possible. We also must eliminate the homeless encampments throughout our city, including in our parks and neighborhoods, so that all members of the public are able to use public spaces for their intended purposes (including walking, biking, and running). That can be achieved by providing a humane, secure alternative place for unsheltered people to live, often called a “sanctioned camp,” which would provide decent bathrooms, showers, meals, a mail-drop, property lockers, and case management to assist every person to transition to needed treatment or housing.
9. Incentivize the use of no-emission vehicles, and disincentivize the use of gas-powered cars with internal combustion, throughout the city. When I was mayor, I began a program, which is still in place but more restrictive since the end of Mayor Biskupski’s term, where people driving clean alternative fuel vehicles can park free at city parking meters. We should provide more free EV charging stations throughout the city, and ensure that the electricity for those stations is produced by clean sources such as solar panels and efficient batteries. The city should install and provide the charging stations and electricity rather than paying a company to provide what the city can do itself. The city should also reserve far more parking spaces for EVs and explore other incentives for the use of EVs if people have a need to drive a car. The best strategy, however, is to create a transportation system where we can move people to wherever they need or want to go without the use of a personal vehicle.
6. Expand light rail on busiest roads, such as Foothill Drive, Redwood Road, and 700 East. Connect to electric shuttles that can get people to their destinations.
7. Encourage more use of bicycles by ending the rampant bike thefts throughout the city through enforcement of the laws, utilizing sting operations and bicycle identification so stolen bicycles can be identified.
8. A man living at a condominium on 300 East between 100 and 200 South told me he was going to meet someone two blocks away at Oasis, but because of all the people encamped on 300 West, as well as all the people living in the Magnolia and other apartments on the block, who hang out shooting up heroin and smoking meth (undeterred by the laws or the police because of the lack of enforcement at the mayor’s behest), he went to the parking lot of his condominium building and drove his car instead of walking.
We can encourage walking, bicycle riding, and the use of scooters, skateboards, etc., by making the city safer and cleaner. A significant measure in achieving that would be to enforce drug laws, diverting offenders from jail to drug or mental health treatment whenever possible. We also must eliminate the homeless encampments throughout our city, including in our parks and neighborhoods, so that all members of the public are able to use public spaces for their intended purposes (including walking, biking, and running). That can be achieved by providing a humane, secure alternative place for unsheltered people to live, often called a “sanctioned camp,” which would provide decent bathrooms, showers, meals, a mail-drop, property lockers, and case management to assist every person to transition to needed treatment or housing.
9. Incentivize the use of no-emission vehicles, and disincentivize the use of gas-powered cars with internal combustion, throughout the city. When I was mayor, I began a program, which is still in place but more restrictive since the end of Mayor Biskupski’s term, where people driving clean alternative fuel vehicles can park free at city parking meters. We should provide more free EV charging stations throughout the city, and ensure that the electricity for those stations is produced by clean sources such as solar panels and efficient batteries. The city should install and provide the charging stations and electricity rather than paying a company to provide what the city can do itself. The city should also reserve far more parking spaces for EVs and explore other incentives for the use of EVs if people have a need to drive a car. The best strategy, however, is to create a transportation system where we can move people to wherever they need or want to go without the use of a personal vehicle.
B. Recently Utah’s Department of Transportation approved a gondola project in Little Cottonwood Canyon, despite overwhelming opposition to the plan. This would directly impact many in Salt Lake City. Do you oppose this plan and would you use your position to try and influence issues such as this one?
(X ) Yes
( ) No
Explain:
The gondola project is an obscenity, opposed by the vast majority of people, yet paid for by them rather than the ski resorts that will be the major beneficiaries. If this project would cut down on vehicle traffic and air pollution, as in Zermatt (where you have to take a train and which has almost no cars in the town—at least when I was there decades ago), there might be some public benefit from significantly reduced air pollution that could justify some public investment, but auto traffic is going to continue unabated up the canyons, polluting and congesting the roads, all contrary to the public interest.
Of course, I would use my position as mayor to organize against the gondola plan. If the public organizes and rises up against the gondola plan, making it clear there will be political costs for those elected officials who support it, I believe we can stop it.
C: Do you intend to make more areas of the city more walkable? If so, where and how?
(X) Yes
( ) No
Explain:
Safety and a sense of security is crucial to walkability. Now, many areas of our city are not perceived by many as being safe and secure so are out of bounds for people to walk there. Mid City Salon, a half block west of Main Street on 300 South, recently closed after more than 30 years in business there because of several criminal acts that have driven away customers and employees. The last incident was a man masturbating in front of the salon full of women and the police failed to respond to a 911 call. When the police have responded to calls from the salon, they told the owner that the mayor has instructed them to simply tell the offenders to “move along.”
That is a similar account provided by numerous small businesses throughout and beyond the downtown area, including European Treasures Antiques on 600 South 500 West and Cake Salon at 1010 South State Street. In all instances, many customers are now choosing not to go, by foot or otherwise, to those businesses. For that reason, Southam Gallery and LatterDay Bride, both long-time businesses downtown have moved out of Salt Lake City.
The same holds true for our parks, normally a place for people to walk, run, and otherwise recreate. Now, there are open air drug markets and conspicuous use of drugs and sex acts because of the sense of impunity so many people have because of the lack of accountability for those who engage in anti-social acts. I’ll make certain people know the laws will be enforced, but with a restorative justice approach, where problem-solving (e.g., drug and mental health treatment) will be the focus, instead of punishment, humiliation, and retribution.
I will also make certain that good trails are built according to solutions reached through a collaborative approach between different types of users (e.g., mountain bikers and hikers), which has been missing thus far, leading to a lot of expense in carving up the foothills, then the imposition of a “moratorium” by the present administration. Our trails system is a remarkable treasure that should be protected, with a careful approach to maintenance and any expansion.
As I described above, measures can be taken to protect and attract pedestrians to Main Street and elsewhere, including perhaps a retractable glass overhead cover to be closed during inclement weather. That would foster an attractive, fascinating year-round pedestrian experience, similar to this covered walkway in Australia:
(X ) Yes
( ) No
Explain:
The gondola project is an obscenity, opposed by the vast majority of people, yet paid for by them rather than the ski resorts that will be the major beneficiaries. If this project would cut down on vehicle traffic and air pollution, as in Zermatt (where you have to take a train and which has almost no cars in the town—at least when I was there decades ago), there might be some public benefit from significantly reduced air pollution that could justify some public investment, but auto traffic is going to continue unabated up the canyons, polluting and congesting the roads, all contrary to the public interest.
Of course, I would use my position as mayor to organize against the gondola plan. If the public organizes and rises up against the gondola plan, making it clear there will be political costs for those elected officials who support it, I believe we can stop it.
C: Do you intend to make more areas of the city more walkable? If so, where and how?
(X) Yes
( ) No
Explain:
Safety and a sense of security is crucial to walkability. Now, many areas of our city are not perceived by many as being safe and secure so are out of bounds for people to walk there. Mid City Salon, a half block west of Main Street on 300 South, recently closed after more than 30 years in business there because of several criminal acts that have driven away customers and employees. The last incident was a man masturbating in front of the salon full of women and the police failed to respond to a 911 call. When the police have responded to calls from the salon, they told the owner that the mayor has instructed them to simply tell the offenders to “move along.”
That is a similar account provided by numerous small businesses throughout and beyond the downtown area, including European Treasures Antiques on 600 South 500 West and Cake Salon at 1010 South State Street. In all instances, many customers are now choosing not to go, by foot or otherwise, to those businesses. For that reason, Southam Gallery and LatterDay Bride, both long-time businesses downtown have moved out of Salt Lake City.
The same holds true for our parks, normally a place for people to walk, run, and otherwise recreate. Now, there are open air drug markets and conspicuous use of drugs and sex acts because of the sense of impunity so many people have because of the lack of accountability for those who engage in anti-social acts. I’ll make certain people know the laws will be enforced, but with a restorative justice approach, where problem-solving (e.g., drug and mental health treatment) will be the focus, instead of punishment, humiliation, and retribution.
I will also make certain that good trails are built according to solutions reached through a collaborative approach between different types of users (e.g., mountain bikers and hikers), which has been missing thus far, leading to a lot of expense in carving up the foothills, then the imposition of a “moratorium” by the present administration. Our trails system is a remarkable treasure that should be protected, with a careful approach to maintenance and any expansion.
As I described above, measures can be taken to protect and attract pedestrians to Main Street and elsewhere, including perhaps a retractable glass overhead cover to be closed during inclement weather. That would foster an attractive, fascinating year-round pedestrian experience, similar to this covered walkway in Australia:
Art makes a city far more walkable. We should create world-class designs for pedestrian bridges and other pedestrian walkways to attract more pedestrians and create a memorable experience that anyone will have in mind when thinking of our city. Just imagine a pedestrian bridge like the Miraflores-Barranco Pedestrian Bridge in Lima, Peru:
For people to want to walk, the walkway must be interesting and safe. Pedestrian safety is crucial. I will provide better enforcement of laws meant to protect pedestrians and undertake all measures possible to make us, once again, the most improved city in the U.S. for pedestrian safety.
The nature of the surrounding natural and built environment is also vital for attracting pedestrians. For that reason, we developed a “walkable community” ordinance when I was mayor, providing disincentives for strip-mall designs, where people walk on sidewalks with an asphalt street on one side and an asphalt parking lot on the other. We should keep in mind with respect to every new development or major renovation that the walking environment must be improved and never diminished. When a behemoth new housing development, like that on South Temple and 500 East, is built right up to the sidewalk, it makes for an unpleasant, uninteresting, sometimes even intimidating pedestrian experience. We need to do far better in our planning and zoning when it comes to enhancing the pedestrian experience.
The nature of the surrounding natural and built environment is also vital for attracting pedestrians. For that reason, we developed a “walkable community” ordinance when I was mayor, providing disincentives for strip-mall designs, where people walk on sidewalks with an asphalt street on one side and an asphalt parking lot on the other. We should keep in mind with respect to every new development or major renovation that the walking environment must be improved and never diminished. When a behemoth new housing development, like that on South Temple and 500 East, is built right up to the sidewalk, it makes for an unpleasant, uninteresting, sometimes even intimidating pedestrian experience. We need to do far better in our planning and zoning when it comes to enhancing the pedestrian experience.
6. PROTECTING OUR DEMOCRACY
State lawmakers have been making it harder for Utahns to be represented at every level of government. In 2018, voters passed Proposition 4 establishing a seven-member Independent Redistricting Commission. While the Utah Constitution only allows for the Legislature to have redistricting authority, an agreement was made that the commission could serve in a non-binding advisory capacity. During the 2020 election cycle, Utah’s Independent Redistricting Commission presented twelve map proposals to the Legislative Redistricting Committee: three proposals each for Congress, state Senate, state House, and State School Board informed by sixteen public hearings across the state. Nearly all of the Congressional & Legislative map proposals earned an A-grade for partisan fairness from the Princeton Gerrymandering Project. Every single one of the proposed maps was rejected by the Utah Legislative Redistricting Committee, which released its own maps late on the Friday night before approving those maps on the following Monday, during a public session with nearly all comments in opposition. Many Utahns saw this as a transparent display of partisan gerrymandering despite a voter-passed initiative within the state legislature to try and prevent that.
More recently, several preemption bills have sought to reclaim authority from municipalities trying to exercise local control over public health and animal enterprise. Such actions by the Utah Legislature erode public confidence in government, making it harder for citizens to be represented equally, as well as making it harder to achieve conservation victories through the state legislature.
As Mayor, will you support legislation that increases voter participation, strengthens the voice of the people, and enacts campaign finance reform? This includes complete disclosure of all political campaign expenditures by for-profit and nonprofit corporations and all political action committees, including those making independent expenditures?
(X) Yes
( ) No
Explain:
Yes, I’ve been an ardent supporter of ending the corrupting influence of money in our political system for decades, even making that the core platform of my campaign in 2012 as the Justice Party nominee for president. The reason we ran the campaign was primarily to raise awareness among the electorate of the corrupt aspects of our political system never addressed anymore by either of the major political parties (since they both benefit from the status quo). See, e.g., “Dark-horse presidential candidate berate role of money in politics,” The Center for Public Integrity, found at https://publicintegrity.org/politics/dark-horse-presidential-candidates-berate-role-of-money-in-politics/; “Rocky Anderson’s radical third way,” The Guardian, found at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/dec/12/rocky-anderson-radical-third-way; “Rocky Anderson: “Overthrow the Dictatorship of Money,” Counterpunch, found at https://www.counterpunch.org/2012/02/07/rocky-anderson-overthrow-the-dictatorship-of-money/ (“ ‘What the Justice Party and my campaign are about is to radically change that system so that we can eliminate the plutocracy — that is, government by the wealthy — and ensure instead that our government finally represents the public interest,’ he said. To get money out of politics, the first priority in an Anderson presidency would be passing a constitutional amendment overturning the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling.”)
We should all know who is contributing to get a candidate elected and never permit people to fund a campaign anonymously, hiding behind a PAC. We also should demand that the Citizens United ruling be overruled by a constitutional amendment, protecting our democracy from a corporate dictatorship because of unlimited contributions by corporations to buy their candidates into office.
If the Utah Supreme Court does not rule in the people’s favor in the pending lawsuit relating to the fair boundaries initiative passed by a majority of voters, we should insist on an amendment to Utah’s Constitution, making it clear that the Legislature cannot repeal or undermine initiatives passed by the voters (or at least making it very difficult to do so). Utah was the second state in the nation to provide that the people also have legislative power through the initiative process. (“The Legislative power of the State shall be vested in: (a) a Senate and House of Representatives which shall be designated the Legislature of the State of Utah; and (b) the people of the State of Utah as provided in Subsection (2).” Article VI, Section 1 (1).) The Utah Supreme Court has stated that the right of the popular initiative is a “fundamental right,” yet that right has been gutted repeatedly by a Legislature that believes it can simply override the people’s will by passing new legislation at variance with what voters demanded through the direct-democracy initiative process under Article VI, Section 1 (2).
The Legislature undermined or effectively repealed initiatives passed by a majority of voters several times, including with respect to the civil forfeiture of property without a trial, expansion of Medicaid, medical cannabis, and gerrymandering. The people of the state of Utah should come together in a non-partisan fashion and demand that the legislative power invested in them by our Constitution cannot be overridden by the Legislature. After all, the Utah Constitution, Article I, Section 2, also provides: “All political power is inherent in the people; and all free governments are founded on their authority for their equal protection and benefit, and they have the right to alter or reform their government as the public welfare may require.”
I would also favor legislation that would require in a corporate charter of any media organization that all candidates will have free and equal time to communicate their message to the public.
State lawmakers have been making it harder for Utahns to be represented at every level of government. In 2018, voters passed Proposition 4 establishing a seven-member Independent Redistricting Commission. While the Utah Constitution only allows for the Legislature to have redistricting authority, an agreement was made that the commission could serve in a non-binding advisory capacity. During the 2020 election cycle, Utah’s Independent Redistricting Commission presented twelve map proposals to the Legislative Redistricting Committee: three proposals each for Congress, state Senate, state House, and State School Board informed by sixteen public hearings across the state. Nearly all of the Congressional & Legislative map proposals earned an A-grade for partisan fairness from the Princeton Gerrymandering Project. Every single one of the proposed maps was rejected by the Utah Legislative Redistricting Committee, which released its own maps late on the Friday night before approving those maps on the following Monday, during a public session with nearly all comments in opposition. Many Utahns saw this as a transparent display of partisan gerrymandering despite a voter-passed initiative within the state legislature to try and prevent that.
More recently, several preemption bills have sought to reclaim authority from municipalities trying to exercise local control over public health and animal enterprise. Such actions by the Utah Legislature erode public confidence in government, making it harder for citizens to be represented equally, as well as making it harder to achieve conservation victories through the state legislature.
As Mayor, will you support legislation that increases voter participation, strengthens the voice of the people, and enacts campaign finance reform? This includes complete disclosure of all political campaign expenditures by for-profit and nonprofit corporations and all political action committees, including those making independent expenditures?
(X) Yes
( ) No
Explain:
Yes, I’ve been an ardent supporter of ending the corrupting influence of money in our political system for decades, even making that the core platform of my campaign in 2012 as the Justice Party nominee for president. The reason we ran the campaign was primarily to raise awareness among the electorate of the corrupt aspects of our political system never addressed anymore by either of the major political parties (since they both benefit from the status quo). See, e.g., “Dark-horse presidential candidate berate role of money in politics,” The Center for Public Integrity, found at https://publicintegrity.org/politics/dark-horse-presidential-candidates-berate-role-of-money-in-politics/; “Rocky Anderson’s radical third way,” The Guardian, found at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/dec/12/rocky-anderson-radical-third-way; “Rocky Anderson: “Overthrow the Dictatorship of Money,” Counterpunch, found at https://www.counterpunch.org/2012/02/07/rocky-anderson-overthrow-the-dictatorship-of-money/ (“ ‘What the Justice Party and my campaign are about is to radically change that system so that we can eliminate the plutocracy — that is, government by the wealthy — and ensure instead that our government finally represents the public interest,’ he said. To get money out of politics, the first priority in an Anderson presidency would be passing a constitutional amendment overturning the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling.”)
We should all know who is contributing to get a candidate elected and never permit people to fund a campaign anonymously, hiding behind a PAC. We also should demand that the Citizens United ruling be overruled by a constitutional amendment, protecting our democracy from a corporate dictatorship because of unlimited contributions by corporations to buy their candidates into office.
If the Utah Supreme Court does not rule in the people’s favor in the pending lawsuit relating to the fair boundaries initiative passed by a majority of voters, we should insist on an amendment to Utah’s Constitution, making it clear that the Legislature cannot repeal or undermine initiatives passed by the voters (or at least making it very difficult to do so). Utah was the second state in the nation to provide that the people also have legislative power through the initiative process. (“The Legislative power of the State shall be vested in: (a) a Senate and House of Representatives which shall be designated the Legislature of the State of Utah; and (b) the people of the State of Utah as provided in Subsection (2).” Article VI, Section 1 (1).) The Utah Supreme Court has stated that the right of the popular initiative is a “fundamental right,” yet that right has been gutted repeatedly by a Legislature that believes it can simply override the people’s will by passing new legislation at variance with what voters demanded through the direct-democracy initiative process under Article VI, Section 1 (2).
The Legislature undermined or effectively repealed initiatives passed by a majority of voters several times, including with respect to the civil forfeiture of property without a trial, expansion of Medicaid, medical cannabis, and gerrymandering. The people of the state of Utah should come together in a non-partisan fashion and demand that the legislative power invested in them by our Constitution cannot be overridden by the Legislature. After all, the Utah Constitution, Article I, Section 2, also provides: “All political power is inherent in the people; and all free governments are founded on their authority for their equal protection and benefit, and they have the right to alter or reform their government as the public welfare may require.”
I would also favor legislation that would require in a corporate charter of any media organization that all candidates will have free and equal time to communicate their message to the public.
7. ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE
Environmental justice is defined as the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people
regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. The Sierra Club is committed to environmental justice principles and working against injustices where there are disproportionate harms imposed on people of more limited means.
A. As mayor, what measures will you take to ensure that unhoused individuals have access to safe and secure housing, food, and other necessities? What steps will you take to prevent people from losing homes in a market that has outpaced income for many residents?
1. First, I will immediately provide for a safe and secure sanctioned campus, where unsheltered homeless people can exist without the constant, incredibly harmful and unconstitutional city police raids and the confiscation and destruction of their property by city streets division employees and city contractors working for Advantage Services. I will endeavor to locate that campus at the old Wingpointe Golf Course or somewhere similar, remote from neighborhoods and businesses, but close to transit. During winters, there has been no room in any of the shelters for hundreds of unsheltered people in our city and nothing was done by city government to provide for their safety or comfort from the bitter freezing weather, resulting in numerous deaths and many amputations of toes, fingers, and lower limbs because of frostbite suffered because of lack of shelter. Unlike the horrible conditions under which they have existed these past four years, all unsheltered people can vacate their encampments that are in many parts of our city, including parks and neighborhoods, and be in a sanctioned campus, where they will have decent bathrooms (which are now denied them by city government in most areas), showers, meals, property lockers, and access to caseworkers who will develop individualized plans for each person to help them transition to necessary mental health or drug abuse treatment and/or housing.
2. Currently, the goals adopted by our current mayor and others regarding the elimination of homelessness are tragically timid. Their collective goals are, in part, that in three years, there will be a mere 5% reduction in the unsheltered population, and in five years, there will be a mere 7% reduction in the vulnerable homeless population (i.e., those who are disabled, elderly, chronically homeless, victims of domestic violence, or mentally ill). Statewide Collaboration for Change: Utah’s Plan to Address Homelessness, February 2023.
Setting realistic but ambitious goals is crucial to providing secure housing and other necessities for homeless people. I will set far more ambitious goals, so that we can eliminate homelessness for vulnerable people and end unsheltered homelessness (with rare, brief exceptions) within four years. By pursuing a much more cost-effective and competent means of providing permanent housing for the homeless population, we can achieve those goals.
The current mayor assured the public over a year ago that the 197-unit old Ramada Inn (which also has some cement slabs for vehicles), for which the city committed $2 million of our infrastructure budget and the RDA committed to a loan of over $1 million, would be ready for occupancy by the time the winter overflow shelter was closed last April. The April deadline wasn’t met, and month after month went by without one unit being ready for occupancy. All that time, the money could have been directed toward a homeless housing developer who would do what it committed to do, but the city did nothing. The project languished and, not until I held a press conference at the site of the old hotel and noted that no construction had been done for a very long time and that the developer was not moving forward with the housing project did the mayor finally come clean with the public—after representing at two debates that the project was “still under construction” and “still in the pipeline”—and admit that the project was dead. The cavalier treatment of this issue is shameful given that at least 400 unsheltered people were supposed to have been living in the renovated Ramada Inn by last April, but are still on the street and still being subjected to the city’s police raids and confiscations and destruction of homeless people’s property––and facing yet another winter.
We can bring the state, Salt Lake County, the business community, and the philanthropic community together with the city and push aggressively to meet the four-year goal of housing those who are homeless, both those in shelters and those who are unsheltered (i.e., those living in tents, cars, and other places considered to be uninhabitable). We can accomplish that not by building new, expensive buildings like the Magnolia, but by following the model of Switchpoint, which has 200 units in the Point Airport and Point Fairpark on North Temple and about 2200 West. There, residents pay rent, are held accountable for misconduct, and are provided opportunities to work, including at enterprises created by Switchpoint.
When I was mayor and for a few years afterward, many different entities (including Salt Lake City) were building a lot of permanent supportive housing, to the point that we were seen around the nation as an example other cities and states should follow in order to eliminate chronic homelessness. See, e.g., “Utah Reduced Chronic Homelessness 91 Percent; Here’s How,” NPR, found at https://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chronic-homelessness-by-91-percent-heres-how. Then, from 2010 until 2019, not one more unit of permanent housing for chronically homeless people was built. The result was disastrous. We can get back to being that national example and nearly eliminate chronic homelessness with passionate, energetic, engaged leadership.
B. Will you support and actively promote policies that address racial, economic, social, and environmental justice such as legislation that requires Utah DEQ permit reviews to take into account cumulative air pollution impacts, requires payment of the prevailing wage, provides for hiring from local communities on climate and clean energy projects, secures workforce training and transition planning for coal and fracked gas industry employees, and promotes strong enforcement of environmental laws—especially in the most disproportionately affected communities?
(X) Yes
( ) No
Explain:
My commitment to economic, social, and environmental justice (all of which entails racial justice) was signified for years by my co-founding the Justice Party and directing it full-time for years without pay. Everything we did was focused on achieving greater economic, social, and environmental justice. “The Justice Party was created with the motto “economic, environmental, and social justice for all.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_Party_(United_States) #:~:text=The%20Justice%20Party%20was%20created,influence%20of%20money%20in%20politics .
As in most cities in the U.S., the adverse health effects, including premature death, from air pollution fall heaviest on poorer communities. I would vigorously promote legislation requiring Utah DEQ permit reviews to take into account cumulative air pollution impacts. That should urgently be done in connection with the proposed expansion of I-15, which I have said should be challenged by a lawsuit brought by the city if there is a good-faith legal basis. (My primary opponent said she would not legally challenge the expansion of I-15.)
I passionately believe that all working people should be paid a living wage. As mayor, I issued an executive order requiring that there be a preference in city contracting for those companies that pay a living wage and have a policy of employment non-discrimination on the basis of several factors, including sexual orientation. Although our state’s minimum wage (which is the national minimum wage of $7.25 per hour) has only 40% of the purchasing power of the minimum wage in 1968, the Utah Legislature responded to my executive order with legislation forbidding cities from providing a preference for city contractors that pay more than Utah’s minimum wage. I would always push in every way possible for an increase in the minimum wage and would insist to the extent possible that employers always pay a living wage.
We should always hire from our local community to the extent possible, including on any climate and clean energy projects, such as the possible new community clean energy utility described above.
Our state legislature should be persuaded to provide training and transition planning for all coal and fracked gas industry employees, which will help us all transition from the use of fossil fuels to renewable energy. Such training and transition planning will neutralize the common objection to ending the use of coal and fracked gas based on the impact on the present workforce. Far better opportunities and security are available in the clean industry sector, particularly since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act.
Environmental protection laws and regulations exist to provide meaningful protections for the public and our environment. That’s why I enthusiastically joined with the Sierra Club and Utahns for Better Transportation to challenge the original plans for the Legacy Highway, which were, as the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled, illegal under federal law. I believe in the strict enforcement of laws intended to protect the public and our environment and will explore whether there is a good-faith basis to challenge poor, dangerous environmental policies and practices, including the expansion of I-15 and industrial pollution, including by US Magnesium. Responsible leadership requires a willingness to pursue legal remedies when the public health and the environment are illegally placed at risk. That is especially the case when underrepresented and disproportionately affected communities are harmed or placed at risk of harm.
C. How will you ensure that green spaces, clean energy technology, and pollution prevention strategies are equally accessible to everyone in your municipality regardless of their economic position or zip code?
My approach to public policy and practices is to make certain that previously underrepresented and less economically advantaged communities are protected and that the city make up for any prior unfair or unequal treatment of any such communities. I believe strongly in equity in connection with everything from education, environmental protection, access to green space, recreation, and parks, and trees. Any clean energy technology must be equally accessible in every part of our city, which would clearly occur if we created our own public clean energy utility.
D. Do you support citizen commissions to guarantee fair public processes and lift up voices from impacted communities?
(X) Yes
( ) No
Explain:
Citizen boards and commissions are vital in democratizing city governance and providing a meaningful voice and power to impacted communities. For instance, I created the Police Civilian Review Board, to provide important citizen input regarding claims of police misconduct. Unfortunately, in recent years, many of the city’s boards and commissions have had several seats left unfilled. At one point, the Civilian Review Board had only 5 seats (unexpired) filled out of 21 total. In other words, 16 of 21 seats had been left unfilled. Many of those seats were from traditionally underrepresented communities in Salt Lake City. Currently only 2/3 (6 of 9) of the seats on the city’s Human Rights Commission are filled by people whose terms have not expired. These are huge lost opportunities for community engagement and impact.
When I was mayor, we aggressively recruited new members on city boards and commissions in previously underrepresented communities and, over 8 years, 31% of our appointments to city boards and commissions were from ethnic minority communities. That diversity on boards and commissions served our city well and gave a voice to the ethnic minority communities they never had before.
Citizen commissions that have fair, diverse representation can provide important protections for public processes and provide impacted communities with vital representation and an important, informed voice.
Environmental justice is defined as the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people
regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. The Sierra Club is committed to environmental justice principles and working against injustices where there are disproportionate harms imposed on people of more limited means.
A. As mayor, what measures will you take to ensure that unhoused individuals have access to safe and secure housing, food, and other necessities? What steps will you take to prevent people from losing homes in a market that has outpaced income for many residents?
1. First, I will immediately provide for a safe and secure sanctioned campus, where unsheltered homeless people can exist without the constant, incredibly harmful and unconstitutional city police raids and the confiscation and destruction of their property by city streets division employees and city contractors working for Advantage Services. I will endeavor to locate that campus at the old Wingpointe Golf Course or somewhere similar, remote from neighborhoods and businesses, but close to transit. During winters, there has been no room in any of the shelters for hundreds of unsheltered people in our city and nothing was done by city government to provide for their safety or comfort from the bitter freezing weather, resulting in numerous deaths and many amputations of toes, fingers, and lower limbs because of frostbite suffered because of lack of shelter. Unlike the horrible conditions under which they have existed these past four years, all unsheltered people can vacate their encampments that are in many parts of our city, including parks and neighborhoods, and be in a sanctioned campus, where they will have decent bathrooms (which are now denied them by city government in most areas), showers, meals, property lockers, and access to caseworkers who will develop individualized plans for each person to help them transition to necessary mental health or drug abuse treatment and/or housing.
2. Currently, the goals adopted by our current mayor and others regarding the elimination of homelessness are tragically timid. Their collective goals are, in part, that in three years, there will be a mere 5% reduction in the unsheltered population, and in five years, there will be a mere 7% reduction in the vulnerable homeless population (i.e., those who are disabled, elderly, chronically homeless, victims of domestic violence, or mentally ill). Statewide Collaboration for Change: Utah’s Plan to Address Homelessness, February 2023.
Setting realistic but ambitious goals is crucial to providing secure housing and other necessities for homeless people. I will set far more ambitious goals, so that we can eliminate homelessness for vulnerable people and end unsheltered homelessness (with rare, brief exceptions) within four years. By pursuing a much more cost-effective and competent means of providing permanent housing for the homeless population, we can achieve those goals.
The current mayor assured the public over a year ago that the 197-unit old Ramada Inn (which also has some cement slabs for vehicles), for which the city committed $2 million of our infrastructure budget and the RDA committed to a loan of over $1 million, would be ready for occupancy by the time the winter overflow shelter was closed last April. The April deadline wasn’t met, and month after month went by without one unit being ready for occupancy. All that time, the money could have been directed toward a homeless housing developer who would do what it committed to do, but the city did nothing. The project languished and, not until I held a press conference at the site of the old hotel and noted that no construction had been done for a very long time and that the developer was not moving forward with the housing project did the mayor finally come clean with the public—after representing at two debates that the project was “still under construction” and “still in the pipeline”—and admit that the project was dead. The cavalier treatment of this issue is shameful given that at least 400 unsheltered people were supposed to have been living in the renovated Ramada Inn by last April, but are still on the street and still being subjected to the city’s police raids and confiscations and destruction of homeless people’s property––and facing yet another winter.
We can bring the state, Salt Lake County, the business community, and the philanthropic community together with the city and push aggressively to meet the four-year goal of housing those who are homeless, both those in shelters and those who are unsheltered (i.e., those living in tents, cars, and other places considered to be uninhabitable). We can accomplish that not by building new, expensive buildings like the Magnolia, but by following the model of Switchpoint, which has 200 units in the Point Airport and Point Fairpark on North Temple and about 2200 West. There, residents pay rent, are held accountable for misconduct, and are provided opportunities to work, including at enterprises created by Switchpoint.
When I was mayor and for a few years afterward, many different entities (including Salt Lake City) were building a lot of permanent supportive housing, to the point that we were seen around the nation as an example other cities and states should follow in order to eliminate chronic homelessness. See, e.g., “Utah Reduced Chronic Homelessness 91 Percent; Here’s How,” NPR, found at https://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chronic-homelessness-by-91-percent-heres-how. Then, from 2010 until 2019, not one more unit of permanent housing for chronically homeless people was built. The result was disastrous. We can get back to being that national example and nearly eliminate chronic homelessness with passionate, energetic, engaged leadership.
B. Will you support and actively promote policies that address racial, economic, social, and environmental justice such as legislation that requires Utah DEQ permit reviews to take into account cumulative air pollution impacts, requires payment of the prevailing wage, provides for hiring from local communities on climate and clean energy projects, secures workforce training and transition planning for coal and fracked gas industry employees, and promotes strong enforcement of environmental laws—especially in the most disproportionately affected communities?
(X) Yes
( ) No
Explain:
My commitment to economic, social, and environmental justice (all of which entails racial justice) was signified for years by my co-founding the Justice Party and directing it full-time for years without pay. Everything we did was focused on achieving greater economic, social, and environmental justice. “The Justice Party was created with the motto “economic, environmental, and social justice for all.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_Party_(United_States) #:~:text=The%20Justice%20Party%20was%20created,influence%20of%20money%20in%20politics .
As in most cities in the U.S., the adverse health effects, including premature death, from air pollution fall heaviest on poorer communities. I would vigorously promote legislation requiring Utah DEQ permit reviews to take into account cumulative air pollution impacts. That should urgently be done in connection with the proposed expansion of I-15, which I have said should be challenged by a lawsuit brought by the city if there is a good-faith legal basis. (My primary opponent said she would not legally challenge the expansion of I-15.)
I passionately believe that all working people should be paid a living wage. As mayor, I issued an executive order requiring that there be a preference in city contracting for those companies that pay a living wage and have a policy of employment non-discrimination on the basis of several factors, including sexual orientation. Although our state’s minimum wage (which is the national minimum wage of $7.25 per hour) has only 40% of the purchasing power of the minimum wage in 1968, the Utah Legislature responded to my executive order with legislation forbidding cities from providing a preference for city contractors that pay more than Utah’s minimum wage. I would always push in every way possible for an increase in the minimum wage and would insist to the extent possible that employers always pay a living wage.
We should always hire from our local community to the extent possible, including on any climate and clean energy projects, such as the possible new community clean energy utility described above.
Our state legislature should be persuaded to provide training and transition planning for all coal and fracked gas industry employees, which will help us all transition from the use of fossil fuels to renewable energy. Such training and transition planning will neutralize the common objection to ending the use of coal and fracked gas based on the impact on the present workforce. Far better opportunities and security are available in the clean industry sector, particularly since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act.
Environmental protection laws and regulations exist to provide meaningful protections for the public and our environment. That’s why I enthusiastically joined with the Sierra Club and Utahns for Better Transportation to challenge the original plans for the Legacy Highway, which were, as the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled, illegal under federal law. I believe in the strict enforcement of laws intended to protect the public and our environment and will explore whether there is a good-faith basis to challenge poor, dangerous environmental policies and practices, including the expansion of I-15 and industrial pollution, including by US Magnesium. Responsible leadership requires a willingness to pursue legal remedies when the public health and the environment are illegally placed at risk. That is especially the case when underrepresented and disproportionately affected communities are harmed or placed at risk of harm.
C. How will you ensure that green spaces, clean energy technology, and pollution prevention strategies are equally accessible to everyone in your municipality regardless of their economic position or zip code?
My approach to public policy and practices is to make certain that previously underrepresented and less economically advantaged communities are protected and that the city make up for any prior unfair or unequal treatment of any such communities. I believe strongly in equity in connection with everything from education, environmental protection, access to green space, recreation, and parks, and trees. Any clean energy technology must be equally accessible in every part of our city, which would clearly occur if we created our own public clean energy utility.
D. Do you support citizen commissions to guarantee fair public processes and lift up voices from impacted communities?
(X) Yes
( ) No
Explain:
Citizen boards and commissions are vital in democratizing city governance and providing a meaningful voice and power to impacted communities. For instance, I created the Police Civilian Review Board, to provide important citizen input regarding claims of police misconduct. Unfortunately, in recent years, many of the city’s boards and commissions have had several seats left unfilled. At one point, the Civilian Review Board had only 5 seats (unexpired) filled out of 21 total. In other words, 16 of 21 seats had been left unfilled. Many of those seats were from traditionally underrepresented communities in Salt Lake City. Currently only 2/3 (6 of 9) of the seats on the city’s Human Rights Commission are filled by people whose terms have not expired. These are huge lost opportunities for community engagement and impact.
When I was mayor, we aggressively recruited new members on city boards and commissions in previously underrepresented communities and, over 8 years, 31% of our appointments to city boards and commissions were from ethnic minority communities. That diversity on boards and commissions served our city well and gave a voice to the ethnic minority communities they never had before.
Citizen commissions that have fair, diverse representation can provide important protections for public processes and provide impacted communities with vital representation and an important, informed voice.
8. POLLUTER ACCOUNTABILITY
In 2018 EPA found several counties in Utah in violation of federal ozone standards. Rather than cutting back on industrial emissions over the three years provided by EPA to do so, fossil fuel and mining industry groups pushed state regulators and elected officials (including the Governor and top Legislators) to request a waiver (179B request) from the EPA and to assert the offending levels of ozone came from Asia. Ozone has harmful effects on the lungs, but also can cause inflammation throughout the body. Levels seen in Utah can harm the lungs in a decade as much as smoking a pack a day can do in three decades. Ozone can cause asthma attacks, stillbirths, and premature deaths.
A. As mayor, how will you encourage industry to comply with regulations?
(X) Yes
( ) No
Explain:
Regulations, such as the federal ozone standards, are without any meaning if they cannot or will not be enforced. Just as I sued in my official capacity to join the Sierra Club and Utahns for Better Transportation to challenge the original plan for the Legacy Highway on the ground that it violated federal law, I would have the city sue to enforce laws intended to protect the public health and environment if they were violated.
Because industry-caused air pollution has had an extremely harmful effect on the health of our residents, I will seek to hire one or more top-flight plaintiff’s environmental lawyers to pursue the protections of laws and regulations intended to prevent harm to the public health and environment. The pursuit of those protections through the legal system is the responsibility of our city’s leaders and exactly what should be expected in a system based on the rule of law.
In 2018 EPA found several counties in Utah in violation of federal ozone standards. Rather than cutting back on industrial emissions over the three years provided by EPA to do so, fossil fuel and mining industry groups pushed state regulators and elected officials (including the Governor and top Legislators) to request a waiver (179B request) from the EPA and to assert the offending levels of ozone came from Asia. Ozone has harmful effects on the lungs, but also can cause inflammation throughout the body. Levels seen in Utah can harm the lungs in a decade as much as smoking a pack a day can do in three decades. Ozone can cause asthma attacks, stillbirths, and premature deaths.
A. As mayor, how will you encourage industry to comply with regulations?
(X) Yes
( ) No
Explain:
Regulations, such as the federal ozone standards, are without any meaning if they cannot or will not be enforced. Just as I sued in my official capacity to join the Sierra Club and Utahns for Better Transportation to challenge the original plan for the Legacy Highway on the ground that it violated federal law, I would have the city sue to enforce laws intended to protect the public health and environment if they were violated.
Because industry-caused air pollution has had an extremely harmful effect on the health of our residents, I will seek to hire one or more top-flight plaintiff’s environmental lawyers to pursue the protections of laws and regulations intended to prevent harm to the public health and environment. The pursuit of those protections through the legal system is the responsibility of our city’s leaders and exactly what should be expected in a system based on the rule of law.
Biographical SketchHas the candidate personally approved the responses given in this questionnaire?
(X) Yes – and I wrote them.
( ) No
Thank you for taking the time to complete this questionnaire. Good luck with your campaign!
Thank you! My biographical sketch is below.
(X) Yes – and I wrote them.
( ) No
Thank you for taking the time to complete this questionnaire. Good luck with your campaign!
Thank you! My biographical sketch is below.
Ross C. “Rocky” Anderson
Salt Lake City Mayoral Candidate
Biographical Sketch
October 22, 2023
During his adult life, Rocky (a Lifetime Member of the Sierra Club) has dedicated much of his time, energy, and passion toward fighting on behalf of those who have suffered, or will in the future suffer, from abuses of personal, corporate, and governmental power. The causes to which he has dedicated himself range from protection of our wild places, climate protection, opposition to storage of high-level nuclear waste in Utah or Nevada, antitrust and securities violations, official corruption, sex abuse, civil rights violations (including violations of freedom of expression, illegal surveillance, abuses of incarcerated people, and police abuse), and human rights violations (including the climate crisis and torture).
His commitments have been reflected in much that he has done in his law practice (1978-1999, 2013-2021), his service as two-term Salt Lake City Mayor (2000-08), his leadership of High Road for Human Rights (2008-2011), and his dedicated work with many other non-profit organizations, including his leadership on the boards of Planned Parenthood Association of Utah, ACLU of Utah (President of Board), Utah Common Cause, Guadalupe School (President of Board), Citizens for Penal Reform (President of Board), International Council on Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI), Salt Lake Academy of Music (SLAM) (President of Board), and Haitian Orchestra Institute.
Among his many endeavors, Rocky has testified several times before the Utah Legislature and at the following federal Congressional hearings:
- At the invitation of Senator Harry Reid, Rocky testified before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources in opposition to the storage of high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
- At the invitation of Rep. Maurice Hinchey, and in cooperation with Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, Rocky testified before the Natural Resource Committee’s Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public lands at the only congressional hearing ever held on the Red Rock Wilderness Act (originally sponsored by Rep. Wayne Owens in 1989). “2009 Congressional Hearing on America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act, SUWA, found at https://suwa.org/2009-congressional-hearing-on-americas-red-rock-wilderness-act/ . (A copy of Rocky’s written testimony is attached hereto.)
- After Rocky lobbied Chairman John Conyers, along with Representatives Jerrold Nadler, Sheila Jackson Lee, and several other members of the Democratic Caucus to hold a hearing on the extensive criminality of the George W. Bush administration (including illegal surveillance, torture, and the international crime of aggressive war), Rocky testified before the House Judiciary Committee regarding criminal acts that should have served as the basis for impeachment of President Bush. (Videos of that testimony can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnCidsWeT2g; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrpdKWPaDLE.)
The following describes much of Rocky’s approach to educating about, and helping to combat, climate disruption:
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Considered perhaps the "greenest" mayor in the United States, Anderson gained international renown for his Salt Lake City Green Program – a comprehensive effort to improve sustainability and reduce the City's environmental footprint – which achieved a 31% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from municipal operations in just 3 years. Elements of the program, which Anderson described as covering "everything from dog waste to nuclear waste", included initiatives to improve the efficiency of the City's fleet and use of electricity, measures to make Salt Lake City more bicycle-and pedestrian-friendly, and co-generation plants at the City's landfill and wastewater treatment facilities that recapture methane to generate electricity.
As part of the Salt Lake City Green program, Anderson committed Salt Lake City to the Kyoto Protocol goals in 2002. He mandated that all city buildings use energy-efficient light bulbs and replaced SUVs in the city fleet with high-efficiency, alternative-fuel vehicles. Anderson almost doubled the city's recycling capacity in one year. The City surpassed its Kyoto goals in 2006, seven years ahead of schedule. In 2003, Anderson received the Climate Protection Award from the United States Environmental Protection Agency, and the Sierra Club acknowledged his environmental work with its Distinguished Service Award. In November 2005, the Salt Lake City Green program led to Salt Lake City receiving the World Leadership Award for environmental programs, presented by the World Leadership Forum in London. Anderson exemplified "green living" through personal example, including xeriscaping his entire yard, installing solar panels at his home, recycling all recyclable materials, and using cold-water detergent, fluorescent bulbs, thermostat timers and a natural gas-powered car. While serving as mayor, Anderson informed and inspired other municipal officials about the importance of educating constituents about climate change and of taking measures to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Anderson later researched, produced, and narrated a multi-media piece (still available on YouTube) regarding the need for tenacious, effective leadership to protect against further disastrous climate chaos. For three consecutive years, he organized and co-hosted, with Robert Redford and ICLEI, The Sundance Summit: A Mayors Gathering on Climate Protection, attended by dozens of mayors from throughout the United States. At the Sundance Summit, mayors learned the science of climate change, how to communicate regarding the causes, consequences, and solutions to climate change, and best practices in cities implementing ground-breaking climate protection practices. Anderson also spoke on the subject of the climate crisis at side meetings at United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP) meetings in New Delhi, Buenos Aires, and Bali, and at conferences in Sweden, Australia, and across the United States. Anderson also spoke in Beijing to a gathering of Chinese mayors and vice-mayors about how they can help their communities reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Anderson was also the only representative from the United States to consult in London with representatives from G8 nations on climate change, in preparation for the 2005 G8 Summit. He also spoke on climate protection issues at the 2006 annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative and the 2007 annual meeting of the national Environmental Law Societies. During Anderson's tenure as mayor, he created the "e2 Business" program, recruiting local businesses to implement major sustainability practices, and led a national campaign against the environmentally and economically destructive use of plastic water bottles, which he has called "the greatest marketing scam of all time". While serving as Executive Director of High Road for Human Rights, Anderson co-authored a major article on the human rights implications of the climate crisis and why climate chaos should be treated as human rights violation. |
Rocky Anderson, Wikipedia, found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_ Anderson (footnotes omitted).
Knowing that environmental laws and regulations are meaningful only to the extent they are followed or enforced, Rocky believes that legal challenges to violations of the laws are vital to providing the protections intended by the laws. Hence, he joined with the Sierra Club and Utahns for Better Transportation in suing to enforce federal environmental laws to stop the construction of the originally planned Legacy Highway. He was denied standing, but continued to stand publicly in opposition to the Legacy Highway until the Sierra Club and Utahns for Better Transportation prevailed before the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
Statement of Ross C. “Rocky” Anderson
October 1, 2009
Before the Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands
of the Committee on Natural Resources
Legislative Hearing on H.R. 1925
America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act of 2009
October 1, 2009
Before the Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands
of the Committee on Natural Resources
Legislative Hearing on H.R. 1925
America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act of 2009
Thank you for the opportunity to testify before this subcommittee regarding America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act, H.R. 1925. My name is Ross C. “Rocky” Anderson. Except for three years of law school in Washington, D.C., I have lived my entire life in Utah and was privileged to serve as Mayor of Salt Lake City from 2000-2008.
Thank you Congressman Hinchey, for your commitment to this legislation, particularly after you took the torch from former Congressman Wayne Owens, a remarkable man who understood the tremendous responsibility we have to preserve, in their untrammeled state, the majestic places that make the State of Utah so magnificently unique. Thank you, Chairman Grijalva, for co-sponsoring America's Red Rock Wilderness Act and for giving us this opportunity to discuss the critical and timely issue of protection for Utah’s – and America’s – wild lands.
This far-sighted bill was initially sponsored by Congressman Owens in 1989, but there is a real urgency now because of the imminent, constant threat to the wilderness character of these lands posed by the explosion of off-road vehicle use and the consequences of climate change. If nothing is done to assume the responsibility we have as stewards of these lands, the matter of Utah wilderness will be decided by default when these last remaining wild places succumb to desecration by off-road vehicle abuse and other forms of development.
In 1960, Wallace Stegner, a westerner and former Utahn, articulated the imperative for wilderness with these words:
Thank you Congressman Hinchey, for your commitment to this legislation, particularly after you took the torch from former Congressman Wayne Owens, a remarkable man who understood the tremendous responsibility we have to preserve, in their untrammeled state, the majestic places that make the State of Utah so magnificently unique. Thank you, Chairman Grijalva, for co-sponsoring America's Red Rock Wilderness Act and for giving us this opportunity to discuss the critical and timely issue of protection for Utah’s – and America’s – wild lands.
This far-sighted bill was initially sponsored by Congressman Owens in 1989, but there is a real urgency now because of the imminent, constant threat to the wilderness character of these lands posed by the explosion of off-road vehicle use and the consequences of climate change. If nothing is done to assume the responsibility we have as stewards of these lands, the matter of Utah wilderness will be decided by default when these last remaining wild places succumb to desecration by off-road vehicle abuse and other forms of development.
In 1960, Wallace Stegner, a westerner and former Utahn, articulated the imperative for wilderness with these words:
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“Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed; if we permit the last virgin forests to be turned into comic books and plastic cigarette cases; if we drive the few remaining members of the wild species into zoos or to extinction; if we pollute the last clear air and dirty the last clean streams and push our paved roads through the last of the silence, so that never again will Americans be free in their own country from the noise, the exhausts, the stinks of human and automotive waste.”
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Wallace Stegner, The Wilderness Letter, 1960.
The warning in these words is unmistakable, but I have confidence in our ability, as Americans who value the preservation of these wild places and who recognize our responsibilities toward future generations, to exercise the wisdom to prevent Wallace Stegner’s grim depiction of a landscape without wilderness from ever happening.
America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act is a bold vision for Utah wilderness born out of the work of thousands of Utahns who care deeply for our wild lands. It lays the framework for what is possible to protect the "wild west" landscapes of Utah’s Colorado Plateau, and the starkly beautiful Basin and Range landscapes of our West Desert.
My support for Utah wilderness is informed by the experiences I’ve had hiking and camping in Utah’s wild lands, as well as experiencing the direct benefits of leading a major urban area adjacent to thousands of acres of designated wilderness.
My experiences of Utah's wild landscapes are part of the reason I chose to move back to Utah after law school. For me, as well as for millions of others, the experience of getting away to hike, explore, and camp in wilderness areas – away from the noise, pollution, and land-corrupting mechanization of our day – is soul-inspiring beyond measure. Just a few weeks ago, my son and I backpacked in the proposed Death Hollow wilderness, adjacent to the Box Death Hollow Wilderness Area near Escalante, Utah, and will never forget the beauty, the solitude, and the utter wildness of the spectacular landscape.
As Mayor of Salt Lake City, I was so pleased to introduce visitors to our nearby wilderness areas, assets to our city whose tremendous uniqueness and value is no longer questioned – although, before the wilderness designations of those areas, many of the same arguments were made by opponents that we hear now in opposition to the Red Rock Wilderness Act.
In fact, before the wilderness designation of Lone Peak wilderness, both Salt Lake City and the Salt Lake City-County Health Department argued against the designation. They expressed fears that wilderness designation would make it difficult to protect the water quality of this area. Both of Utah’s House members at that time opposed wilderness designation for Lone Peak. (U.S. Forest Service, Uinta National Forest-Wasatch National Forest, Intermountain Region, Region 4, "Lone Peak Wilderness Study, Study Report, Final Environmental Statement," 1976, 1, Appendix B; "Lawmakers Ask to Keep Lone Peak as 'Scenic,'" Deseret News, 3 March 1977).
Today, everyone would agree that those concerns and fears were entirely misplaced. The naysayers were wrong on every count. Wilderness adjacent to Salt Lake City has been of tremendous benefit to our community. It creates needed open space for the increasingly dense urban population of Salt Lake Valley and surrounding areas, world-renowned recreational opportunities, and vital protection for our watershed.
The dynamic of opposition and fear is typical. Almost every time lands are proposed to be protected as National Parks, National Monuments, and wilderness, vocal opponents raise many of the same complaints we hear today about America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act Yet after the protections are in place, people generally look back with gratitude for the foresightedness of those who made certain the exquisite nature of these magnificent places will be preserved for our children and for later generations.
Our realization as a community about the importance of undeveloped wild lands to our water supply and quality of life was demonstrated during my tenure as Mayor when Salt Lake City purchased 155 acres in Big Cottonwood Canyon to create the Willow Heights Conservation Area and another 149 acres to preserve Donut Falls, both of which will now be protected in perpetuity from development. We knew that, once developed, these pristine areas would be destroyed forever.
Most Utahns support Utah wilderness. Over the years Salt Lake City residents have frequently told me how important this issue is to them. This support shows up in the bright yellow “Protect Wild Utah” bumper stickers that are on so many vehicles in the Salt Lake City area, including my own. This support was demonstrated recently by a statewide survey of Utahns conducted by Dan Jones and Associates, which reflects that 60% of people who have developed an opinion on the matter want to see nine million acres or more of the federal lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management protected as wilderness. (Dan Jones & Associates, A Study Conducted for Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, General Public Study, Longitudinal Data, September 2009).
Those in Utah who resist protection of these places should take a clue from the visitors to our state who come to Utah, and keep coming back, because they are in awe of the geography they find there. Where else in the world can you go from the inspiring granite peaks of mountains like the Wasatch to the red rock splendor of the San Rafael Swell in a four hour drive?
The beauty of the landscape is an astounding resource for Utah that sets it apart from most other places in the world, providing Utahns remarkable opportunities for outdoor recreation and serving as a magnet for tourists from other parts of the country and world. In a study of the economic impact of National Parks in Southeast Utah by the National Parks and Conservation Association, released in 2009, the authors report that: "In 2006, over 1.2 million visitors came to Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, spending some $99 million during their visits." Economists estimate that this spending supported 2,315 jobs. (National Parks and Conservation Association, Landscapes of Opportunity: The Economic Influence of National Parks in Southeast Utah, April 2009, p. 7).
Long-term, sustainable economic development is best promoted by providing for low-impact recreational use. It will help generate the greatest monetary benefit from federal lands for the longest period of time.
Adaptation to the impacts of climate change is another significant benefit of protecting large swaths of wild lands on the Colorado Plateau and in the west desert. The U.S. Geological Survey predicts that by 2050 soil conditions on the Colorado Plateau will be worse than those typical of the Dust Bowl. And, as we know from the Dust Bowl years, dry soil, especially if it is disrupted by human activity, easily becomes airborne, forming dust storms. Studies by the U.S. Geological Survey also show that undisturbed dry soil develops a fragile, but important crust, and the accompanying ecosystem of symbiotic life forms growing in that crust helps to keep it in place during high winds. Disruption of the soil by off-road vehicles results in crushing of plants, soil crust, and anything else in the way, loosening the soil to be carried away. (U.S. Geological Survey, Impacts of Climate Change on Water and Ecosystems in the Upper Colorado River Basin, August 2007).
Dust from Utah's Colorado Plateau is already a problem in Colorado, landing in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. Scientists have been tracking these dust storms for six years. In 2009, a record number occurred. As the red dust from the Colorado Plateau lands on snow, it increases the heat absorption of the snow, causing it to melt much faster. (Thomas Painter, Presentation, “Dust on Snow Panel: What’s the Dirty Secret of Dirty Snow?,” Colorado River District Annual Water Seminar, September 18, 2009; Thomas H. Painter et al., “Impact of Disturbed Desert Soils on Duration of Mountain Snow Cover,” Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 34, L12502, 2007).
A contributing factor to soil disruption is the dramatic increase of offroad vehicle use. The pressing need for thoughtful management of these vehicles grows stronger with each new one that enters Utah's wild lands. Unless protections are enacted soon, there will be very few places for humans to go without the noise, pollution, and destruction of the land caused by ORVs.
Even with enactment of America's Red Rock Wilderness Act, there will still be 17,000 miles of dirt roads, jeep trails, and old mining tracks for off-road vehicle enthusiasts to enjoy on BLM lands on the Colorado Plateau. That figure does not include all trails in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Those who say we are "locking up the land" and no one will have access to it except for backpackers and horse-packers should understand that they will have access too because 70% of the land proposed for wilderness designation within America's Red Rock Wilderness Act is within eight city blocks of a motorized route.
Another argument we hear against America's Red Rock Wilderness Act is that it will inhibit energy development in Utah. But the facts don't bear this out. Utah holds approximately 2.5% of the country's proven oil reserves. The technically recoverable, undiscovered natural gas and oil resources on land within America's Red Rock Wilderness Act amount to less than twenty-three days of natural gas and approximately 6.5 days worth of oil at current rates of consumption. (U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, visited September 2009).
Some are worried about the impact of Utah wilderness designation on school trust lands. Wilderness designation is actually a good thing for Utah’s schools and students. Trust lands within wilderness can be traded for federal land with greater revenue-generating potential. America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act can serve as a catalyst for exchanging the scattered, difficult-to-develop school trust lands for amalgamated blocks of land in areas more appropriate and more promising for development. For example, when the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument was designated it created impetus for a large land exchange to remove all trust lands within the monument’s boundaries. The United States gave Utah’s school kids $50 million in cash and large acreages of land productive for energy development. Trust lands within the Monument were traded for federal land at Drunkards Wash, near Price, Utah, among other places. Drunkards Wash is an extremely profitable natural gas field. In 2006, this field alone provided 60% of all state trust land oil and gas revenue. (State of Utah, School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration, Tenth Anniversary Report (July 1, 1994 to June 30, 2004); Report to the Utah Legislature, A Performance Audit of the School & Institutional Trust Land Administration (SITLA), Number 2006-01, January 2006, pp. 8-9).
Finally, there are those, including Representatives from Utah, who argue that the federal government was required, constitutionally or otherwise, to give up its lands in Utah at the time of statehood. The Congressman from Utah’s First Congressional District has maintained in a recent op-ed piece in Utah’s major daily newspaper that the U.S. Constitution contains a provision giving rise to the Equal Footing Doctrine and that somehow that doctrine forbids federal ownership of lands in states at the time of statehood. Actually, Article IV of the Constitution, cited by the Congressman, says no such thing. Further, the 1894 Enabling Act for Utah to be admitted to the Union makes several references to continued federal ownership of lands, including, under Section 3, (1) a requirement that Utahns disclaim all right and title to the unappropriated public lands lying with the boundaries of the State; (2) a requirement that until the United States extinguishes its title to lands, they shall remain subject to the disposition of the United States; and (3) a prohibition that “no taxes shall be imposed by the State on lands or property therein belonging to or which may hereafter be purchased by the United States.” (Emphasis added.)
Were the county supremacists correct about the Equal Footing Doctrine, one wonders why they have not pursued their claims in the courts. The United States Court of Appeals rejected that very claim (United States v. Gardner, 107 F.3d 1314 (9th Cir. 1997)) – and the U.S. Congress obviously gives it no credence because of the many bills it has passed relating to the management and control over federal lands, which the Property Clause of the Constitution clearly contemplates.
While it is true the federal government does not pay property taxes on the land it owns in Utah, it does provide the state with "payment in lieu of taxes," under which Utah receives the third highest amount in the nation. Also, Utah ranks 18th in the nation, on a per capita basis, of land within the state that is not owned by the federal government.
Many good reasons support enactment of America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act. When considering this vital measure, please hearken to the words of Utah native Terry Tempest Williams:
America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act is a bold vision for Utah wilderness born out of the work of thousands of Utahns who care deeply for our wild lands. It lays the framework for what is possible to protect the "wild west" landscapes of Utah’s Colorado Plateau, and the starkly beautiful Basin and Range landscapes of our West Desert.
My support for Utah wilderness is informed by the experiences I’ve had hiking and camping in Utah’s wild lands, as well as experiencing the direct benefits of leading a major urban area adjacent to thousands of acres of designated wilderness.
My experiences of Utah's wild landscapes are part of the reason I chose to move back to Utah after law school. For me, as well as for millions of others, the experience of getting away to hike, explore, and camp in wilderness areas – away from the noise, pollution, and land-corrupting mechanization of our day – is soul-inspiring beyond measure. Just a few weeks ago, my son and I backpacked in the proposed Death Hollow wilderness, adjacent to the Box Death Hollow Wilderness Area near Escalante, Utah, and will never forget the beauty, the solitude, and the utter wildness of the spectacular landscape.
As Mayor of Salt Lake City, I was so pleased to introduce visitors to our nearby wilderness areas, assets to our city whose tremendous uniqueness and value is no longer questioned – although, before the wilderness designations of those areas, many of the same arguments were made by opponents that we hear now in opposition to the Red Rock Wilderness Act.
In fact, before the wilderness designation of Lone Peak wilderness, both Salt Lake City and the Salt Lake City-County Health Department argued against the designation. They expressed fears that wilderness designation would make it difficult to protect the water quality of this area. Both of Utah’s House members at that time opposed wilderness designation for Lone Peak. (U.S. Forest Service, Uinta National Forest-Wasatch National Forest, Intermountain Region, Region 4, "Lone Peak Wilderness Study, Study Report, Final Environmental Statement," 1976, 1, Appendix B; "Lawmakers Ask to Keep Lone Peak as 'Scenic,'" Deseret News, 3 March 1977).
Today, everyone would agree that those concerns and fears were entirely misplaced. The naysayers were wrong on every count. Wilderness adjacent to Salt Lake City has been of tremendous benefit to our community. It creates needed open space for the increasingly dense urban population of Salt Lake Valley and surrounding areas, world-renowned recreational opportunities, and vital protection for our watershed.
The dynamic of opposition and fear is typical. Almost every time lands are proposed to be protected as National Parks, National Monuments, and wilderness, vocal opponents raise many of the same complaints we hear today about America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act Yet after the protections are in place, people generally look back with gratitude for the foresightedness of those who made certain the exquisite nature of these magnificent places will be preserved for our children and for later generations.
Our realization as a community about the importance of undeveloped wild lands to our water supply and quality of life was demonstrated during my tenure as Mayor when Salt Lake City purchased 155 acres in Big Cottonwood Canyon to create the Willow Heights Conservation Area and another 149 acres to preserve Donut Falls, both of which will now be protected in perpetuity from development. We knew that, once developed, these pristine areas would be destroyed forever.
Most Utahns support Utah wilderness. Over the years Salt Lake City residents have frequently told me how important this issue is to them. This support shows up in the bright yellow “Protect Wild Utah” bumper stickers that are on so many vehicles in the Salt Lake City area, including my own. This support was demonstrated recently by a statewide survey of Utahns conducted by Dan Jones and Associates, which reflects that 60% of people who have developed an opinion on the matter want to see nine million acres or more of the federal lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management protected as wilderness. (Dan Jones & Associates, A Study Conducted for Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, General Public Study, Longitudinal Data, September 2009).
Those in Utah who resist protection of these places should take a clue from the visitors to our state who come to Utah, and keep coming back, because they are in awe of the geography they find there. Where else in the world can you go from the inspiring granite peaks of mountains like the Wasatch to the red rock splendor of the San Rafael Swell in a four hour drive?
The beauty of the landscape is an astounding resource for Utah that sets it apart from most other places in the world, providing Utahns remarkable opportunities for outdoor recreation and serving as a magnet for tourists from other parts of the country and world. In a study of the economic impact of National Parks in Southeast Utah by the National Parks and Conservation Association, released in 2009, the authors report that: "In 2006, over 1.2 million visitors came to Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, spending some $99 million during their visits." Economists estimate that this spending supported 2,315 jobs. (National Parks and Conservation Association, Landscapes of Opportunity: The Economic Influence of National Parks in Southeast Utah, April 2009, p. 7).
Long-term, sustainable economic development is best promoted by providing for low-impact recreational use. It will help generate the greatest monetary benefit from federal lands for the longest period of time.
Adaptation to the impacts of climate change is another significant benefit of protecting large swaths of wild lands on the Colorado Plateau and in the west desert. The U.S. Geological Survey predicts that by 2050 soil conditions on the Colorado Plateau will be worse than those typical of the Dust Bowl. And, as we know from the Dust Bowl years, dry soil, especially if it is disrupted by human activity, easily becomes airborne, forming dust storms. Studies by the U.S. Geological Survey also show that undisturbed dry soil develops a fragile, but important crust, and the accompanying ecosystem of symbiotic life forms growing in that crust helps to keep it in place during high winds. Disruption of the soil by off-road vehicles results in crushing of plants, soil crust, and anything else in the way, loosening the soil to be carried away. (U.S. Geological Survey, Impacts of Climate Change on Water and Ecosystems in the Upper Colorado River Basin, August 2007).
Dust from Utah's Colorado Plateau is already a problem in Colorado, landing in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. Scientists have been tracking these dust storms for six years. In 2009, a record number occurred. As the red dust from the Colorado Plateau lands on snow, it increases the heat absorption of the snow, causing it to melt much faster. (Thomas Painter, Presentation, “Dust on Snow Panel: What’s the Dirty Secret of Dirty Snow?,” Colorado River District Annual Water Seminar, September 18, 2009; Thomas H. Painter et al., “Impact of Disturbed Desert Soils on Duration of Mountain Snow Cover,” Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 34, L12502, 2007).
A contributing factor to soil disruption is the dramatic increase of offroad vehicle use. The pressing need for thoughtful management of these vehicles grows stronger with each new one that enters Utah's wild lands. Unless protections are enacted soon, there will be very few places for humans to go without the noise, pollution, and destruction of the land caused by ORVs.
Even with enactment of America's Red Rock Wilderness Act, there will still be 17,000 miles of dirt roads, jeep trails, and old mining tracks for off-road vehicle enthusiasts to enjoy on BLM lands on the Colorado Plateau. That figure does not include all trails in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Those who say we are "locking up the land" and no one will have access to it except for backpackers and horse-packers should understand that they will have access too because 70% of the land proposed for wilderness designation within America's Red Rock Wilderness Act is within eight city blocks of a motorized route.
Another argument we hear against America's Red Rock Wilderness Act is that it will inhibit energy development in Utah. But the facts don't bear this out. Utah holds approximately 2.5% of the country's proven oil reserves. The technically recoverable, undiscovered natural gas and oil resources on land within America's Red Rock Wilderness Act amount to less than twenty-three days of natural gas and approximately 6.5 days worth of oil at current rates of consumption. (U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, visited September 2009).
Some are worried about the impact of Utah wilderness designation on school trust lands. Wilderness designation is actually a good thing for Utah’s schools and students. Trust lands within wilderness can be traded for federal land with greater revenue-generating potential. America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act can serve as a catalyst for exchanging the scattered, difficult-to-develop school trust lands for amalgamated blocks of land in areas more appropriate and more promising for development. For example, when the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument was designated it created impetus for a large land exchange to remove all trust lands within the monument’s boundaries. The United States gave Utah’s school kids $50 million in cash and large acreages of land productive for energy development. Trust lands within the Monument were traded for federal land at Drunkards Wash, near Price, Utah, among other places. Drunkards Wash is an extremely profitable natural gas field. In 2006, this field alone provided 60% of all state trust land oil and gas revenue. (State of Utah, School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration, Tenth Anniversary Report (July 1, 1994 to June 30, 2004); Report to the Utah Legislature, A Performance Audit of the School & Institutional Trust Land Administration (SITLA), Number 2006-01, January 2006, pp. 8-9).
Finally, there are those, including Representatives from Utah, who argue that the federal government was required, constitutionally or otherwise, to give up its lands in Utah at the time of statehood. The Congressman from Utah’s First Congressional District has maintained in a recent op-ed piece in Utah’s major daily newspaper that the U.S. Constitution contains a provision giving rise to the Equal Footing Doctrine and that somehow that doctrine forbids federal ownership of lands in states at the time of statehood. Actually, Article IV of the Constitution, cited by the Congressman, says no such thing. Further, the 1894 Enabling Act for Utah to be admitted to the Union makes several references to continued federal ownership of lands, including, under Section 3, (1) a requirement that Utahns disclaim all right and title to the unappropriated public lands lying with the boundaries of the State; (2) a requirement that until the United States extinguishes its title to lands, they shall remain subject to the disposition of the United States; and (3) a prohibition that “no taxes shall be imposed by the State on lands or property therein belonging to or which may hereafter be purchased by the United States.” (Emphasis added.)
Were the county supremacists correct about the Equal Footing Doctrine, one wonders why they have not pursued their claims in the courts. The United States Court of Appeals rejected that very claim (United States v. Gardner, 107 F.3d 1314 (9th Cir. 1997)) – and the U.S. Congress obviously gives it no credence because of the many bills it has passed relating to the management and control over federal lands, which the Property Clause of the Constitution clearly contemplates.
While it is true the federal government does not pay property taxes on the land it owns in Utah, it does provide the state with "payment in lieu of taxes," under which Utah receives the third highest amount in the nation. Also, Utah ranks 18th in the nation, on a per capita basis, of land within the state that is not owned by the federal government.
Many good reasons support enactment of America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act. When considering this vital measure, please hearken to the words of Utah native Terry Tempest Williams:
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"If you know wilderness in the way that you know love, you would be unwilling to let it go."
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(Terry Tempest Williams, Testimony, Milkweed Editions, 1996)
Utah Congressman Wayne Owens understood this, Utahns understand this in greater numbers than ever before, and people outside of Utah understand this. Utah's red rock wilderness is a gift we should not squander. Please embrace this far-sighted opportunity, in service to the world and to later generations, without any further delay.
Utah Congressman Wayne Owens understood this, Utahns understand this in greater numbers than ever before, and people outside of Utah understand this. Utah's red rock wilderness is a gift we should not squander. Please embrace this far-sighted opportunity, in service to the world and to later generations, without any further delay.
Respectfully submitted,
Ross C. “Rocky” Anderson
Ross C. “Rocky” Anderson
