When word leaked out last week that the Clinton administration was secretly preparing a proposal to create an enormous national monument across southern Utah, everybody supposedly in the know seemed caught off-guard.
Land-preservation advocates, government leaders and development-types alike said they were surprised, even those who have closely followed every move the federal government has made with regard to the area, much of it within the Kaiparowits Plateau."We're in shock," said Kane County Commissioner Joe Judd, who - like almost everybody else in Utah - heard it first from newspaper reports that originated out of state.
"I was in Washington three weeks ago and didn't learn anything at all about it," said Ken Rait, a spokesman for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.
Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt was equally surprised - and unsettled.
"Something that significant, you need to have lots of discussion and public participation," he said. "I will be surprised if it is a serious proposal. (What the Clinton administration did) is not the way democracy works."
Pressed for some insight on the idea's origin, Rait - whose group has fought a long battle to protect the Bureau of Land Management-owned plateau from coal mining - insisted he could offer none.
But one official in the governor's office, who asked not to be identified, said the motive appears to be purely presidential campaign politics. Clinton needs to win California, but the Green Party, led by environmentalist Ralph Nader, is running strong in that state. By taking a strong stand to protect southern Utah canyon areas, Clinton may entice conservation-minded voters back into the Democratic fold.
And it is a no-lose situation for Clinton, who finished third in the 1992 presidential race in Utah. Even if Utahns are angered, he is not going to win here anyway, and he stands to gain a lot more politically in California.
Ted Stewart, director of the state's Department of Natural Resources, said he was in the dark about the proposal, although he provided a clue or two by way of information picked up from conversations with Washington insiders.
Stewart offered what others were saying: The seed for the proposed Canyons of the Escalante National Monument was planted some months ago by the President's Council on Environmental Quality, a White House advisory panel.
Stewart said word was the president was recommending national monument status for up to 1.8 million acres, slightly more than all of Utah's current national parks and federal monuments combined andan area about the size of Yellowstone National Park.
Canyons of the Escalante National Monument, according to SUWA's Web page, would stretch for 90 miles from near Mount Carmel in Kane County to Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. It would reach south for an unspecified 50 miles or so from the southern border of the Dixie National Forest in Kane and Garfield counties.
But who inspired the President's Council on Environmental Quality to suggest so radical a step? The land-conservation community, no doubt, though no one in that camp has taken credit.
Leavitt, who has not heard from the White House or the Department of Interior, said it is still too early to panic, even though a national monument designation would have statewide ramifications. "My impression is that when people release information to the Washington Post without any effort to contact people in the state affected, it is a political proposal and not a serious policy proposal," he said.
Ironically, Leavitt himself stepped into the fray a couple of years ago when he proposed the Escalante Canyons Ecosystem, a management plan that called for varying levels of federal land management ranging from wilderness areas to conservation areas.
The multiple-management approach withered in the face of criticism from local residents, who did not want any additional wilderness designations and were suspicious of other preservation desig-na-tions. The national monument proposal was not part of Leav-itt's plan.
Rait, whose group has led the Kaiparowits protection charge, hinted that certain influential members of the Clinton administration are no strangers to the region.
"There are people in the White House who know this land pretty well," said Rait.
The plateau and its environs have garnered growing national press as SUWA and other organizations have fought an attempt by multinational Andalex Resources to put a 40-acre coal mine site at Smoky Hollow on the south edge of the plateau.
Because of an uncooperative Congress, conservationists have so far failed to win wilderness status for the land in question. Thus, the Clinton proposal - which needs no congressional consent.
SUWA was taking it seriously enough to put out an endorsement on its Web page Monday. SUWA's description of the proposed monument includes the Kaiparowits and two other large features: The Grand Staircase to the west, made up of a series of sheer rock faces that include the Pink Cliffs, the White Cliffs and the Vermillion Cliffs; and the Escalante Basin, a maze of canyons north of the plateau and adjacent to Capitol Reef National Park.
"If you haven't called the White House, please do so!" said Monday's Web headline. "Say something like, `I strongly support the Canyons of the Escalante National Monument.' "
A message of another sort was being heard in the Kane County seat of Kanab, according to Judd, who said he had yet to hear from anybody in local support of the monument.
"Everyone I've spoken to in the last two days is incensed,"
said Judd, whose constituency favors the Andalex development and the jobs its builders promise it will bring.
And he said popular suspicions are that the borders of a new national monument will be dictated ultimately by the controversial mine effort.
"They don't know where east, west, north, south is, but they d--- well know it'll encompass the Andalex mine."