Environmentalists in southern Utah have joined to form a regional group of the Utah chapter of the Sierra Club.
The "Sierra Club Glen Canyon Group" will focus on issues spanning seven southern Utah counties: Carbon, Emery, Garfield, Grand, Kane, San Juan and Wayne. This region is home to eight national parks and monuments, as well as Lake Powell, which the national Sierra Club wants to see drained.
"This geographic area is too important not to have a Sierra Club group working hard to promote its environmental issues, including superlative wilderness, dynamic watersheds and sensitive desert ecosystems," said John Weisheit, the group's chairman.
The public is invited to an open house at 4 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 11, at the Moab Arts and Recreation Center, 111 E. 100 North in Moab.
Grazing, off-road vehicles and the Colorado River are among the issues on which the group will focus its attention.
Lawson LeGate, the Sierra Club's southwestern field representative, said the new group will give a greater presence to statewide issues. Glen Canyon joins other Sierra Club groups in Ogden and Salt Lake City.
"I think it's great," LeGate said. "They seem now to have a critical mass of folks interested and concerned about issues that the Sierra Club has been working on for a long time."
Environmentalists in southern Utah have been frustrated with the Salt Lake chapter of the Sierra Club for focusing more of its efforts on fighting the proposed Legacy Highway than on issues like draining Lake Powell on the Colorado River. There's been a split in the national group between moderate environmentalists who have set the club's tone for decades and those who take a more radical stance on issues.
Organizers of the newly formed Sierra Club Glen Canyon Group wouldn't say ideological differences led to the formation, but simply the desire to bring southern Utah activists together under the Sierra Club name.
"The Sierra Club is a great organization," said Kevin Walker, who serves on the group's executive committee. "It's not just the name, but they have an elaborate structure in place for getting people involved in environmental issues."
Although the group shares a passion for causes like draining Lake Powell, that proposal is not necessarily the group's sole purpose, Walker said.
The executive committee includes Weisheit, a river guide and president of the Moab-based Glen Canyon Action Network.
Others are Jean Binyon, former head of the Utah chapter of the Sierra Club, who will serve as vice chair and focus on planning and development issues in the Moab and Grand county area. Walker, who coordinated the citizens' Bureau of Land Management wilderness inventory in Utah for the Utah Wilderness Coalition, will focus on wildlands protection.
Patrick Diehl, an Escalante resident and a founder of the Escalante Wilderness Project, will serve as the group's secretary and co-chairman of the forest and grazing committee. And Ken Sleight, a river runner who lives in Moab and founded Friends of Glen Canyon in 1954, will serve as the chairman of the nuclear waste task force and focus on keeping Utah from becoming the dumping ground for the nation's nuclear waste.
E-MAIL: donna@desnews.com