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SALT LAKE CITY -- Mayor Ralph Becker is working to craft a broad plan to protect the Wasatch Mountains, whose waters and lands are under a variety of increasing and unprecedented pressures.
Salt Lake's mayor has been quietly talking with a variety of people, including officials at the county, state and federal levels. His fear is that without a plan, the mountains will essentially become fully urbanized, an extension of the city, doing irreparable damage.
"Bottom line is, we have really, I think, a once in a generation opportunity to make some good decisions that will serve all of us well," he said.
Since long before the pioneers entered the valley, the Wasatch Mountains have been a source of inspiration, and more importantly, hydration.
Bottom line is, we have really, I think, a once in a generation opportunity to make some good decisions that will serve all of us well.
–Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker
"For Salt Lake City, it's our primary watershed," Becker said. "For so many of us it's our backyards and where we recreate."
Becker's big idea, one he's been floating in Washington D.C., is to forge a groundbreaking environmental process to plan for future transportation, watershed protection, ski resort expansion and wilderness.
"We're hoping to have very specific decisions about the areas that will be protected," said Becker. "Areas where development will be allowed, what that development will look like, specific guidance on what our transportation systems will look like in the canyons and connecting to Park City going forward."
Becker says the process would include stakeholders like federal, state, county and local governments, ski resorts, developers, transportation agencies, business and environmental groups. He says he's received positive feedback from the governor and the congressional delegation.
"Governor Herbert has been supportive of a conversation about the mountains, but there's been no proposal brought to him yet," said Ally Isom, spokesperson for the governor. "There are a lot issues that need to be discussed and coordinated."
Discussions could be difficult on a number of fronts, including over the Canyons Resort's controversial SkiLink project to link, by gondola-type chairlift, the Canyons with Solitude. Becker opposes it, saying it'll be bad for the drainage that supplies clean drinking water to hundreds of thousands.
But in May, a business group portrayed the project as critical to future economic development.
"We just don't want to see our Canyons locked up and the key thrown away," said Sandy Mayor Tom Dolan.
Becker, though, says without a comprehensive, big-picture plan, a slew of individual projects will chip away at the pristine alpine landscape - leaving the Wasatch Mountains a paved-over, wasted shadow of its former self.
"They could easily get trashed," he said. "They could easily get developed in ways that take away the opportunities we have."
The planning process alone could be costly - toting a price tag of about $1 million.
