While a pioneer preservation group crows over its victory to kill a proposed potash works 30 miles north of Wendover, officials from the minig comapny are already preparing their appeal to the BLM.
Last week The Bureau of Land Management rejected a prospecting permit application for a Canadian company that wants to build an $85 million potash extraction plant near Pilot Mountain 15 miles north of Wendover.
Opposition to the project which would have created at least 40 very long term high paying jobs was spearheaded by the Oregon-California Trails Association which began a letter campaign against the proposed mine because of its proximity to the Hastings Cutoff, the “shortcut” taken by the infamous Donner Party as well as four other wagon trains in the mid 1800’s.
The Oregon-California Trails Association is the nation’s largest and most influential organization dedicated to the preservation and protection of overland emigrant trails and the emigrant experience.
“Mesa claims to have Utah Senators Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee, along with Congressman Rob Bishop, leaning on the Bureau of Land Management to authorize the project to “reduce dependence on foreign producers,” “provide economic development,” and jobs, jobs, jobs!” wrote OCTA Utah member Will Bagley, on the Association’s website this June. “Genesis tells the ancient tale of how Esau sold his birthright to his brother Jacob for a bowl of lentil stew. For thousands of years, this “mess of pottage” has represented something worthless that is foolishly traded for an immensely more valuable birthright.
For many of us, the playa at Pilot Peak is a national treasure, what the Park Service calls a place that is “fragile, sensitive, rare, irreplaceable, exemplary, unique, and vulnerable to adverse change.” The American past has an almost magical ability to disappear, but beneath the looming majesty of Pilot Peak, silent stretches of the Hastings Cutoff endure. The singular landscape of the Pilot Peak Playa should be a National Monument, not a strip mine.”
The president and CEO of Mesa Mining was more than a little taken aback by the vehement opposition to his modest project.
“I am all for preserving history,” said Foster Williams. “And I think this country has done a pretty good job. The main trail is marked over 2,000 miles across six states. Locally there is an Oregon Trail Interactive Center in Elko. But the Hastings cutoff was used by just four trains and is only note worthy because of the Donner Party.”
The Donner Party’s claim to infamy came several weeks after they took the Hasting Cutoff when against advice from experts attempted to cross California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains in late fall, got stuck in an early snow storm and resorted to canabalism to survive the winter.
“There is a park named after the Donner Party, a lake and a monument to them.” Wilson said. “And it is not like our site attracts thousands of tourists every year. there is only one mark in the whole area and its shot up. There is literally nothing out here and the pioneers were ecstacted to leave it behind.
Our project will bring 40 well paying long lasting jobs to the area.”
In their effort to kill the project the OCTA enlisted the aid of the Siearra Club and other envioronmental groups. The opposition dovetailed nicely with recent efforts to set aside millions of acres of Utah lands as wilderness and therefore untouchable to any industry.
But while the OCTA found allies in the environmental movent one group they did not contact pontentially would be the most affected by the mine– the local Native Americans.
“This group the (OCTA) reminds me of all the others that want to dictate how to manage our ancestral land,” said Jason Walker of the Northen Shoshone. “For us the coming of the wagon trains was not something to celebrate but a disaster.”
And in the Shoshone Williams may have found an unexpected ally in his company’s appeal of the BLM decision.
“We would be more than willing to employ members of the tribe,” he said. “This is their land afterall and the tribe should benefit from its natural resources. Or it can remain a strecth of desert where nothing grows and is so dry and desolate that a wagon track laid 150 years ago is still there.”
