Orrin Hatch: “I have been intrigued by the comments and remarks of my colleague from New Jersey. But I have to say that during the…”

“I have been intrigued by the comments and remarks of my colleague from New Jersey. But I have to say that during the course of this debate, we are going to show a number of those remarks to be in error. Let me mention a couple of things right off the top of my head. He mentioned the beauties of the Kaiparowits Plateau, which I have tramped on and been around. I might add that, in this bill, if you include just Fifty Mile Mountain in that area and the Paria-Hackberry area, you are talking about 220,628 acres out of that area that are going into wilderness. The implication is that we are not doing anything about wilderness. My gosh, almost 221,000 acres. With the Dirty Devil area, which was mentioned, we are designating more than 75,000 acres. We are talking about 2 million acres here. Since the BLM began studying this issue almost 18 years ago, more than than $10 million has been spent, countless hearings held, town meetings scheduled--many efforts to bring people together. The affected county people are upset, many not wanting any acres at all in wilderness. Then, there is the other extreme wanting 5.7 million acres. The BLM, looking at it all, said that the only acres that even came close to qualifying for true wilderness are 3.2 million. That is the study area. Nobody in their right mind expected that whole study area to become wilderness. Everybody knows that once it is designated wilderness, it is used only basically for backpacking.…”