Excellent article up on Ogden Valley Forum this morning, leapfrogging off a story carried this morning by the Standard-Examiner, reporting that there's been another brake failure-related fatality on the Powder Mountain road. Read Larry Zini's full writeup here:
• Fatal Accident on Powder Mountain RoadToday's OVF article is chock full of informative links, and also offers an eye-opening Powder Mountain spokesman comment. And be sure to read the Standard-Examiner and KSL News comments sections, where online reader/commentators again point out the sheer insanity of building a Mega Ski Resort (or holding major public events) at the relatively inaccessible Powder Mountain site, which is dependant upon rinky-dink and dangerously steep access road.
In addition to the rollover fatality, OVF also reports "a huge weekend for Life Flight as they made some 6 - 8 flights to area hospitals" over the weekend. Quite an astounding drain on public rescue resources for one resort over one weekend, we think.
If the greedhead Powder Mountain Developers have their way with their Powderville Township Power-grab, we'll confidently predict we ain't seen nuttin' yet. Imagine the slaughter on state highway 158, if the Powder Mountain Resort succeeds in increasing traffic along that road by a factor of ten.
Who will be the first to comment?
Update 9/1/09 9:07 a.m.: Carlos Mayorga provides a front page followup story this morning, which has been appended to the Std-Ex story linked above.
10 comments:
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What's clear now is that Powder Mountain isn't merely an accident waiting to happen. The wave of future accidents is in full flower. The carnage will continue until the Republican legislature gets into the act to stop the problem right now.
Maybe the morons on the Hill will start thinking straight after the inevitable multi-million dollar lawsuit.
A curse on Senate President Mike waddoups for killing Ogden House Representative Gage Froerer's corrective bill, on the the last night of the 2009 legislative session.
It seems that if Gage Froerer had any real prestige or influence his bill would have come to a vote. He was a enthustic supporter of the original bill that created the problem. Remember that that adjourned with nearly an hour to go in the session and his bill due up next on the docket.
I believe its unfair to condemn Gage Froerer for Waddoups's killing of Froerer's corrective bill, blackrulon.
Sure, he's a second-term House Representative with little influence on Senate leadership. And in truth, Weber County legislators, regardless of how hard they work, have virtually no "political juice" on capitol hill. Nevertheless he and Weber County Sen. Christensen worked hard on this, and believed they had the necessary votes lined up.
The fact of the matter is that the bill was killed without a floor vote, due to the dilatory efforts of the Utah real estate lobby.
There was no reason for Waddoups to bring the gavel down as this bill came up on the Senate calender a full hour before the previously-scheduled end of session.
This is how the frightenly powerful Utah real estate industry behaves in the Utah legislature, however. I Blame it, accurately I think, entirely on them.
We should all keep this in mind, BTW, with four real estate industry lackeys vieing for all four open Ogden City Council seats in November.
Rudi:
Blackrulon didn't blame Gage "Asleep At The Swith" Froerer for the bill's not coming to a vote. He merely noted that had Froerer truly been an influential member of the legislature, that would not have happened. Pretty much what you argued in your post: that his influence was as a straw in a gale compared to that of the Utah realtors' lobby.
Lol, Curm. It goes without saying that Froerer has little influence in the legislator. #1, he's a mere second-term house rep. #2, he comes from Weber County, the red-headed stepchild of Utah Counties.
I interpreted blackrulon's comment as at least tangentially attaching blame to Froerer. I therefor took exception to that.
You're right about your final point.
The Realtors are an extremely powerful and anti-populist lobby. That's why i believe we need to steer clear of their candidates during the ongoing 2009 municipal elections.
Making this latter point, by the way, was really the main reason I lodged my earlier comment.
Never let the facts get in the way of a good yarn. It was neglected to report that the 6 to 8 injuries over the weekend were due to a motocross event at Powder Mountain and had nothing to do with road. There were also no rescues because lifeflight helicopters were already on standby at the event.
Rudi, you'ze be showing your skitzo side with this business of schmoozing up that turkey Froerer while at the same time castigating the realtor gang's power over the Legislature all the while ignoring that Froerer is a charter member of that very same real estate cabal and has been full steam ahead with his support of a whole list of developer and realtor friendly bills that have wreaked havoc with land use issues here in Zion.
Bottome line - Froerer is a realtor, his heart is in representing his peers in that profession and he ainta gonna change and all of a sudden be a champion for the common man.
Sorry, Ozboy; but I suppose you and I will have to agree to disagree on that. Froerer has diligently worked against realtor interests and for the interests of his constituents too many times in the past two years for me to go along with that.
Rudi my boy, I think you're about as full crap as a Christmas Turkey on this Froerer kid ever working against realtor interests. Betcha can't name more than one example and then that would be highly suspect. So little buddy I'm just plain callin bull shit on that one...
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