Logan Municipal Council Votes Extinction for Rare Cache Valley Fireflies!
As one of its first orders of business for 2018, the Logan City Municipal Council, with newly elected mayor, Holly “show-me-the-money” Daines at the helm, voted in favor of a commercial-to-residential rezone for an estimated 360 unit multifamily housing tract development in an already housing-glutted Cache Valley.
And we thought she’d be different.
This is not a unique situation to Logan and Cache Valley (now being called “Cash” Valley) as local developers have been choking the scenery and taxing the natural resources here with multi-unit housing tracts for years. Entering the valley anymore from the south or from the north is starting to look like Daly City, California. These multi-unit development tracts have become an issue of social conscience lately, but most recently, however, with this new “development”, there is a fly in the ointment. A firefly.
Cache Valley is a pristine northern Utah community about 20 miles from the Idaho border. It gets its name from the old time trappers who “cached” or stashed their furs here during the winter months to rendezvous in the spring and trade with the Indians and other trappers. The valley is about 25 miles long and about 5 miles wide crossing over into Idaho on the north end. For scale, Manhattan island would fit nicely into Cache Valley (and it’s starting to look like it).
Although the Cache Valley area in question is one of the few places in the western United States where fireflies can be observed, this story, in my opinion, is not about fireflies. I don’t hold out any hope for them. Hopefully, they will survive, but it will be on their own dime to live and procreate, not on the baseless promise of a mercenary developer or self-serving public official expressing concern about protecting them.
Follow the money, indeed.
It’s a common story here in Cache Valley, as it is across America and probably the world over. I mean, this is how Donald Trump made his money. Grandpa dies, his hard-earned and hard-worked farmland and pastureland are passed down to the young’uns. They immediately sell it off to exploitive real estate developers because the esthetics and heritage of the land is worthless to them, plus they can’t afford the taxes, and before you can say ‘show me the money’ it’s divided up into multifamily housing units and there goes the neighborhood.
In this particular case, there goes Cache Valley. You see it all over Utah, Ogden, Salt Lake City, St. George ...America ...it’s inevitable, but a shame to see it happen here ...so shamelessly.
They want the income, and the retirement money ...but still.
There is no stopping progress and growth, it’s as natural as time itself, flows like a river, and it’s going to happen no matter what, how or who tries to inject some environmental sensitivity into the mix. But this is precisely the point. Who’s going to do that? Obviously, it’s not the Logan City government in this case, who you’d think would be self-endowed with a stand-up integrity to serve and protect, and who are, by sacred trust and promise charged with that mission. It’s certainly not the developers, or the contractors, or any of the others who will profit.
We already know the outcome. Just follow the money. Good bye fireflies, hello Thursday morning trash collection.
The hypocrisy, the crime, against all common sense, logic and nature, and ultimately, ironically, we ourselves, is that these folks go out of their way to skirt the issues and boldly lie to the general public, and most likely to each other. It’s called blowing smoke.
I suppose it’s a kind of guilt or justification for the blatant greed, but here’s the best quote of the day. The developer of this “firefly” housing development project said that his goal was to “not interfere” with the fireflies. His goal? It has already been determined that the impact will be severe. I’m not convinced he gives a damn about the fireflies ...or the surrounding neighbors, or the impact his housing tract will have on the overall balance of things ...traffic, heavy trucks. He’s probably convinced himself, and apparently Logan’s mayor and municipal council, that he’s actually doing the ecology a favor, promoting wildlife and at the same time providing necessary, crucial, housing for those moving into his “Cash” Valley.
‘We’ll make a nature preserve park of the whole thing! We’ll keep the lights dim for the fireflies and have people turn their headlights down, no problem. The public will love it! ...the fireflies will thrive!’.
Nuh-uh. That’s not even a reasonable whitewashing. Who’re they kidding?
If you read between the lines in the story as published in Logan's local newspaper, it’s all there, every standard side-stepping quote and token opinion from the now so familiar uninspired range of government administrator and shamelessly unrepentant developer.
President Trump made some infamously “unfortunate” remarks recently branding several roguish countries and the governments therein being so corrupt and callous toward the needs of the people, not to mention the general environment, that they were fleeing for their lives.
Hopefully, our local public officials, administrators and businessmen won’t let their apathy, ineffectiveness and greed get so out of control that our Utah, our Cache Valley, will suffer from this same infamous “expletive deleted” branding.
“Remember the Fireflies!”
John Kushma is a communication consultant and lives in Logan, Utah.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-george-kushma-379a5762
http://newsbout.com/a/John+Kushma
