When I entered the power business in ‘73 after graduating with an ME, the Four Corners area was the big hot spot. The environmentalists succeeded in getting a lot land taken out of consideration for mining. The historical controversy over coal extraction on the plateau began quietly in 1964 -with a proposal from Southern California Edison known as the Kaiparowits Power Project. Later Dutch energy company Andalex Resources planned a 10,000-acre strip mine on the plateau near the town of Kanab, Utah. Andalex intended to mine Kaiparowits coal and ship it to Japan and other countries.
Then, on September 18, 1996, Clinton stood outside announced his intention to proclaim more than 1.7 million acres of south-central Utah as the Grand Staircase- Escalante National Monument. In the center of the new monument was the Kaiparowits Plateau, a 5,000 square-mile collection of mountains, mesas, and sandstone canyons.
Here we are decades later, and the area is an energy desert.
***the Kaiparowits Power Project**
I remember that project. Now shut down and in a “National Monument.”
Yes, I remember that. Apparently the monument was for the benefit of Clinton's billionaire buddy in Indonesia, who owned one of the two largest areas of the best coal in the world, the other being inside the new monument. The monument area had mining claims that were about to be opened, so the region had to be locked up.