Kaiparowits Plateau

Kaiparowits Plateau - Part of Escalante Grand Staircase - Utah "If commercial interests had prevailed, in place of the Kaiparowits Plateau's wild, free openness, we would see: a 5,000 megawatt, 9,000-acre coal-fired generating station puffing 316 tons of pollutants every day from its 600-foot towers and slurry and electrical transmission lines snaking toward Southern California. Heavy trucks pound the new sixty-seven-mile road, in Wahweap Canyon, a 300-acre gravel quarry would be exhaling white clouds, and 120 tons of rock waste accumulating on Fourmile and John Henry Benches. Clanking machinery echoes from the Smoky Mountain strip mine while coal trains wind through Escalante to Boulder, then disappear into a long, deep tunnel under Capital Reef National Park."