Lawmakers gave final approval Wednesday to have the state cover any legal costs if counties are sued for cutting down trees on federally managed forests without authorization — as long as they do it to abate a “catastrophic public nuisance."
Rep. Ken Ivory, R-West Jordan, in an earlier committee hearing likened federal control of Utah’s national forest to ”a dynamite factory run by chain-smoking chimpanzees.”
He especially pointed to the 2017 Brian Head Fire, which laid waste to Panguitch’s municipal watershed. Garfield County officials had asked the Dixie National Forest to take action to protect that watershed two years earlier, but the forest did not respond, according to County Commissioner David Tebbs.