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Judge Hands Down Sentence in Lost Lake Fire Case LOA – On Monday, September 24, the Wayne County District Court room was full as county residents came to witness the sentencing of Lance Durfey on charges of arson. In late July, 38-year old Mr. Durfey, a Wayne County resident, had pleaded guilty to a third degree felony charge of arson for setting a series of fires on the Dixie National Forest. Mr. Durfey had set the fires on June 3 on the north slope of Boulder Mountain, about four miles southwest of Teasdale. The fires, which took about two weeks to contain, caused local evacuations and burned an area of 2,075 acres, requiring over 400 personnel to fight the blaze at a cost $3.2 million. Judge Wallace A. Lee presided over the sentencing. Citizens in the court room reported that the sentence that Judge Lee handed down
came in two parts. First, he stated that he was giving Mr. Durfey the standard sentence for the third-degree felony arson charge, which is zero to five years in prison and a maximum financial penalty of $9,500. He then indicated that he was suspending that sentence, and instead giving Mr. Durfey five years probation, which includes 180 days in county jail, 20 hours per month of community service, and substance abuse evaluation and treatment. Mr. Durfey is to serve his jail time in the Sevier County Jail. Judge Lee stressed that he was presenting the alternative probation sentence and county jail time because it offered to Mr. Durfey a greater level of access for the treatment of substance abuse. Judge Lee is also said to have noted that neither alcohol nor emotional factors are an excuse for what
Mr. Durfey did, and that this was indeed a very serious crime. As for the restitution component of the sentence, Judge Lee indicated that Mr. Durfey will have a separate restitution hearing in January of 2013. Many letters and statements were submitted to the court, a number stating that the court should soberly weigh the seriousness and financial cost of the crime and the risk to life and property that Mr. Durfey caused. Other statements defended Mr. Durfey’s character and the good he does in the community. Federal charges were not filed in the arson case, and according to attendees at the sentencing, no U.S. Forest Service officials were present at the proceedings. —Insider report
Thursday, September 27, 2012 • Issue # 963
Wayne Wonderland Airport Gets a ‘Lift’ LOA - Wayne County has recently completed a major maintenance renovation at the Wayne Wonderland Airport, fulfilling the first stage of an overall airport master plan that the county has developed for the facility. The project, which took several years to accomplish, consisted of new runway lights, runway safety area grading and the construction of a wildlife fence. The airport passed its final project inspection on August 30 and is open and ready for air traffic. Brandon Jenson, with Wayne County’s Geographic Information Systems Department, served as the county’s project manager, and says that, “About six or seven years ago the County Commission decided to upgrade and improve the airport. That’s when they developed their master plan and initially acquired additional acreage on the north end to eventually extend the runway to accommodate larger planes.” Prior to extending the runway and making other planned upgrades, however, maintenance upgrades were needed to meet Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) requirements. According to Jensen, the old runway lights were both inadequate and had suffered extensive damage caused by prairie dogs. The old lighting system was removed completely and replaced with wiring protected by conduit and runway lighting mounted on concrete bases to prevent displacement by prairie dogs and other rodents. The runway safety area grad-
Time Travelers. This family has solid proof of their adventures at The Corral Mercantile Vintage Photos and Gift Shop in Torrey.
Something Old, Something New turned you to the present, you could prove to your friends that you were actually there. The Corral is ready to supply you with chalk and slate boards, quill and ink sets, old vintage toys, glass marbles, fifes, Early American school sets, vintage 1800s candy, books (yes, real books!), Utah-made jams and jellies, and, best of all, a professional portrait studio and lots of stuff to outfit you for an Old West photo shoot. Which, according to store owner Tory Davis, appeals not just to time-travelers, but also to a lot of locals looking for a little fun. Or, if that
PANGUITCH weather
LOA weather
seems like just too much fun for you, the studio offers the option of wearing your own garb and getting a professional photo of your “normal” self. Mr. Davis operates the mercantile with his business partner, Alicia Durfey. They opened the store during the month of May, in the current year of this current century. Davis says the shop actually started out as just the Old West portrait studio, and then they expanded to offering “vintage” provisions. When asked to elaborate further on the store’s amenities, Davis said, “I think the place speaks for itself!” So, maybe you’ll have to just hop into your time-travel machine and check it out. The Corral Mercantile Vintage Photos & Gift Shop is located on West Main Street in the Velvet Ridge Shopping Center, in Torrey. Hours for the gift shop and Old West portrait photo studio are Wednesday through Monday (closed Tuesday) from 11am-7pm. Let us know if you have a business you’d like to see featured in the Insider. Call (435) 8362622 (Wayne) or (435) 676-2621 (Garfield) or email us at snapshot@live.com
Wayne County’s Brandon Jensen and one of Wayne Wonderland’s new runway lighting fixtures. ing consisted of removing vegetation from around the runway and compacting and providing finish grades to meet FAA standards. In addition, approximately 7,000 linear feet of wildlife fence was installed at a height of 8 feet to keep deer and elk off the runway, completing the fence around the airport property. The budget for the project totaled $427,000, and was funded primarily (95%) with federal funds provided by the FAA, and the remainder was funded by Wayne County. The airport serves as an important resource to the county, for example providing an aviation facility for fire crews working the Lost Lake fire earlier this summer. The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources regularly uses the airport, in particular to support alpine fish stocking operations, and doing aerial work related to the Loa and Egan hatcheries. The airport currently has one hangar housing three planes, and one private hangar that houses one plane, and several tie-down airplanes
are often on site from local pilots or visitors coming to the area for recreation. The Wayne Wonderland airport does have fuel services, with, according to Jensen, a “functional but temperamental” credit card reader, but fuel prices are comparable to those found in Richfield. The next phase of the airport master plan includes extending the runway (which is currently 5,900 ft.) and relocating the current 3-plane hangar to the west side of the runway, cutting back the apron and building a taxiway. Wayne county receives FAA funding every year for maintenance of the airport, a 90/10 match where the FAA pays 90% and the county matches 10%. The county is allowed to bank and save this funding for future projects—it’s not a requirement that monies be spent during the current fiscal year. “The FAA has been really good to work with,” says Jensen. —Insider report, with support from Ryan Torgerson
BYU Students Present Special Exhibit at This Year’s Escalante Canyons Art Festival
Photo: The Corral
TORREY - September is National Preparedness Month, and The Corral Mercantile Vintage Photos & Gift Shop in Torrey is there for all of your Y19C needs. You remember Y2K, right? Well, if you were to time-travel back to not just the turn of this current century, but to the one before that, The Corral would be your onestop-shop for communications supplies and to stock up on candy for the good--or maybe tough--times ahead. After reprovisioning, you could document your experience, so that when your time-machine re-
WGCI photo
Steven Waggoner, Hidden Arch Escalante
James Winegar, Nomadic Treasures
Art Morrill, Hoodoos
ESCALANTE - A group of Brigham Young University visual arts and art history students are presenting a unique exhibit at the Escalante Canyons Art Festival. Titled Resonance: Escalante 2012, the exhibit is inspired by the southern Utah canyon country, and follows a week-long immersion in the Escalante area earlier this year by a group of BYU student artists. After their encounter, the students went back to school and created works representing their experience here. “What we did was, we went down to Escalante in late May, hiked around and stayed in the area for a week, got to know it, and were immersed in the landscape,” says Breezy Taggart, an art history graduate student who is co-curating the exhibit. “Students were told that if they were inspired by the trip, to do a piece that represents that experience for the Art Festival.” Exhibit curators came up with a theme, and asked some questions to get the artists thinking. “What the ‘Resonance’ theme is about is we wanted to encompass the idea of being on the land and making a mark on the land,” continues Taggart.
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“Most of the time when we hike in nature we’re changed by it in some way—and that was what a lot of the students’ remarks were afterwards—it was an amazing experience for them, and it changed their idea of nature in general. In turn, the way that artists create their works changes other people’s perceptions of the land. “So, it’s the idea of being shaped by the land and creating works in turn that shape the community.” Seventeen students participated in the project, including animation, graphic arts, illustration, photography, and art history students. About eight students plan to attend the festival and will have some time available to talk to visitors at the exhibit. The art students have done a similar project in the past—at Capitol Reef National Park—but the showings of those works took place at BYU. “We’ve never done a festival or shown art within the community we’ve worked in,” says Taggart. “So, this is really exciting.” Resonance: Escalante 2012 will be on exhibit Friday and Saturday at the Escalante Community Center. Refer to the Art Festival schedule (p.3) for details. —Insider report
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PRE-SORT STANDARD PAID RICHFIELD, UTAH PERMIT No. 122