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Tribune editorial: Utah officials need to wake up to the many plagues of climate change

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Tribune editorial: Utah officials need to wake up to the many plagues of climate change


If only we were given a sign.

How about these:

And the response of Utah’s political class?

Nothing.

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Actually, worse than nothing. State and local officials, and our congressional delegation, can be relied upon to actively oppose every effort of the federal government and others to slow the climate emergency.

What are we waiting for? A plague of frogs?

Utah leaders go out of their way to stand against cleaner energy

Utah could be a national, even a world, leader in turning the tide against the destruction of our natural environment. We not only have everything to lose from the status quo, we also have a great deal to gain — environmentally and financially — from a new green economy.

Utah is naturally poised to be the mother load of solar, wind and geothermal energy. The transition to renewables is happening, but it would be moving a lot faster if our state leaders would embrace it as the cash cow it could be instead of bull-headedly devoting so much of their time and your money clinging to the dead-end extractive fossil-fuel economy.

Rocky Mountain Power did have plans to phase out its carbon-belching Hunter and Huntington power plants in Emery County, moving toward more renewable generation and storage, by 2032. But last spring the multi-state utility giant, sheltered by Utah laws that push utilities to stick with coal by allowing them to pass the higher costs on to consumers, announced that it would keep those plants in operation as far into the future as 2042.

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The Intermountain Power Agency, a utility owned by a consortium of local governments around Utah, has had to constantly fight off legislative attacks on its plans to shift from coal to a clean hydrogen-based system that has great potential for limitless, and profitable, energy production.

Seven counties in eastern Utah, backed by the state, are literally going all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in defense of an awful idea to build a new rail link from Uinta Basin oil fields to supposedly spur a five-fold increase in the area’s petroleum output.

Utah state officials are also dragging the U.S. Bureau of Land Management into court, again, over the agency’s plans to start doing what it should have done all along — count conservation as a good use of public land.

Apparently, if you hold public office in Utah, you just don’t think it’s hot enough, or the air is dirty enough, around here. If the people feel otherwise, they should say so.

State efforts to save the Great Salt Lake need to be accelerated

A couple of good snowfall years helped the levels of the Great Salt Lake recover somewhat from their recent record lows. But it still fell short of some expert predictions.

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Gov. Spencer Cox and the Utah Legislature are not ignorant of the situation. Laws have been passed and executive orders signed to allow the state to buy water rights from mostly agricultural users, to grant more than $200 million in state funds to boost water-saving efforts of farmers and canal operators and to pause the granting any new rights.

Benighted plans to dam sections of the Bear River upstream of the lake apparently have been abandoned. The Legislature acted to slow the kinds of mineral extraction that depletes the lake.

Lawmakers are admitting that they know what they don’t know — how much of the water supposedly being saved from improved agricultural practices is actually getting to the lake. They have tasked various executive branch departments to get out of their silos to work together and find out.

Early in 2023, the Legislature put up $275,000 to buy gadgets to improve the state’s ability to monitor the pollutants that rise from the Great Salt Lakebed. As of this summer, the money hadn’t been spent and the monitors hadn’t been installed.

Now that state officials cannot, and largely do not, claim ignorance about the risks of a shrinking lake, more must be done.

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Allocating more state money to buy or lease more private water rights, mostly from farmers, can, if it makes our conservative leaders feel better, be framed as a “free-market solution.”

Actually there is no other choice, as government in the United States is constitutionally prohibited from seizing private property, even for the most necessary of public purposes, without compensation.

It will be the best money the state of Utah ever spent.



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22-year-old arrested in Utah in connection to Las Vegas double-homicide

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22-year-old arrested in Utah in connection to Las Vegas double-homicide


LAS VEGAS (FOX5) — Officials have identified a 22-year-old man as the suspect in a Las Vegas homicide case that killed two people in a Southern Highlands neighborhood.

Detectives say 22-year-old Ziaire Ham was the suspect in the case. According to officials, Ham was located on Tuesday, March 3, by the Ogden City Police Department and the Utah Highway Patrol.

Ham was taken into custody and booked into the Weber County Jail. Las Vegas authorities said he will be charged with open murder with the use of a deadly weapon and will be extradited back to the valley.

MORE ON FOX5: LVMPD corrections officer arrested on multiple felony charges

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The shooting occurred Monday night at the 11000 block of Victoria Medici Street, near Starr Ave and Dean Martin Drive.

According to police, officers were conducting a vehicle stop in the area when they heard gunfire. After searching nearby neighborhoods they found a car with bullet impacts with a woman and a toddler inside suffering from gunshot wounds.

The pair were transported to hospital where they later died. The Clark County Coroner’s Office identified them as Danaijha Robinson, 20, and 1-year-old Nhalani Hiner.



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Utah nonprofit creates events, experiences for disadvantaged children

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Utah nonprofit creates events, experiences for disadvantaged children


A simple moment watching a child laugh changed everything for Ivan Gonzalez.

Eight years ago, Gonzalez was working at the Ronald McDonald House when he had an idea to throw a birthday carnival for the kids staying there.

“Let’s do a carnival, birthday carnival for the kids,” he said.

MORE | Pay It Forward

What happened during that event stuck with him.

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“There I was watching this kid play whack-a-mole, just having a blast, laughing,” Gonzalez said. “And then I see his mom kind of with happy tears because he’s enjoying himself.”

That moment led to something bigger.

Gonzalez realized the experience shouldn’t stop with just one event or just one group of kids.

“I said, wait, we can do this not just for kids in the hospital,” he said with excitement.

So he started a nonprofit called Best Seat in the House, which creates events and experiences for children who often face difficult circumstances.

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“We provide events and experiences for disadvantaged kids,” Gonzalez said.

The organization serves children battling cancer and other medical conditions, refugee children, kids living in poverty, those in foster care and children with special needs.

“These kids grow up too fast,” Gonzalez said.

For Gonzalez, the mission is deeply personal.

“I grew up very poor,” he said.

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He remembers the people who stepped in for his family when they needed it most.

“The local church, we weren’t even a part of it,” he described. “My parents couldn’t afford Christmas gifts and I still remember the gifts they gave me. They didn’t even know me.”

Today, he hopes to create that same feeling for other children through his nonprofit.

“Kids live in poverty and they don’t know where the next meal is coming from, let alone going to a play or to a game,” Gonzalez said.

But for Gonzalez, the reward isn’t the events themselves, it’s the joy they create.

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“You can give me a billion dollars, all the money in the world,” he says as tears roll down his face. “I won’t trade these opportunitieskids just enjoying life.”

Because of his work giving back, KUTV and Mountain America Credit Union surprised Gonzalez with a Pay it Forward gift to help him continue creating those moments for kids across Utah.

For more information on supporting Best Seat in the House, click here.

_____



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‘Don’t release him ever. Please.’ Family of slain Utah teen calls for justice at parole hearing

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‘Don’t release him ever. Please.’ Family of slain Utah teen calls for justice at parole hearing


SALT LAKE CITY — Francisco Daniel Aguilar says he’s sorry for shooting and killing his girlfriend, 16-year-old Jacqueline “Jacky” Nunez-Millan, a Piute High School sophomore, in 2023.

But just as he did when he was sentenced, he didn’t have much of an explanation on Tuesday as to why he shot her not once, but twice.

“It just kinda happened. I was mad. And I stepped out (of my truck) and started shooting,” he said. “When I saw her fall, I just kind of panicked, I just went and shot her again.”

But Jacky’s friends and family members say even before she was killed, Aguilar already had a history of violence, and they now want justice to be served.

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“You don’t accidentally take a gun, you don’t accidentally grab a knife … you don’t accidentally shoot someone, those are all choices,” a tearful Rosa Nunez, Jacky’s sister, said at Tuesday’s hearing. “Keep him where he needs to be.

“Don’t release him ever. Please.”

On Jan. 7, 2023, Aguilar, who was 17 at the time, got into a fight with his girlfriend, Jacky, shot her twice and left her body near a dirt road outside of Circleville, Piute County. He was convicted as an adult of aggravated murder and sentenced to a term of 25 years to up to life in prison.

Because of Aguilar’s age at the time of the offense, board member Greg Johnson explained Tuesday that the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole is required to hold a hearing much earlier than the 25-year mark, mainly to check on Aguilar and “see how things are going.” Aguilar, now 20, is currently being held in a juvenile secure care facility and will be transferred to the Utah State Prison when he turns 25 or earlier if he has discipline violations and is kicked out of the youth facility.

According to Aguilar’s sentencing guidelines, he will likely remain in custody until at least the year 2051.

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During Tuesday’s hearing, Aguilar told the board that he was feeling “stressed out” during his senior year of high school. He said he and Jacky would often have little arguments. But their bigger fight happened when he failed to get her a “promise ring” around Christmastime, he said.

On the night of the killing, the two were arguing about the promise ring and other items, Aguilar recalled. At one point, he grabbed a knife and then a gun because, he said, he wanted to “irritate” and “scare” Jacky. According to evidence presented in the preliminary hearing, Aguilar and his girlfriend had been “trying to make each other angry” when Aguilar took ammunition and a 9mm gun from his father’s room and then drove to the Black Hill area in his truck with Jacky.

Jacky’s friend, McKall Taylor, went looking for her that night and found her. But after Aguilar shot Jacky in the leg, he began shooting at Taylor, who had no choice but to run to her car to get away. Her car was hit multiple times by bullets. Aguilar then shot Jacky a second time as she lay on the ground and Taylor drove away.

On Tuesday, Taylor’s mother, Lori Taylor, read a statement to the board on her daughter’s behalf.

“My innocence and freedom was taken from me,” she said.

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McKall Taylor says the “horrifying events of that night will forever play in my head,” and the sounds of Jacky screaming and the gunshots as well as the sight of Jacky falling to the ground, will never go away.

“Francisco is a murderer who has zero remorse,” her letter states.

Likewise, Rosa Nunez told the board that for her and her family, “nothing in our world has felt safe since” that night as they all “continue to relive this horrific moment.”

After shooting Jacky and driving off, Aguilar says he called his father and “told him I was sorry for not being better, for not making good choices, I told him that I loved him. I was just planning on probably shooting myself, too.”

His father told him that although what he did wasn’t right, “he’d rather see me behind bars than in a casket,” and then told his son to “be a man about it. … This is where you have to change.”

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Aguilar was arrested after his tires were spiked by police.

“An apology won’t fix what I did. I’ll never be able to fix what I did. But I want to say I’m sorry,” he said Tuesday. “I don’t even know how to fix what I did. I’m hoping I’m on the right track now.”

Johnson noted that Aguilar has done well during his short time being incarcerated. But that doesn’t change the fact “the crime was horrific,” he said.

The full five-member board will now take a vote. The board could decide to schedule another parole hearing for sometime in the future or could order that Aguilar serve his entire life sentence. But even if that were to happen, Johnson says Aguilar could petition every so often for a redetermination hearing.

The board’s decision is expected in several weeks.

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The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.



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