Whether there is any truth to his callous comment or not, he should be ashamed of himself.  Imagine the black eye to the state of Utah if an aircraft of any kind, especially a commercial airliner, were to go down in the GSL and no rescue operation was initiated IMMEDIATELY because no rescue boats could get out of the marina.  Survivors or not, you send everything you’ve got!  And if you’ve got nothing to send, just imagine the field day the press would have with that!

From: GSL-Marina [mailto:gsl-marina-bounces@mailman.xmission.com] On Behalf Of alan.d.vincent@gmail.com
Sent: Thursday, March 5, 2015 4:55 PM
To: Janet Robins; GSL Marina
Subject: Re: [GSL-Marina] Representative Francis Gibson - Utah County

On that note, as cold as his comments about rescue of airline survivors is, there is probably some statistical truth to them…and others on the committee may have the same viewpoint.  If we are going to leverage safety and try and talk to it tomorrow, we should probably have some sort of rebuttal or data to prove that this is more than a salvage operation

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From: alan.d.vincent@gmail.com
Sent: Thursday, March 5, 2015 4:36 PM
To: Janet Robins, GSL Marina

One of the first things he asked us when he found out why we were there was if we knew who he was and who he represented and seemed hostile right off the bat….

Anyway, those weren’t his exact words about body retrieval , but it was the general meaning of them.  We had told him how many airlines went over the lake and how often there were crashes and how duck hunters need rescue every year and his response was something along the lines of ‘yeah, well how many of those are actually rescues?  Knowing that he was referring to airline survivors I tried to talk to him about duck hunters that get rescued or have issues every year and that time is limited due to water temps but he cut me off mid statement and changed from rescue to water depth - we didn’t even get to talk about brine shrimper safety. 

He wouldn’t even hear why Utah lake didn’t make sense.  He didn't know how much money was involved, where it came from, or that it had already been recommended for Utah lake or who recommended it.  He barely let us make any statement about the economics behind it. We tried to talk to him about gsl being in the black and Utah lake in the red and all the tourists coming to the gsl…his response was they come to see the lake and that's it.  Me and the other gentleman Tom?) rebutted this with the fact that we have both been not only approached by tourists looking for a boat ride but have taken tourists out on our boats.   At the end he said no one has talked to him or approached this about this but he’ll look at it (which I personally highly doubt) - basically he seemed clueless and like he didn’t care about a single thing we said. 

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From: Janet Robins
Sent: Thursday, March 5, 2015 4:32 PM
To: GSL Marina

This was a lovely comment we received today - guess it doesn't surprise me it was coming from a Representative in Utah County (where Utah Lake is)

Had two people lobbying the Senate & House today  - here was the report I got back from them about Senator Gibson's reaction (he is Utah County)

"We talked to Gibson briefly, he didn't even know what the issue was about and had noticed emails about it but didn't read them.  He seemed to think rescue on the GSL was not an issue because it's just normally body retrieval and not rescue."

OMG!