"Over the River" vs "ROAR":
The $50 million project by the artist Christo, who hopes to drape nearly six miles of the Arkansas River here in southern Colorado with suspended bank-to-bank fabric, received approval from federal land managers late last year. ...
Christo’s supporters — a strange bedfellow’s mix of art lovers, politicians and tourism interests — rallied near the county administration building before the session began, handing out sky-blue T-shirts.
Anti-Christo forces, led by a group that has dubbed the project, and the name of their organization, “Rags Over the Arkansas River,” or ROAR, said that moneyed interests and state politicians were pushing a project that would mostly benefit outsiders. ...
The project, which is projected to draw upward of 400,000 visitors — during the two-year construction period and the two-week final exhibition, tentatively scheduled for August 2014 — has divided people over multiple fracture lines.
Some speakers at the hearing said they resented the pressure to say yes, which they said is bearing down on their small rural communities from local chambers of commerce and politicians, led by Gov. John W. Hickenlooper, a vocal enthusiast.
Others said the project, in seeking to create art in the midst of an already stunning natural setting in a rugged river valley, would diminish nature by presuming to improve upon it — a prospect that would offend true lovers of Colorado’s wild beauty and keep them away. ...
And in classifying an art project as a “recreation activity,” the suit says, the federal analysts framed their assessment in ways that excused the impact of the thousands of bore-holes, rock-bolts and anchors that will have a cumulative effect, the suit says, not unlike industrial mining.
via www.nytimes.com
Wow, where to start? First, the costs of the project is $50 million plus the external "resource extraction costs." But the $50 million is, apparently, covered by Christo's art sales (really?). The benefits are the consumer surplus values enjoyed by the expected 400,000 visitors (wondering where that number came from ...).
So, what we have here is a classic western lands problem, nature lovers vs art lovers, cast in unfamiliar terms for westerners, resource extraction costs vs outdoor recreation benefits. But, oddly, in this case the costs and benefits coincide with the same project instead of being competing projects (e.g., you can either mine it or build a mountain bike trail).
