Jon Kovash

The new Moab Regional Hospital, a year and a half after opening its doors, faces a grave financial crisis, and the new long-term Care Center may have to close soon unless local government coughs up substantial funds.

On Friday, local officials were told the new Moab hospital, already the county’s largest employer, may be $1,000,000 in the red and is slowing payments to creditors while making significant changes to its operations.

For years, Moab’s Mill Creek Canyon, a sensitive wilderness study area right next to town, has been intentionally left off the official guide books. But increasingly, people are finding the canyon anyway, and they are in danger of loving it to death.

In the past two years filming for major motion pictures has made a comeback, and the Utah Film Commission projects that 2012 will be a “watershed year,” with film crews spending $56 million in the state. Lured to Utah by cash rebates, Sony Pictures and Disney were encamped in Moab for most of the summer.

Governor Gary Herbert traveled to Moab Monday, where he heard about plans to re-establish Moab as Utah’s mountain biking mecca. Moab is halfway through an ambitious plan to add  hundreds of miles of both paved and single-track bike paths, which will be tied together by a transit hub next to the Colorado River. The governor was told it will all be in place by the end of next year, at a total cost of $21 million in federal grants.

Last year over 1 million people visited Arches National Park, putting unprecedented strain on parking lots and 18 miles of park roads. At some spots, long lines of RVs blocked a good part of the scenery. But the Park Service is adamant that, unlike Zion or Bryce Canyon National Parks, traffic at Arches should not be restricted.

The plan just unveiled calls instead for a free bus system to compete with private cars.