WE NEED TO FIGHT THIS OR THE FOREST SERVICE WILL ONLY CONTINUE TO SHUT US OUT OF THE FOREST IN THE FUTURE!!!
Courtesy of the Yakima Herald Republic - August 18th 2013
http://www.yakimaherald.com/home/1410058-8/road-rage-closed-forest-service-roads-leave-many
CLIFFDELL — A decision to close sections of three Forest Service roads off State Route 410 has angered hundreds of the area’s full-time and seasonal residents, recreationists and others who say they were unaware of the plan until it was too late.
“I’ve talked to probably 30 of my neighbors,” says Kevin Hearns, who lives just off Old River Road, “and nobody’s received the notice. It’s kind of hard to comment on something if you haven’t even heard about it.”
The only legal notice of the proposal was published, as per Forest Service policy, in the Wenatchee World, which isn’t sold anywhere in the area.
District officials say they mailed 1,000 copies of the 24-page scoping document. But even some residents who received it looked at the big “Flood Repair projects” title on the front and thought it was simply an announcement of the district’s plan to repair the roads damaged by flooding in 2011.
Several hundred people have signed petitions complaining to the Forest Service, but the signatures won’t have any legal bearing because the official comment period has ended.
Of the 66 people whose comments were received in time, the majority wanted the roads repaired and reopened. And federal funding was available.
But other factors figured into District Ranger Irene Davidson’s decision.
“I had to also weigh into the equation resource protection,” she said.
“Also, balancing spending federal dollars for the benefit of the public. I have to weigh that into my decisions also. Bang for the buck, protecting the resource and the amount of money it would take to do that.”
In what’s termed a “Finding of No Significant Impact,” Davidson chose to decommission the three roads — closing each in their respective damaged areas. So while the rest of each road will remain open, none will be a through road.
‘This could turn out real bad’
Reactions in Cliffdell, where many residents have long held the agency they call “the Forest Circus” in less than the highest regard, have ranged from surprise to anger.
The closures, residents say, are a matter of both safety and convenience.
Although users of those decommissioned roads can still get to where they’re going, in each case they will have to use alternate, longer and more circuitous routes.
That includes emergency vehicles and fire trucks.
“Not fixing these roads can put people in jeopardy,” said Nile-Cliffdell Deputy Fire Chief Ty Brown. “This could turn out real bad. I think it puts forest users and recreational users at risk. Absolutely.”
Perhaps most at risk are the owners of 12 cabins on the west end of Forest Road 1700-416, who have been cut off from the east end — and the exit onto State Route 410 they had typically used — since the 2011 flood took out the crossing over Gold Creek.
With the district’s decision not to rebuild the Gold Creek crossing, users of those cabins — some of which have been in the same family for five generations — have only one entrance onto State Route 410. And with blind curves on each side, it “frankly is unsafe,” said state Department of Transportation engineer Rick Holmstrom.
The DOT approved the entrance to the highway in 1939, when traffic was significantly lighter and much slower than the current 55 mph speed limit.
“Would we do the same thing we did in 1939 (in approving the approach)? The answer is no,” Holmstrom said.
“We would prefer the access (to and from Forest Road 416) to be the easterly approach because it’s much more usable than the one in the middle of the curve. That’s all we’ve said to the Forest Service: If you want to use this (west-end access) — and by the decision they’re making it’s going to force these cabin owners to do so — some improvements will have to be made.”
Cabin owners’ cash
The cabin owners, not the Forest Service, have been paying for Forest Road 416’s maintenance over the years. They also pay annual permit fees and excise taxes; one eight-cabin group along the 416 has paid roughly $76,000 over the past 20 years.
Some cabin owners initially expressed interest in helping pay for the district to repair the Gold Creek crossing, especially since the crossing’s twin culverts had remained in place when the floods blew out the roadway just west of the culverts.
The culverts “were well-constructed and well-placed when they were put in,” said Department of Fish and Wildlife habitat biologist Eric Bartrand. “It looked to me like the culverts were certainly serviceable (even after the flood) in that, if you wanted to maintain a crossing, those culverts would be value-added, to just leave in place.”
But Davidson had the culverts removed.
And even had the cabin owners decided to rebuild the bridge, its potential price tag went up significantly when the contractor that the Naches District hired to take out the culverts also ripped out about 75 feet of Forest Road 416 on each side of Gold Creek — even though the public appeals period to stop that work won’t end for another week.
Davidson said the contractor wasn’t supposed to have done that.
Snowmobilers frustrated
The damage was more extensive further upstream, where floodwaters washed out 300 feet of the Gold Creek 1703 roadway.
A total of $300,000 in federal funding, known as Emergency Relief for Federally Owned Roads, was approved for repairing the road.
But because Gold Creek road users could reach many of the same destinations via the Spring Creek and Rock Creek forest roads, and because of the high likelihood of Gold Creek flooding, Davidson chose to decommission Forest Road 1703.
For many Cliffdell residents — especially the area’s large snowmobiling community — that was a huge loss.
“A lot of the homeowners in the area bought those homes because of the direct access it afforded them to the mountains. Now that is being cut off,” said Julie Bosma, whose family owns a cabin on deeded ground in Cliffdell (as opposed to a cabin on leased National Forest land).
Gold Creek Road has for decades been a popular snowmobile route, enabling riders to come all the way from Greenwater, on the west slopes of the Cascades near Crystal Mountain, or from as far north as Cle Elum and Easton. Without Gold Creek Road open, the Gold Creek restaurant along State Route 410 has seen its business from winter snowmobilers “dwindle to nothing,” said owner Ron Myers.
“They’ve spent more money closing these roads than they would have to fix them. The fixes weren’t that expensive,” Myers said. “As a businessman, you try to get along with all your neighbors, and the Forest Service is my main neighbor. And in the past I’ve said, ‘I’d better keep my mouth shut and not say anything to get them upset.’
“Well, guess what that’s done — given them permission to steamroll over a small businessman, which is what they’ve done.”
‘Recipe for disaster’
The third road being decommissioned, the Old River 1704, actually predates State Route 410. The corridor was created, and in some places blasted out of the rock wall, sometime around 1910 when engineers were building the Bumping Lake Dam.
The roadway is barely wide enough for one vehicle, and erosion has made it dicey enough in places that in the last year, two vehicles have gone over the edge into the Naches River. Cliffdell excavator contractor Rod Ennis, though, calls it a simple fix to repair the road, which has continued to be used by owners of three dozen cabins and other recreationists.
Still, the district plans to not only close about 1,500 feet of the roadway, but also remove two-thirds of its width “to prevent additional erosion,” leaving a 5-foot-wide lane for pedestrians, bicyclists and, presumably, snowmobiles.
Brown, the Nile-Cliffdell deputy fire chief and also a snowmobiler, said leaving just a 5-foot width creates a hazardous situation because of snow sliding off the cliff face and creating snowdrifts.
“So if you get someone who’s an inexperienced rider and they try to get across that drift that’s angled to the river, that’s a recipe for disaster right there: Now you have a potential rescue situation, a water rescue in the middle of winter, cold water and hypothermia potential — and if that road is blocked like the Forest Service is proposing, we have no access as a rescue unit.”
The area where the road is to be decommissioned does have a cliff overhang that would prevent larger fire pumper trucks from getting through, but a brush truck or an aid vehicle can still get through without a problem. And getting medical aid from the Nile-Cliffdell fire station on the east end of Old River Road to the two dozen cabins west of the proposed closure area would become more problematic.
“We could still come in from the other side, but as everybody knows, minutes matter,” he said. “If you’ve got a heart attack or something like that, you’ve got a very small window of time. By adding to that window, you’re putting people in jeopardy.”
Not to mention what would happen if, at the westernmost end of Old River Road, a rock-and-dirt slope that routinely sloughs off in minor mudslides sees a significantly larger one.
“If that slides up there,” said one west-end cabin resident, “we’re on our own. We can’t get out.”
Emergency exits
Davidson, the district ranger, said she had to consider more factors than simply the convenience of local residents.
“What we tried to do was still provide public access while protecting resources, and while considering the cost to the American taxpayer,” she said. “What’s the argument? They still have access. Do they have the exact access they want? No, but they still have access in all cases.”
When asked about cabin owners’ potentially hazardous entrance from the west end of the 416 road onto State Route 410, she noted that “about 40 percent” of the district’s forest-road approaches onto 410 “have sight-distance issues.” And the district’s “Finding of No Significant Impact” document on the 1700 system road repairs plainly says it “is not required to maintain motorized access” for Forest Service roads in summer-home tracts.
Davidson said closing roads “is not something we want to do. It’s part of (the Forest Service’s) mission. Congress has continued to cut our road maintenance budgets and they expect us to be looking at our road systems and eliminating those we don’t need.”
Which ones are needed, though, depends on one’s perspective.
Whistlin’ Jack Lodge owner Doug Williams said removing usable roads that could get people out of the area in winter, when State Route 410 is closed at Morse Creek, risks leaving Cliffdell-area residents “landlocked” should something happen to the state highway.
And creating dead-end roads in a heavily forested district certainly isn’t going over well with many locals.
“No business could do this,” Bosma said. “No business could say, ‘We’re going to decommission our emergency exits.’
“But that’s what they’re doing.”
A letter I just sent to Doc Hastings to bring his attention to this matter and the actions of the Forest Circus.
Dear Mr. Hastings,
I write to you today as a very concerned and irritated citizen of central Washington. I am an avid forest user and outdoors-man and appreciate the beauty and opportunity of the mountains surrounding us. For several years now, Irene Davidson has been the Forest Ranger for the Wenatchee National Forest at the Naches Ranger Station. During this time, Mrs. Davidson has demonstrated her complete lack of public concern toward equal forest access and has promoted a very 'exclusionist' policy. Pro-longed road closures for motorized users, harassment of snowmobilers, and disregard to the needs of safe public access have been big issues the last several years.
The reason I am writing you today is in regard to an article written in the Yakima Herald Republic dated August 18th, 2013 titled - Road rage: Closed Forest Service roads leave many angry - and can be found at the following web address - http://www.yakimaherald.com/home/1410058-8/road-rage-closed-forest-service-roads-leave-many
In this article it should be noted that there is Federal money available for this road repair that is needed to restore safe access to the area surrounding Gold Creek on Chinook Pass. Mrs Davidson is quoted in the article as saying as such. It is also quoted in the article from Emergeny Responders that closing the affected roads will create a hazardous situation in the event of an emergency.
This is but one important example of the lack of service the public is receiving from the Forest Service these days. I would ask that you look very carefully into this situation and the actions of Irene Davidson as the current area Forest Ranger. Mrs. Davidson has done many things in the last 3 years to exclude the public from the forest and I have no doubt she will continue to escalate her exclusionist policies if she is allowed to remain in her position of power.
Access and maintenance of the Forest roads for it's residents and recreationists is very important to me. Public lands should be managed for the public, rather than being closed to them.
Thank you for your time and attention to this matter.
I would urge you to also contact Doc Hastings on this matter so he can hear our problems with this situation. Here's his contact page - http://hastings.house.gov/contact/
Courtesy of the Yakima Herald Republic - August 18th 2013
http://www.yakimaherald.com/home/1410058-8/road-rage-closed-forest-service-roads-leave-many
CLIFFDELL — A decision to close sections of three Forest Service roads off State Route 410 has angered hundreds of the area’s full-time and seasonal residents, recreationists and others who say they were unaware of the plan until it was too late.
“I’ve talked to probably 30 of my neighbors,” says Kevin Hearns, who lives just off Old River Road, “and nobody’s received the notice. It’s kind of hard to comment on something if you haven’t even heard about it.”
The only legal notice of the proposal was published, as per Forest Service policy, in the Wenatchee World, which isn’t sold anywhere in the area.
District officials say they mailed 1,000 copies of the 24-page scoping document. But even some residents who received it looked at the big “Flood Repair projects” title on the front and thought it was simply an announcement of the district’s plan to repair the roads damaged by flooding in 2011.
Several hundred people have signed petitions complaining to the Forest Service, but the signatures won’t have any legal bearing because the official comment period has ended.
Of the 66 people whose comments were received in time, the majority wanted the roads repaired and reopened. And federal funding was available.
But other factors figured into District Ranger Irene Davidson’s decision.
“I had to also weigh into the equation resource protection,” she said.
“Also, balancing spending federal dollars for the benefit of the public. I have to weigh that into my decisions also. Bang for the buck, protecting the resource and the amount of money it would take to do that.”
In what’s termed a “Finding of No Significant Impact,” Davidson chose to decommission the three roads — closing each in their respective damaged areas. So while the rest of each road will remain open, none will be a through road.
‘This could turn out real bad’
Reactions in Cliffdell, where many residents have long held the agency they call “the Forest Circus” in less than the highest regard, have ranged from surprise to anger.
The closures, residents say, are a matter of both safety and convenience.
Although users of those decommissioned roads can still get to where they’re going, in each case they will have to use alternate, longer and more circuitous routes.
That includes emergency vehicles and fire trucks.
“Not fixing these roads can put people in jeopardy,” said Nile-Cliffdell Deputy Fire Chief Ty Brown. “This could turn out real bad. I think it puts forest users and recreational users at risk. Absolutely.”
Perhaps most at risk are the owners of 12 cabins on the west end of Forest Road 1700-416, who have been cut off from the east end — and the exit onto State Route 410 they had typically used — since the 2011 flood took out the crossing over Gold Creek.
With the district’s decision not to rebuild the Gold Creek crossing, users of those cabins — some of which have been in the same family for five generations — have only one entrance onto State Route 410. And with blind curves on each side, it “frankly is unsafe,” said state Department of Transportation engineer Rick Holmstrom.
The DOT approved the entrance to the highway in 1939, when traffic was significantly lighter and much slower than the current 55 mph speed limit.
“Would we do the same thing we did in 1939 (in approving the approach)? The answer is no,” Holmstrom said.
“We would prefer the access (to and from Forest Road 416) to be the easterly approach because it’s much more usable than the one in the middle of the curve. That’s all we’ve said to the Forest Service: If you want to use this (west-end access) — and by the decision they’re making it’s going to force these cabin owners to do so — some improvements will have to be made.”
Cabin owners’ cash
The cabin owners, not the Forest Service, have been paying for Forest Road 416’s maintenance over the years. They also pay annual permit fees and excise taxes; one eight-cabin group along the 416 has paid roughly $76,000 over the past 20 years.
Some cabin owners initially expressed interest in helping pay for the district to repair the Gold Creek crossing, especially since the crossing’s twin culverts had remained in place when the floods blew out the roadway just west of the culverts.
The culverts “were well-constructed and well-placed when they were put in,” said Department of Fish and Wildlife habitat biologist Eric Bartrand. “It looked to me like the culverts were certainly serviceable (even after the flood) in that, if you wanted to maintain a crossing, those culverts would be value-added, to just leave in place.”
But Davidson had the culverts removed.
And even had the cabin owners decided to rebuild the bridge, its potential price tag went up significantly when the contractor that the Naches District hired to take out the culverts also ripped out about 75 feet of Forest Road 416 on each side of Gold Creek — even though the public appeals period to stop that work won’t end for another week.
Davidson said the contractor wasn’t supposed to have done that.
Snowmobilers frustrated
The damage was more extensive further upstream, where floodwaters washed out 300 feet of the Gold Creek 1703 roadway.
A total of $300,000 in federal funding, known as Emergency Relief for Federally Owned Roads, was approved for repairing the road.
But because Gold Creek road users could reach many of the same destinations via the Spring Creek and Rock Creek forest roads, and because of the high likelihood of Gold Creek flooding, Davidson chose to decommission Forest Road 1703.
For many Cliffdell residents — especially the area’s large snowmobiling community — that was a huge loss.
“A lot of the homeowners in the area bought those homes because of the direct access it afforded them to the mountains. Now that is being cut off,” said Julie Bosma, whose family owns a cabin on deeded ground in Cliffdell (as opposed to a cabin on leased National Forest land).
Gold Creek Road has for decades been a popular snowmobile route, enabling riders to come all the way from Greenwater, on the west slopes of the Cascades near Crystal Mountain, or from as far north as Cle Elum and Easton. Without Gold Creek Road open, the Gold Creek restaurant along State Route 410 has seen its business from winter snowmobilers “dwindle to nothing,” said owner Ron Myers.
“They’ve spent more money closing these roads than they would have to fix them. The fixes weren’t that expensive,” Myers said. “As a businessman, you try to get along with all your neighbors, and the Forest Service is my main neighbor. And in the past I’ve said, ‘I’d better keep my mouth shut and not say anything to get them upset.’
“Well, guess what that’s done — given them permission to steamroll over a small businessman, which is what they’ve done.”
‘Recipe for disaster’
The third road being decommissioned, the Old River 1704, actually predates State Route 410. The corridor was created, and in some places blasted out of the rock wall, sometime around 1910 when engineers were building the Bumping Lake Dam.
The roadway is barely wide enough for one vehicle, and erosion has made it dicey enough in places that in the last year, two vehicles have gone over the edge into the Naches River. Cliffdell excavator contractor Rod Ennis, though, calls it a simple fix to repair the road, which has continued to be used by owners of three dozen cabins and other recreationists.
Still, the district plans to not only close about 1,500 feet of the roadway, but also remove two-thirds of its width “to prevent additional erosion,” leaving a 5-foot-wide lane for pedestrians, bicyclists and, presumably, snowmobiles.
Brown, the Nile-Cliffdell deputy fire chief and also a snowmobiler, said leaving just a 5-foot width creates a hazardous situation because of snow sliding off the cliff face and creating snowdrifts.
“So if you get someone who’s an inexperienced rider and they try to get across that drift that’s angled to the river, that’s a recipe for disaster right there: Now you have a potential rescue situation, a water rescue in the middle of winter, cold water and hypothermia potential — and if that road is blocked like the Forest Service is proposing, we have no access as a rescue unit.”
The area where the road is to be decommissioned does have a cliff overhang that would prevent larger fire pumper trucks from getting through, but a brush truck or an aid vehicle can still get through without a problem. And getting medical aid from the Nile-Cliffdell fire station on the east end of Old River Road to the two dozen cabins west of the proposed closure area would become more problematic.
“We could still come in from the other side, but as everybody knows, minutes matter,” he said. “If you’ve got a heart attack or something like that, you’ve got a very small window of time. By adding to that window, you’re putting people in jeopardy.”
Not to mention what would happen if, at the westernmost end of Old River Road, a rock-and-dirt slope that routinely sloughs off in minor mudslides sees a significantly larger one.
“If that slides up there,” said one west-end cabin resident, “we’re on our own. We can’t get out.”
Emergency exits
Davidson, the district ranger, said she had to consider more factors than simply the convenience of local residents.
“What we tried to do was still provide public access while protecting resources, and while considering the cost to the American taxpayer,” she said. “What’s the argument? They still have access. Do they have the exact access they want? No, but they still have access in all cases.”
When asked about cabin owners’ potentially hazardous entrance from the west end of the 416 road onto State Route 410, she noted that “about 40 percent” of the district’s forest-road approaches onto 410 “have sight-distance issues.” And the district’s “Finding of No Significant Impact” document on the 1700 system road repairs plainly says it “is not required to maintain motorized access” for Forest Service roads in summer-home tracts.
Davidson said closing roads “is not something we want to do. It’s part of (the Forest Service’s) mission. Congress has continued to cut our road maintenance budgets and they expect us to be looking at our road systems and eliminating those we don’t need.”
Which ones are needed, though, depends on one’s perspective.
Whistlin’ Jack Lodge owner Doug Williams said removing usable roads that could get people out of the area in winter, when State Route 410 is closed at Morse Creek, risks leaving Cliffdell-area residents “landlocked” should something happen to the state highway.
And creating dead-end roads in a heavily forested district certainly isn’t going over well with many locals.
“No business could do this,” Bosma said. “No business could say, ‘We’re going to decommission our emergency exits.’
“But that’s what they’re doing.”
A letter I just sent to Doc Hastings to bring his attention to this matter and the actions of the Forest Circus.
Dear Mr. Hastings,
I write to you today as a very concerned and irritated citizen of central Washington. I am an avid forest user and outdoors-man and appreciate the beauty and opportunity of the mountains surrounding us. For several years now, Irene Davidson has been the Forest Ranger for the Wenatchee National Forest at the Naches Ranger Station. During this time, Mrs. Davidson has demonstrated her complete lack of public concern toward equal forest access and has promoted a very 'exclusionist' policy. Pro-longed road closures for motorized users, harassment of snowmobilers, and disregard to the needs of safe public access have been big issues the last several years.
The reason I am writing you today is in regard to an article written in the Yakima Herald Republic dated August 18th, 2013 titled - Road rage: Closed Forest Service roads leave many angry - and can be found at the following web address - http://www.yakimaherald.com/home/1410058-8/road-rage-closed-forest-service-roads-leave-many
In this article it should be noted that there is Federal money available for this road repair that is needed to restore safe access to the area surrounding Gold Creek on Chinook Pass. Mrs Davidson is quoted in the article as saying as such. It is also quoted in the article from Emergeny Responders that closing the affected roads will create a hazardous situation in the event of an emergency.
This is but one important example of the lack of service the public is receiving from the Forest Service these days. I would ask that you look very carefully into this situation and the actions of Irene Davidson as the current area Forest Ranger. Mrs. Davidson has done many things in the last 3 years to exclude the public from the forest and I have no doubt she will continue to escalate her exclusionist policies if she is allowed to remain in her position of power.
Access and maintenance of the Forest roads for it's residents and recreationists is very important to me. Public lands should be managed for the public, rather than being closed to them.
Thank you for your time and attention to this matter.
I would urge you to also contact Doc Hastings on this matter so he can hear our problems with this situation. Here's his contact page - http://hastings.house.gov/contact/
