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| Written by Ed Ditto |
| Thursday, 21 February 2008 08:18 |
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When Sumter National Forest releases its Visitor Use Capacity Analysis at the end of February, it could very well be the end the Forest’s 32-year boating ban on the Wild and Scenic Upper Chattooga. But don’t get your hopes up, says American Whitewater. AW characterizes the analysis process as deeply flawed and awaits its release with a certain pessimistic fatalism. To illustrate its point, AW refers to Sumter’s unusual approach to a two-mile reach of the Upper Chattooga that flows through private land. Sumter says it can’t manage floating through that stretch—and then bans it there anyway. Such decision-making is nationally inconsistent within the United States National Forest Service, and even illegal, says AW, adding that it’s the sort of thinking that typifies Sumter’s approach to Upper Chattooga boating. Paddler Magazine talked with Kevin Colburn, AW’s National Stewardship Director, to discuss his expectations for Sumter’s Visitor Use Capacity Analysis, and what the next steps for securing boater access to the Upper Chattooga might be. Paddler: The Visitor Use Capacity Analysis is due out at the end of February. You don’t seem optimistic that it’ll be favorable, or even that it’ll treat boaters equitably. Colburn: No. We already know that it doesn’t. The last time they released alternatives, they also released a memo that outlined their position that they would not look at any alternatives that would allow any boating on the upper two miles of the river. Which flows through private lands. That’s not really an equity issue, but it sort of is…in that they’re basically saying: “Not only are we not going to allow recreation on this part of a Wild and Scenic River, we’re not going to protect any of the values we’re supposed to be protecting or enhancing. Paddler: What do you think the finding’s going to say? Colburn: I don’t know. I have no idea. In general, based on everything they’ve done before, I don’t think there’s any way they would ban boating on the entire river, all year, again. It’s possible. I wouldn’t be surprised. But my guess is that they’ll try to allow as little boating as possible, [without breaking] too many laws. They’ll probably allow a little bit of boating, during certain times of year, on certain sections of the river, while allowing all other uses to go completely unlimited. Paddler: The floating through private land issue—to what degree is that a national policy problem for AW? Colburn: I think there are a lot of National Forests that have in-holdings—pockets of private land inside Federal land. The property at the Chattooga is private land that the Forest Service owns upstream and downstream of. From a Wild and Scenic Rivers perspective, you could put in on Forest Service land, paddle through private land, and take out on Forest Service land. I am assuming there are many places in the country where that situation exists. Everywhere else [that situation exists], the Forest Service has managed boating. But here they say they can’t. And then they ban it. It’s just bizarre. I would love for you to ask the Forest Service to justify that rationale. Paddler: How often is the Upper Chattooga runnable? Colburn: Probably about 30 days a year. Paddler: If boaters were allowed to run the Upper whenever it’s runnable, then, would that be a reasonable compromise? Colburn: Well, yeah. That’s the issue. Paddler: But it’s not what you’d call “unrestricted access.” Colburn: Do you mean, would we accept or endorse a water-level based closure? Probably, but I don’t expect one that would be reasonable. The water-level based closures that I’ve seen them talk about are quite high. I think they would probably just force people to run the river at high water or not at all. Paddler: When you start digging into this, everyone wants to get to the anglers-boaters debate pretty quickly. Is that really the issue? Colburn: Well, I don’t really see that as the issue at all. It’s five percent of the issue, and that five percent is five old men. We’ve always viewed this as getting the Forest Service to do their job, and manage the river the right way. We don’t view it as the anglers versus us, or us versus the anglers. We view it as, if anything, us versus the Forest Service. Paddler: If it’s American Whitewater versus the Forest Service, then who’s your constituency? Is it Class V boaters, or anyone who wants to float the river? Colburn: I’d actually say “neither.” I would say our constituents are basically people who want to see the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act fully enforced and applied. And that’s all across the country. You could even go beyond that and say it’s people that are interested in river management on the Forest Service lands. Paddler: So you could very well be doing advocacy work for Trout Unlimited. Colburn: Oh yeah. Our interests are extremely aligned, one would think. We’re advocating for responsible river management on Forest Service lands, so it goes much, much broader than the Chattooga. Paddler: As far as the situation on the ground, there’s obviously a bloc of local stakeholders who have a lot of sway with Sumter. Can you tell me more about what that bloc is like? Why they have influence? Colburn: They’re leaders of several organizations. It cuts across different groups. There’s a coalition of landowners, environmental groups, and anglers that have bound together against boating. They’re called “Friends of the Upper Chattooga.” There are stickers on bridges that say “Friends of the Upper Chattooga” with a kayak with a cross through it. “No kayaking.” An anti-kayaking symbol. We’ve seen them on USFS information booths and things like that. They have a few things going in their favor. For one thing, the people in the Forest Service that manage the river just agree with them, and feel like they have the power to manage the river however they want. The second thing, is that they’ve done a really good job of spinning the issue, and getting a lot of local people to feel like boating would be the end of the river, a disaster of unparalleled proportions. So they’ve kind of beaten some of the local people into a frenzy about it. And they’ve done a good job of bonding together on this anti-boating platform. Paddler: So you’re working to prevent a situation where a local anti-boating bloc has the potential to reach beyond its own immediate area of concern, and to effectively set national policy. That’s scary. Colburn: Absolutely. They are pushing extremely hard. Sumter National Forest is really trying to change the way things are done. And it could ripple across the whole country. Things like: should private landowners be able to ban access to a Wild and Scenic River? I just wrote a list of these questions the other day. [An excerpt from that list follows:] Can the USFS totally eliminate paddling from a Wilderness Area for only social reasons? Can the USFS ban paddling on over a third of a Wild and Scenic River, even when paddling was specifically recognized as part of that section’s recreation ORV? Can they do it for only extremely isolated anticipated social reasons, while allowing other uses to go unlimited? Can an in-holding owner block public floating down a Wild and Scenic River? Should agencies do it for them? Is kayaking Wilderness compliant? Can paddlers and anglers share the same river? How should agencies manage for user groups with zero-tolerance of other wilderness compliant groups? Should rivers be zoned for different uses? Paddler: What would you call Sumter, then? A maverick unit? Colburn: Rogue. They are totally dancing to their own tune. I don’t think they care what happens outside North and South Carolina. I believe that they’re trying to run their river, and the rest of the world be damned. In a recent news article, they admitted that they’re the only Forest in the entire country to ban boating on a river. So they’ve taken an action that no other Forest or individual in the Forest Service has done anywhere else. Paddler: If the finding’s unsuitable to AW, for whatever reason, is court the next step? Colburn: Probably. We’ll file an administrative appeal [first], because that’s what you have to do. We’ve already filed one, but we’ll file another one. It’ll probably look almost exactly like the one because a lot of those issues weren’t addressed [by the Forest Service] in the last appeal. And then based on the result of that appeal, we would either file a lawsuit or not. There’s this wild card, just as an aside, that the Forest Service has proposed a new Forest Planning process that would be retroactive and would eliminate our opportunity for an appeal. It’s supposed to go enforced March 7th, which is probably why the Forest Service has delayed releasing [the Visitor User Capacity Analysis] so long. They want to have the new regulations because it allows them to categorically exclude this whole process from NEPA, throw out the whole analysis, and make whatever decision they want. [Chuckling.] It’s really bad. But regardless of what happens, if we get a bad decision we’ll appeal it back to the Forest Service. And if they issue another bad decision based on that appeal, our only option would be court. Paddler: Sounds like a tortuous process. There could be several more years without boaters having access to the Upper Chattooga. Colburn: Yep. Very possible. It’s kind of sad; the most recent news article I saw said the Forest Service has spent almost a half-million dollars on this so far. Probably much more; they spent a half-million just on contractor fees. And if you count the staff time they’ve spent on this, I’m sure they’ll well over a million dollars at this point. Which I think is just embarrassing, because it’s the agency trying to pound a square peg into a round hole. To fit their own values locally. Paddler: Even if boaters had been allowed in and they’d trashed the place, they’d never have run up a million-dollar cleanup bill. Colburn: The worst-case scenario here is that a handful of boaters see a handful of anglers on a handful of days, and those anglers would be mad. That is the absolute worst thing that could possibly happen, out of this whole process, and they’ve spent over a million dollars just to prevent that from happening. When no [other Forest] in the entire country does that. Paddler: And to you that’s evidence of the kind of flawed decision-making that might result in an unfavorable finding. Colburn: Right. Absolutely. I mean, they have a thirty-year record of being anti-boating, so if we’re a little pessimistic, that’s why. Hopefully they’ll totally change their minds and issue a great, legal, nationally-consistent finding. But I don’t expect it. Paddler: If the finding’s unfavorable, do you see any silver linings left over? Colburn: A silver lining would be that until we launched this challenge, the Sumter National Forest had no idea how many people were using the river. If there was any impact from recreation, anywhere. Be it fishing, camping, hiking, backpacking. They had no idea whether there were erosion problems, campsite problems, human waste problems, litter problems. They knew nothing. They barely knew where the river was—many of the managers had never been there when they started this process. So now they know all those things. They know exactly the environmental and social conditions of the river that they’re charged with managing. To me, that’s huge. They’re gonna be able to do things like close spots that are eroding into the river. They’re gonna be able to do things like harden and improve campsites so that backcountry campers have a good experience that’s environmentally sensitive. They’ll be able to be able to manage the river, for the first time ever. And I think they’ll have to. Whereas before they had no scrutiny, no oversight, no information—I just don’t know what they were doing. But they weren’t managing the river. We basically uncovered an agency that had forgotten about half of a Wild and Scenic River, completely, and was failing to manage it. |
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