Page 7 - the NOISE January 2013

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Transportation (ADOT) refuted this specu- lation. It was confirmed that there was no blasting or construction in that location at that time that could have caused the loud booming. In fact, my source said that blast- ing of any kind is usually done at times when traffic volume is lowest – not during the peak travel time of 4:47PM.
Another possibility suggested to me by Susan Garcia, another geophysicist with the USGS, was a meteor entering the earth’s at- mosphere and breaking up. On October 18, 2012 residents of the San Francisco Bay area called the USGS to report an earthquake. This event occurred just before 8PM so, in some regions, others observed a fireball shooting through the sky at this time.
Jonathan Braidman, an astronomy in- structor at Oakland’s Chabot Space & Sci- ence Center said that a meteor roughly the size of a car hit the Earth and broke up over the Bay Area. He explained the boom that residents heard was a sonic boom, caused by the falling object traveling faster than the speed of sound (768 mph). Mr. Braidman said the meteor was probably moving at over 1,000 mph.
There were no major meteor showers re- corded or predicted over the Verde Valley on December 4 and no reports of meteor observations here that day. No heavy con- struction or blasting, no military supersonic aircraft (maybe), no thunderstorms. So what caused the big boom heard and felt around the Verde Valley?
Some time ago a friend of mine who claimed to have been taken up into UFOs and communicated with extraterrestrials told me something I have never forgotten. He said that there is a large crystal buried by ETs un- der Cathedral Rock in Sedona.
He told me that it is the same crystal that powered Atlantis and it was removed when that civilization came to an end. It was next put into the care of the Mayans but was once again moved when they failed to take the Hu- man Race into the next level of ascension. He would laugh and promised he would let me know if there were ever any plans to move it again because that might signal the time to leave Sedona and move to a safer place, though he never really said where that would be. He has since moved on to another plane of existence himself, having passed from this one a few years ago.
Since January 2013 is here and so are we, I can only hope that the Booming Incident of December 4 was not a precursor to the crystal’s imminent extraction. It sure brought this story to mind as I felt the earth shake that day.
TwO wrOnGS DOn’T Make a riGhT!
CinDy J. COle | cindycole@live.com
The United States Forest Service (USFS) in Sedona continues to ignore federal court rulings that have shown that the red rock Pass (RRP) program is being implemented in a manner that violates federal law. And now other forests, including the Tonto na- tional Forest, which is headquartered in Phoenix and includes forest areas around Payson, is looking to the red rock ranger District (RRRD) as a model for revising its own fee programs. Tonto is already the most expensive forest in the nation.
The Arizona resource advisory Coun- cil (RAC) met at the Bureau of land Man- agement (BLM) National Training Center in Phoenix on November 30, 2012. Although this was a meeting of the full RAC and not just the Recreation Subcommittee, several members of the USFS made presentations to the group.
The RAC is actually a BLM organization but the USFS, in order to be in compli- ance with the Federal lands recreation enhancement act of 2004 (REA), asks the group to review USFS issues as well under the Recreation Subcommittee, known as RecRAC. The RAC is a volunteer organiza- tion composed of citizens from around the state of Arizona who represent a wide range of viewpoints on public lands issues includ- ing grazing, mining, and water use as well as recreation.
Glenn Collins, a RAC member and Chair- man of the RecRAC described the RAC’s role in hearing from the USFS at the meeting as follows: “Our job is to evaluate proposals for fees or fee increases. Our job mainly is to de- termine if the fees they are proposing, when they get down to the details, are consistent with the fees being charged for similar facil- ities by other agencies in other places. And secondly, have they done an adequate job of presenting the proposals to the public and getting feedback?”
There was no mention of whether the RAC will also ensure the proposed fees are in compliance with federal law or in accord with recent ninth Circuit Court decisions. There is no specific statutory requirement in this regard.
Jennifer ebert, the Fee Program Man- ager for the Southwest Region (of which Northern Arizona is a part) spoke to the RAC regarding the current state of fee programs and proposals in the area. “We haven’t been at one of these meetings in well over a year,” she said. “And we have some upcoming fee proposals that we will be bringing forward over the next year. So today we don’t have
any specific details ... but we thought this would be a good opportunity to provide an update on where we’re at with the Forest Service fee program.”
Ms. Ebert proceeded to regale the RAC with how the USFS has been reviewing and revamping fee programs in the Southwest Region and across the nation. They are no longer using the term “hira” (high impact recreation areas) to refer to areas in which a general recreation fee is charged. Ms. Eb- ert said that “the forest service coined the term HIRA to describe where we could charge area fees. We’ve gone away from that term because it created a lot of confu- sion. We’ve had a lot of public controversy over the fee areas and we’ve gone away from that term because it is not mentioned anywhere in REA.”
These areas are now being called Stan- dard amenity recreation Fee areas (Sar- Fas). But just because you call a duck a goose – well, isn’t it still a duck?
According to Ms. Ebert, the USFS has re- duced the original 97 HIRAs down to only 24 SARFAs across the country. Ten of those remaining 24 areas are in Arizona. Two of them are right here in the Red Rock Ranger District.
“Red Rock went through its own process just over a year ago with which [the RAC] was heavily involved,” said Ms. Ebert, “and they have already implemented the chang- es that needed to be made.”
Those changes went into effect on Febru- ary 1, 2012. But eight days later the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reached a decision in the case of Adams v USFS, also referred to as the Mt. Lemmon decision. The court ruled that the USFS has been charging fees where they are expressly prohibited by the Forest Lands Recreation Enhancement Act of 2004 (FLREA).
Some of those prohibited fees include fees “solely for parking, undesignated park- ing, or picnicking along roads or trail-sides.” The two fee areas and seven independent fee sites in the RRRD still require fees for these activities. The RRRD and the Co- conino national Forest continue to deny that the Mt. Lemmon decision applies in the Sedona area.
In fact, during the meetings held before the RecRAC in 2011, the Coconino National Forest assured RAC members that the For- est Service’s legal counsel had been con- sulted about the proposed revisions to the RRP program and that the planned pro- gram changes would be in compliance with REA. The 9th Circuit Court decision has since trumped all attempts for the USFS to collect fees simply for parking, even at locations that contain other amenities like bathrooms
and picnic tables if those amenities are not used.
In the Red Rock Ranger District, not only have those illegal fees continued, but new facilities are being built with the stated in- tention of requesting their location to be added to future fee proposals – like the new day use area that is currently under con- struction on Vultee arch road.
Ms. Ebert made repeated references to how revenues from recreation fees are used as well. She said that “fee revenue is used to fund operations and maintenance, facil- ity improvements, and visitor services.” Af- ter stating that “95% of fees we collect go directly back into that forest,” Ms. Ebert hesi- tated slightly and added “into the manage- ment of the fee program.”
We already know that here in the RRRD, more than 50% of the monies that are de- posited into fee machines go to the fee ma- chine vendors. Not one of those vendors is based in Arizona.
The USFS has been repeatedly criticized in the last few years by the government’s internal accounting watchdog department, the Government accountability Office (GAO). In 2009, robin M. nazzaro, Director of Natural Resources and Environment for the GAO, stated: “We reported in 2006 that the Forest Service not only lacked adequate controls and accounting procedures over collected recreation fees, but also lacked ef- fective guidance even for establishing such controls. The agency has since updated its policies and procedures for handling col- lected recreation fees, although we have not evaluated their implementation.” In fact, recent audits of some USFS recreation fee programs have shown them to be in vio- lation of federal accounting standards.
During the RAC meeting, kitty Benzar of the western Slope no Fee Coalition asked whether the Coconino NF has audited the RRP program and, if so, what those audits showed. This question has been submitted in writing and is still awaiting response. So far it appears that numbers reported by the forest as to how much money is collected through the RRP and where that money is spent are not supported by any information or audits that have been scrutinized outside the agency.
To make matters worse, both the Tonto and Coronado National Forests cited the Red Rock Pass program as the inspiration and guidance behind changes they are con- sidering for their own programs. Maybe the Department of the interior figures that two wrongs (or even three) might eventu- ally make a right after all.
thenoise.us • the NOISE arts & news • JANUARY 2013 • 7