Page 6 - the NOISE October 2013

NEwSbriefs
photo By cindy cole
the usfs keeps on keepinG on...
By cindy cole | cindycole@live.com
Summer has nearly come and gone and not much has changed here in red rock Country. Untold thousands of visitors hap- pily paid their $5 red rock Pass fee to en- joy the red rocks of Sedona. The Red Rock Ranger District’s website – redrockcountry. org – still proclaims that the district is a High Impact Recreation Area (HIrA), a term that has fallen out of use in the forest service since 2011. Following legal decisions in US v. Smith and Adams v. USFS, the United States Forest Service decided to replace the term
“HIrA” with “Standard Amenity recreation Fee Area” or SArFA. I guess no one told the rrrD’s website manager. The site also de- clares that “vehicles parked on the National Forest in the red rock area that do not display a valid pass in the windshield are subject to receiving a citation;” this in spite of the fact that Federal law says otherwise.
Changes have taken place in other places like Mt. Lemmon in Tucson and Mt. Evans in Colorado. Both of those locations have had fees removed in response to the lawsuits that have made it clear that the law on recre- ation fees means what it says. The law states that the USFS may not charge fees “solely for parking, undesignated parking, or picnick- ing along roads or trailsides” or “for general access.” In Sedona and Oak Creek Canyon, we still have fees for those activities.
One change that has taken place is that the rrrD is getting a new District ranger (Dr). Former Dr, Heather Provencio, has left for her job as the new Deputy Forest Supervi- sor of the White river National Forest in Colo- rado. Our new Dr, Nicole Branton, officially took office on September 22. She comes to us from Colorado where she has served as an archeologist for the Arapaho and roosevelt National Forests. Perhaps coming from an area that appears to be outside the recre- ation fee arena will bring a fresh perspective for Sedona through Ms. Branton.
The USFS will hold another trail planning meeting on September 26 to consider po- tential new trails and trailheads in the district. It is scheduled to be the last meeting on this
issue. A series of meetings has been held since October 2012 although publicity about them has been difficult to locate. Meeting notes from the series can be found at fs.usda. gov/main/coconino/landmanagement/ planning. A number of new trails are be- ing considered and/or added to the exist- ing trail system. Some of these trails were illegally built but, due to popularity and use, the USFS may add them to the system of of- ficial trails. If you’d like to comment on these plans, you can do so on the website.
Ms. Branton comes to Sedona at a time filled with change and controversy. But it could also be a time of opportunity for the USFS, residents and visitors to create better relationships with one another. Maybe Ms. Branton will even help bring the red rock Pass into compliance with the law.
As far as the law goes, as embodied in the
Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act (FLrEA), it looks like it may sunset on December 8, 2014. There was the possibil- ity of a one-year extension for the act as the House of representatives had included it in their version of the FY2014 Appropriations legislation. But the Senate version of this legislation is so far from the House’s that it has not been able to move forward.
So Congress is now turning to a Continu- ing resolution (Cr) to keep the federal gov- ernment solvent. It is not likely that anything regarding FLrEA will appear in a Cr – there’s way too much debate going on about Obamacare with little headway being made toward an agreement – or that a Cr will even be passed in time. The fiscal year for the federal government ends on September 30. A September 18 article in International Business Times stated that “A US govern- ment shutdown at the end of the month is now very likely.” With FLrEA left to sunset at the end of next year, what, if anything, will replace it is anybody’s guess. There are two lawsuits still pending challenging the USFS’s implementation of recreation fees, so it looks like the issue will continue to be battled out in Federal Courts in the meantime. Each sub- sequent loss for the USFS is going to make it more and more difficult for the red rock ranger District to continue to look the other way and not acknowledge the legal viola- tions in its own district.
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6 • october 2013 • the NOISE arts & news • thenoise.us