We need to educate all County Supervisors to the threat caused by Boxer's proposed Wilderness Areas. You will see by this article, that Boxer is using the Supervisors to try to gain buyoff. Please take a moment and get those letter's in. You can find your supervisors on www.congress.org .

Crowdog
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April 15, 2002 -- Designation still not known after meeting

By EDMOND JACOBY Staff writer

A meeting called by El Dorado County Supervisor Dave Solaro to collect information about the proposed boundaries and extent of land in the county proposed by U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Ca., for designation as wilderness areas was turned on its head Friday when Boxer's state deputy director, Thomas Bohigian, decided he was the fact-finder, not the fact-giver.

Solaro's intention was to sit down with Bohigian, Boxer's point man on the wilderness issue, and "about a dozen" interested parties and hear what the senator's plans entail. She has been preparing legislation for more than a year that would expand federally designated wilderness areas, and a patchwork of land parcels in California is part of the proposal.

While wilderness designation would mean development would be prohibited in those areas, it also would mean that many users now enjoying the land to be designated would lose their access, such as mountain bikers, and basic forestry practices with implications for the safety of nearby inhabited land might change.

Altogether, some 54 people arrived at Strawberry Lodge near Twin Bridges for the morning meeting, representing widely divergent groups.

Solaro asked Bohigian to explain Boxer's plan, and he simply took over instead of moderating and announced that he was there to listen to the proposals and concerns of everyone present. In the end, there was no explanation of the legislation Boxer's office says has not yet been written but will be presented in Congress within the next 60 days. Complex legislation of the sort Boxer's office describes usually takes at least two years to be developed.

"There is no bill that has been crafted and introduced," Bohigian insisted. "We're in the process of meeting with stakeholder groups. It is part of the process to develop a piece of legislation."

Proposed for designation as a wilderness area is land around Caples Lake and Caples Creek. The designation would be a potential problem for El Dorado Irrigation District because Caples Lake is an EID water source, and the creek is part of the water supply for the Project 184 hydroelectric plant.

Not only would designation as a wilderness area make maintenance of the water supply system difficult, because motorized and mechanized equipment would be prohibited by the wilderness designation, but clearing of brush and forest fire fuels which would be prohibited, increase the eventual likelihood of a fire.

EID Board of Directors President George Osborne, a former forest fire fighter, objected that he saw too little concern for obvious dangers in the wilderness designation.

"When a fire starts in a wilderness area," he said, "the initial response is constrained." There is a tendency, he said, to let nature take its course until things get wildly out of hand.

"In the Cleveland (Wilderness) fire, 17,000 acres burned, and the downstream consequences were thousands of tons of mudslides," he said.

"And the potential for that is greatly enhanced: They say they can use mechanized equipment to fight a dangerous fire; but doesn't happen right away, the decision is put off as long as possible, and the result is that when the decision is made, they're running away from it instead of attacking it," he said.

Bohigian agreed, but then quickly changed the subject, saying, "You're completely right. But then, sometimes Arson fires get started way far back in the forest. What do you want to do?"

At least a quarter of those in attendance seemed to support the idea of expanding wilderness designated land in the Sierras and foothills.

Opponents said afterward they were frustrated rather than reassured by the meeting because they came to hear answers responding to their concerns, and they heard none.

"It's a moving target," Osborne said.

"We need to see a map; we need to know what's being proposed," he said.

"But they won't tell us," he complained.

"Hell, we're the principal land owner in this area -- we have the greatest interest in the outcome of this thing -- and we only accidentally found out about the legislation and about this meeting," he said.

Michele Kruger of the Lake Tahoe Snowmobile Association, one of a number of recreational user groups attending, said that her group has "a lot of members who have been snowmobiling in this area since the 1960s."

She said that "they risk being closed out of where they recreate. Sometimes, that's literally in their own back yards."

She went on to suggest that "if you designate too much wilderness area in California, it will lose its value." The comment drew nods of approval from most of the attendees.

"Bohigian does a very good job of deflecting, rather than answering, questions," said Becky Bell, a mountain biker.

Asked to explain Sen. Boxer's expectations for the economic impact of enlarging wilderness set-asides in California, Bohigian said he thought it might benefit tourism.

"We were a little hurt that Sen. Boxer did not come herself to El Dorado County and to the Irrigation District to talk about this with us," said John Fraser, a member of the EID Board of Directors.

"We found out about this from second- and third-hand sources," he said.

"Our only agenda here is good public policy," Bohigian said.

"That's why we want to have your input," he said.