Grim Reaper
08-01-2002, 01:46 PM
This is something I posted over at CK5. So excuse the refference to a couple of our Forums. I'm the land use guy for my club. So I do pay attention to stuff in the PPB that effects my area and I do take this stuff that is natonal need and put it on my club list but I'm not real active poster here in the PBB lanuse forum. In fact this is my first.
Well I had posted about how the ERROC event got an awsome review by the local paper. I put it in the garage and ment to move it here after a few day's. The Story was very positive about how well the places was cleaned up after the event. It was cleaner than before the event took place. Well We were passing this on my Clubs web page. We are a big club and a couple other GA clubs sort of monitor our list for information like Landuse issues and stuff. Totaly fine. We are all part Southern Four Wheel Drive Association www.sfwda.org and have Common goals for our local trails.
Well one of the Clubs that monitors our list is a Group called "Southern Jeeps" Herb from that club is on our list. His club had been tossing around doing a clean up at one of the local trails. We get into some friendly trash talking and we decided it would be really cool to have a compititions to see what club could pull the most trash out. Have a BBQ dinner aftewards. Good friendly deal for bragging rights that is going to do some good for our trail systems.
We got debating what trail to hit. My club already takes care of Beasley Knob ORV (about 20 minutes south of Murphy NC (tellico). So it is regularly cleaned.
The other ORV that we use is a place called Anderson Creek. It's a rut trail but nice place to spend a afternoon. There are three VW's that were dumped back off the trails about 20 years ago before it got so rutted out. No wheels. These things are balled up. No way to get a large trailer in. Small trailer maybe. These cars are probably going to have to be cut up into smaller peices to remove them. Southern Jeeps had some real concern about getting them out. They are a Jeep club and as such it's going to be a problem. Were going to get some of our fullsizes in there. Well that trail system is one that they want to Adopt. And we want to help them get started since we have some first hand experiance in dealing with the FS.
The other trail is what I call an "Orphan" trail. This trail bisects a winderness area and a wilderness managment area. For those not familure with the term these are areas where no mechanical transport...not even Bike is alowed. Real touchy area. FS goes nuts about stuff in there. If there was a fire they can only fight it with shovels. Not even supose to have air drops. REAL big concern with the county since a lot of residents border this area. ALl the fires out west have hightend concern. The wilderness area is reistered with the feds. The managment area is treated the same way but not on the inventory of areas where no human interference will happen it could be changed back to normal park land.
The problem is this Road/Trail. It does not belong the the FS. It is a unmaintained county road. FS keeps trying to close it down. The county wants to keep it open because the locals hunt in the area. (this is rural GA). The locals have been dumping in the area and running ATV's off the trail on the FS land. There is a real stink going on with the FS, County, Locals, ECO groups over this area. A bunch of clubs want to take that trail under our wing. We got to make sure the County does not let the FS take it over. If the FS get it in their possestion it would be closed. this will let them take the management area and attache it to the wilderness and keep us locked out for good. Basicly they will manufacture the whole area into wilderness once the decimate that trail.
It needs some regular upkeep. We need to make an effort to block ATV's going into the Wilderness area. Since it's not FS we can't do Adopt-a-trail. We have to work with the county on this one. Might get it into the Adopt-a-mile program.
Whenever you do any sort of work on you local trails you HAVE to take the time to do it right and get it recognized. It's all fine and great that your club goes in and does something but if you don't work with the FS/BLM then your not doing as much as you can. If you properly document the work you do you can get money back from the federal governement to help buy suplies and other things needed for THAT area. THis money would be managed by the local FS office for the district. This is "ice Tea" money. The actual acronym is ISTEA. It stands for "Intermondal Surface Transportation Efficency Act" here is a couple web sites that deal with this http://www.istea.org/ http://ntl.bts.gov/DOCS/ste.html
TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS PROGRAM! Talk to you local FS/ BLM people about it.
Well right now this is still in the planning stages. I'll update this as I get more. I wanted to pass on what we are doing in a hope to get some other clubs motivated to work on the trails in there area. Let them know about how this all works. Start visiting the FS web sites. This is the web site for the area we will be working on. http://www.fs.fed.us/conf/sopa/planning.htm
You should be able to link back to the main sites and back down to your local level from here http://www.fs.fed.us/
Well this has all snow balled. It is now getting bigger. We have interest in other clubs joining in on this little show down. I had e-mailed some of the stuff we were passing to Stefan Roth. Stefan was the President of Southern till last year. He needed a break and decided not to run again this year Well part of the deal (we love Stefan...he does a lot for Southern) would be if the then Vice P would run for president, he would take the VP posisiton. So Stefan is VP now...how he thought that he would be less busy I don't know LOL. Stefan is one of the founding Members of my club. One of the other founding members was past president of United. He stepped down last year for personal reasons.
Well Stefan ran with it. He brought it up the club he runs with now ( The Renegades) then contacted several of the other clubs including SOLARIS (rover club) the Cruises (Toyota club) and a couple others. When My club shows up you can be guaranteed of atleast 15 trucks. Southern Jeeps is larger but less organized. Not sure of their usual showings. If half the people show that are talking like they will were are going to have about 60 or so trucks on the trail working on this clean up. Most will have 2 people some more. So at least 120 people to put a day's worth of work in.
Getting back to the monies I spoke of the Feds will put back into the areas. Well everything thos people use will get a return. So any gas used, miles driven, food bought to feed these people, tools used (there is a rental dollar associated), part broken (yep if you incure a cost performing this donating your time that area will get it back even if it's carnage!Kewl huh? ) etc and you document that and turn it in to your local FS it equals money for that area. Just look at the fuel and millage alone. I live north of Atlanta...I'll still drive 1.5-2 hours to get there. Roughly 120 mile round trip......You get 60 trucks doing that and the money the hours worked will bring.....your talking a sizable chunk of change!
Ok I want to see if you guys can organize something on your trails.
FYI there is a movement for a NATIONAL clean up day. this looks like it will be coming down from United Four Wheel Drive Assoc. www.ufwda.org If your not already a member visit that site. From that site you can find your regional assoc. At the regional level the Clubs are joined and membership dues with many clubs get you joined to the regional assoc AND United at the same time. United is the one going to capital hill and battling to keep our trails open....that takes money. United has a full time lawyer that's sole job is sorting through anything that may effect off road trails as well as our vehicles.
If you prefer to be a privateer and not affilitate with a club, please join either you regional assoc or United. It does make a difference. You can join United through CK5 or you can join off the United site.
Well I had posted about how the ERROC event got an awsome review by the local paper. I put it in the garage and ment to move it here after a few day's. The Story was very positive about how well the places was cleaned up after the event. It was cleaner than before the event took place. Well We were passing this on my Clubs web page. We are a big club and a couple other GA clubs sort of monitor our list for information like Landuse issues and stuff. Totaly fine. We are all part Southern Four Wheel Drive Association www.sfwda.org and have Common goals for our local trails.
Well one of the Clubs that monitors our list is a Group called "Southern Jeeps" Herb from that club is on our list. His club had been tossing around doing a clean up at one of the local trails. We get into some friendly trash talking and we decided it would be really cool to have a compititions to see what club could pull the most trash out. Have a BBQ dinner aftewards. Good friendly deal for bragging rights that is going to do some good for our trail systems.
We got debating what trail to hit. My club already takes care of Beasley Knob ORV (about 20 minutes south of Murphy NC (tellico). So it is regularly cleaned.
The other ORV that we use is a place called Anderson Creek. It's a rut trail but nice place to spend a afternoon. There are three VW's that were dumped back off the trails about 20 years ago before it got so rutted out. No wheels. These things are balled up. No way to get a large trailer in. Small trailer maybe. These cars are probably going to have to be cut up into smaller peices to remove them. Southern Jeeps had some real concern about getting them out. They are a Jeep club and as such it's going to be a problem. Were going to get some of our fullsizes in there. Well that trail system is one that they want to Adopt. And we want to help them get started since we have some first hand experiance in dealing with the FS.
The other trail is what I call an "Orphan" trail. This trail bisects a winderness area and a wilderness managment area. For those not familure with the term these are areas where no mechanical transport...not even Bike is alowed. Real touchy area. FS goes nuts about stuff in there. If there was a fire they can only fight it with shovels. Not even supose to have air drops. REAL big concern with the county since a lot of residents border this area. ALl the fires out west have hightend concern. The wilderness area is reistered with the feds. The managment area is treated the same way but not on the inventory of areas where no human interference will happen it could be changed back to normal park land.
The problem is this Road/Trail. It does not belong the the FS. It is a unmaintained county road. FS keeps trying to close it down. The county wants to keep it open because the locals hunt in the area. (this is rural GA). The locals have been dumping in the area and running ATV's off the trail on the FS land. There is a real stink going on with the FS, County, Locals, ECO groups over this area. A bunch of clubs want to take that trail under our wing. We got to make sure the County does not let the FS take it over. If the FS get it in their possestion it would be closed. this will let them take the management area and attache it to the wilderness and keep us locked out for good. Basicly they will manufacture the whole area into wilderness once the decimate that trail.
It needs some regular upkeep. We need to make an effort to block ATV's going into the Wilderness area. Since it's not FS we can't do Adopt-a-trail. We have to work with the county on this one. Might get it into the Adopt-a-mile program.
Whenever you do any sort of work on you local trails you HAVE to take the time to do it right and get it recognized. It's all fine and great that your club goes in and does something but if you don't work with the FS/BLM then your not doing as much as you can. If you properly document the work you do you can get money back from the federal governement to help buy suplies and other things needed for THAT area. THis money would be managed by the local FS office for the district. This is "ice Tea" money. The actual acronym is ISTEA. It stands for "Intermondal Surface Transportation Efficency Act" here is a couple web sites that deal with this http://www.istea.org/ http://ntl.bts.gov/DOCS/ste.html
TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS PROGRAM! Talk to you local FS/ BLM people about it.
Well right now this is still in the planning stages. I'll update this as I get more. I wanted to pass on what we are doing in a hope to get some other clubs motivated to work on the trails in there area. Let them know about how this all works. Start visiting the FS web sites. This is the web site for the area we will be working on. http://www.fs.fed.us/conf/sopa/planning.htm
You should be able to link back to the main sites and back down to your local level from here http://www.fs.fed.us/
Well this has all snow balled. It is now getting bigger. We have interest in other clubs joining in on this little show down. I had e-mailed some of the stuff we were passing to Stefan Roth. Stefan was the President of Southern till last year. He needed a break and decided not to run again this year Well part of the deal (we love Stefan...he does a lot for Southern) would be if the then Vice P would run for president, he would take the VP posisiton. So Stefan is VP now...how he thought that he would be less busy I don't know LOL. Stefan is one of the founding Members of my club. One of the other founding members was past president of United. He stepped down last year for personal reasons.
Well Stefan ran with it. He brought it up the club he runs with now ( The Renegades) then contacted several of the other clubs including SOLARIS (rover club) the Cruises (Toyota club) and a couple others. When My club shows up you can be guaranteed of atleast 15 trucks. Southern Jeeps is larger but less organized. Not sure of their usual showings. If half the people show that are talking like they will were are going to have about 60 or so trucks on the trail working on this clean up. Most will have 2 people some more. So at least 120 people to put a day's worth of work in.
Getting back to the monies I spoke of the Feds will put back into the areas. Well everything thos people use will get a return. So any gas used, miles driven, food bought to feed these people, tools used (there is a rental dollar associated), part broken (yep if you incure a cost performing this donating your time that area will get it back even if it's carnage!Kewl huh? ) etc and you document that and turn it in to your local FS it equals money for that area. Just look at the fuel and millage alone. I live north of Atlanta...I'll still drive 1.5-2 hours to get there. Roughly 120 mile round trip......You get 60 trucks doing that and the money the hours worked will bring.....your talking a sizable chunk of change!
Ok I want to see if you guys can organize something on your trails.
FYI there is a movement for a NATIONAL clean up day. this looks like it will be coming down from United Four Wheel Drive Assoc. www.ufwda.org If your not already a member visit that site. From that site you can find your regional assoc. At the regional level the Clubs are joined and membership dues with many clubs get you joined to the regional assoc AND United at the same time. United is the one going to capital hill and battling to keep our trails open....that takes money. United has a full time lawyer that's sole job is sorting through anything that may effect off road trails as well as our vehicles.
If you prefer to be a privateer and not affilitate with a club, please join either you regional assoc or United. It does make a difference. You can join United through CK5 or you can join off the United site.