Fix Rubicon Trail's problems or pay fine, water board tells El Dorado County
By Matt Weiser
mweiser@sacbee.com
Published: Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2009 | Page 2B

“Water quality officials are threatening El Dorado County with enforcement action and fines for allegedly mismanaging the legendary Rubicon Trail off-road vehicle route.

In a draft order issued Friday, the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board finds that erosion caused by vehicle traffic on the trail threatens fish habitat in the south fork of the American River and its tributaries.

The rate of erosion on trail segments examined by the agency is 50 times greater than from dirt logging roads in the same watershed.

The order also asserts that pollution from vehicle fluids and human fecal matter deposited by trail users have damaged public waterways.

"We received a number of complaints, and that's why we did inspections," said Wendy Wyels, the board's chief of compliance and enforcement. "We definitely found there's a concern about water quality impacts from the sediment coming off the Rubicon Trail."

Though it crosses U.S. Forest Service land, El Dorado County years ago asserted ownership of the Rubicon Trail within county boundaries.

The 60-mile trail between Georgetown and Lake Tahoe is one of the world's most famous off-road vehicle destinations. It offers four-wheel-drive enthusiasts access to challenging boulder fields and granite slabs.

The county obtained state grant funds to develop a management plan for the trail. Among the proposals were erosion-control projects at stream crossings, seasonal closures and a permit system to educate users and collect management funds.

But the county halted work on the plan last year, citing budget troubles.

Now the county could be forced to adopt many of the same protective measures in the stalled management plan, or be fined $10,000 per day for each water quality violation.

"They seemed to think they could get away with just doing no management," said Karen Schambach, a Georgetown resident and California director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. "They're very short-sighted."

Tom Celio, the county's deputy director of transportation maintenance, said he hasn't reviewed the draft order in detail and declined to comment on specifics.

He said that the county has worked hard with volunteer groups to improve the trail. Recent improvements include a new restroom at the trail's Loon Lake access point, and numerous erosion control projects.

"We've done a significant amount of planning, a lot of work, over the last couple of years, actually," Celio said.

Randy Burleson, president of the Rubicon Trail Foundation, an off-roading group, said the county and trail enthusiasts have continued to work on many improvements proposed in the unfinished plan.

For example, he said, the planning is finished for new bridges over Gerle and Ellis creeks to prevent erosion. Those bridges are among the requirements proposed by the water board to address pollution problems.

"I think the county's done a fine job of managing the trail," Burleson said. "I question whether the water quality board has the authority to identify how a county road is to be managed."

To develop the order, the water board studied erosion rates on seven trail segments totalling about one mile in August 2008. It found that streambed gravel in Ellis Creek, downstream of a Rubicon Trail crossing, had become unsuitable for trout spawning because the gravel was clogged with sediment eroded by trail use.

Other measures in the draft order require the county to submit a trail management plan, which must include specific measures to control erosion and limit vehicle traffic.

The water board can finalize the order without a public hearing, said Wyels. Whether to hold a hearing depends on the nature of public comments received by a Feb. 23 deadline.”

http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/rwqcb5/board_decisions/tentative_orders/rubicon_trail/rubicon_trail_cov.pdf

California Regional Water Quality Control Board Central Valley Region

23 January 2009
Tom Celio, Deputy Director CERTIFIED MAIL
El Dorado County Department of Transportation 70081140000288062160
2441 Headington Road
Placerville, CA 95667
DRAFT CLEANUP AND ABATEMENT ORDER, RUBICON TRAIL, EL DORADO COUNTY

Enclosed for your information and comment is a draft Cleanup and Abatement Order (CAO) for the El Dorado County portion of the Rubicon Trail. We understand that El Dorado County Department of Transportation (DOT) is responsible for providing oversight of the Rubicon Trail within El Dorado County as a public road, and therefore the DOT has been named on the draft CAO as the “Discharger”. Staff’s inspections during the summer of 2008 identified that the Rubicon Trail has not been adequately managed, and this mismanagement has resulted in water quality impacts which include sediment discharges to surface waters, human sanitation problems, and soil and water contamination from petroleum-based automotive fluids.

The draft CAO requires that the DOT take all reasonable steps to cease the discharge of sediment and other wastes due to motorized use of the Rubicon Trail to waters of the state and to immediately implement a vehicle use reduction plan to address wheeled motorized use during wet weather conditions. If adopted as proposed, the draft CAO would further require the DOT to take the following steps:
• Within 12 weeks following signing of the final CAO, submit an Operation and Maintenance (O&M) Plan to address sediment, human waste, and petroleum-based spills on the Rubicon Trail.
• As soon as possible after approval of the O&M Plan and no later than within 16 weeks following signing of the final CAO, begin implementing the approved O&M Plan.
• By 30 September 2009, complete O&M Plan projects proposed for the season.
• By 31 October 2009, submit the first annual report regarding trail use and maintenance activities conducted during 2009. Also report on the permitting system and strategies to address human waste and petroleum products.
• By 30 September 2010, complete installation of bridges at the Ellis Creek and the Gerle Creek crossings

In order to conserve resources, this letter only transmits paper copies of the documents to the Discharger. Interested persons may download documents from the Water Board's website at http://www.swrcb.ca.gov/centralvalley/board_decisions/tentative_orders/index.shtml. Copies of these documents can also be obtained by contacting the Regional Water Quality Control Board's office at 11020 Sun Center Drive, #200, Rancho Cordova, California 95670-6114,
weekdays between 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m.

We look forward to discussing any comments or recommendations you may have about the draft CAO, and recommend that you contact staff to arrange a meeting. The public comment period for the enclosed draft CAO ends on 23 February 2009. All written comments must be received by that date and all meetings should be scheduled prior to that time.

If you have any questions regarding the draft Order, or would like to set up a meeting, please contact Sue McConnell at (916) 464-4798 or smcconnell@waterboards.ca.gov.

WENDY S. WYELS, Chief
Compliance and Enforcement Section
Enclosure: Draft Cleanup and Abatement Order
cc (w/o enc): Patrick Pulupa, Office of Chief Counsel, SWRCB, Sacramento
Reed Sato, State Water Resources Control Board, Sacramento
Diane Rubiaco, Pacific Ranger District, Pollock Pines
Daphne Greene, State Parks OHV Recreation Division, Sacramento
Supervisor Ron Briggs, El Dorado County Board of Supervisors, Placerville
Karen Schambach, PEER, Georgetown
Rich Platt, Natural Resources Consulting, Pollock Pines
Monte Hendricks, Pollock Pines
Randy Burleson, Rubicon Trail Foundation, Fair Oaks
Del Albright, Friends of the Rubicon, Mokelumne Hill

Further discussion over here:
http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/showthread.php?t=754971

Randii

http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/rwqcb5/board_decisions/tentative_orders/rubicon_trail/rubicon_trail_cao.pdf
CALIFORNIA REGIONAL WATER QUALITY CONTROL BOARD CENTRAL VALLEY REGION
DRAFT CLEANUP AND ABATEMENT ORDER NO. R5-2009-XXXX
FOR EL DORADO COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION
RUBICON TRAIL EL DORADO COUNTY

http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/rwqcb5/board_decisions/tentative_orders/rubicon_trail/rubicon_trail_cao_att.pdf
ASSESSMENT OF SEDIMENT DELIVERY FROM THE RUBICON JEEP TRAIL

http://www.swrcb.ca.gov/rwqcb5/about_us/org_charts/sacramento_office.pdf
California Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board Organizational Chart

For those into the techie enviromental stuff - read the paper Drew Coe wrote before he was with the waterboard and you'll get an idea where this is heading.
http://www.fs.fed.us/psw/publications/documents/psw_gtr193/psw_gtr193_4_05_MacDonald_Coe_Lit.pdf

The press article said:
>>>"I think the county's done a fine job of managing the trail," Burleson said. "I question whether the water quality board has the authority to identify how a county road is to be managed."<<<

So now a little personal opinion.... :barf:

I'll be nice and say they must have misquoted Burleson. It is very unfortunate the county took over the land from the feds. The California waterboards have authority over your own backyard in California let alone any road - if it ever rains in your backyard and that water flows to somewhere.

Not only does the waterboard have the authority (thanks to an accumulation of state propositions/laws and federal law) - it answers to no state process outside of itself and I have never seen them give public opinion anything but lip service before they do whatever they wish - even issue fines that rarely can be appealed. It is a political appointment group - so make your case with state politicians to apply pressure to the waterboard - and start planning for federal court litigation now....

Further discussion over here:
http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/showthread.php?t=754971

Randii

Sorry - what I get for being tired and not looking at what section I was in - LOL.

Well... maybe this will get moved.....

"We received a number of complaints, and that's why we did inspections," said Wendy Wyels, the board's chief of compliance and enforcement.

Make no mistake about where this came from.

"They seemed to think they could get away with just doing no management," said Karen Schambach, a Georgetown resident and California director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. "They're very short-sighted."

Randy Burleson, president of the Rubicon Trail Foundation, an off-roading group, said the county and trail enthusiasts have continued to work on many improvements proposed in the unfinished plan.

This is where this group of people have it wrong. They are acting outside the current process. Karen and friends are citing the same, now outdated, information from the now several years ago RTMP.

Since that time, RTF, FOTR and the County have been working on the trail. There is a long list of accomplishments that these eco-t's refuse to acknowledge.

Why?? It takes away from their argument. Upon closer inspection, it seems to fall apart as you see that the Parks dept. really had no means to implement sediment control on the trail.


Now that the DOT is involved, a few short months, more has been done to improve the trail than the previous few years. Bridges are planned, figurative bridges have already been built between agencies and there is much still to be done.

Reading the abatement draft, there are several things I can support, just like with the master plan, there are things that make sense.

Also, remember that this road was engineered right before the motorized revolution. It has been a motorized road for 100 years!!! Lack of maintenance has created a few problem areas and mitigating those will bring it in to compliance with water quality. With missing a year on grants, it puts things back slightly.

It is the big picture that Rubicon Trail Foundation strives to see and I hope that the water board can be good enough to have that kind of forward thinking.

Bowing to complaint pressure is the way these eco-t's work. they keep striking out and keep trying something new. My opinion is that if they had a good enough case it would have stuck already. They want nothing more than NO motorized access.

The fact that they are in a smear campaign is obvious, it is also obvious that the propaganda they are spouting is skewed almost beyond belief to those that look at the bigger picture.

Seem "short sighted" to see things from such a minuscule viewpoint.

We ran into this in the EA for the Surprise Canyon closure a few years ago. Seems the BLM likes to play fast and loose with their facts, much like we are seeing here.

What I don't see in my quick look at this document, I see no assessment of a Properly Functioning Condition (Handbook of Water Quality Monitoring - National Resources Conservation Service; 1997) of the stream courses involved.

Then, one needs to look close to TDS numbers along with the the Secondary Maximum Contaminant Levels established by the California Department of Health Services.

Again, I only took a quick look at the letter so perhaps someone who is reading this closer might want to use what is posted here to forumulate some questions.

>>>"I think the county's done a fine job of managing the trail," Burleson said. "I question whether the water quality board has the authority to identify how a county road is to be managed."<<<
So now a little personal opinion.... :barf:
I'll be nice and say they must have misquoted Burleson.
As little as they put in the article from me, they did get this right. I'll expand, though -- since July 1 of 2008 (and unofficially, a few months before), El Dorado County Department of Transportation took over from El Dorado County Airport, Parks, and Grounds, and good things have been getting done ever since: continued road work by Wentworth, a Concrete Extreme Toilet (CXT) at the Loon trailhead, a trail survey/assessment, grant pursuit, bridge planning, and etc. Our County partners are working well with us -- still plenty of places to improve, but we're definitely seeing good works, and a trend for the better.

It is very unfortunate the county took over the land from the feds.
I disagree, because the feds were basically electing not to manage the trail. Had they managed the trail, I could understand arguments of having them keep managing the trail, but they were letting it coast, with little oversight. Rocks were rolled into the Little Sluice and generally, across most of the trail, the trail was widened with no enforcement (enforcement came only after the County Rubicon Oversight Committee (ROC) meeting helped drive its participants to grant funding). No attention was given to sanitation (grants and education came only after the County ROC meeting drive it).
Again, the County is not perfect, but they are working with us as the lead agency more than the Forest did... and best of all, the County is working well cooperatively with other agencies and groups, including the Forest. As for jurisdiction of the Regional Water Quality Boards (RWQB) in this, I don't believe we'd be any better off with one agency than another in charge -- the complainants are outside all of the agencies, agitating however they can against recreation. They'd be attacking any agency that worked with us.

I'm not thrilled the anti's dragged the RWQB into this -- it definitely complicates things -- but I am confident that we can provide compelling information about ongoing trail improvements to the RWQB, and mitigate their concerns going forward. The County is working well with the El Dorado National Forest, Rubicon Trail Foundation, Friends of the Rubicon, and other parties to improve education, engineering, and enforcement on the trail, and actively plan/mitigate problems as they are presented in the ROC. I know the RWQB has significant authority, but we have such a preponderance of evidence of improvements made and in process, that I can't fathom they won't be swayed.

Randii

Copied and Moved to Rubicon Forum. All posts are retained and can be replied to here (http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/showthread.php?t=755659).

:usa: