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INF on track to a complete road inventory |
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Saturday, 20 October 2007 |
 Marty Hornick, of the Inyo National Forest, points to a map showing a dense array of roads in the Mammoth area during Tuesday night’s public meeting to discuss the recently released Proposed Action for the Inyo National Forest's Travel Management and Route Designation Project. Photo by Jon Klusmire By Jon Klusmire
Register Staff 10-18-2007
The end of the road is in sight for the Inyo National Forest Route Inventory Motorized Travel Management Plan.
After spending at least three years mapping and tracking and penciling-in hundreds of miles of roads and tracks and trails, the forest is starting the final step in the process that will expand the system of legal roads designated for motorized use in the forest.
In an effort to make sure the public has plenty of chances to weigh in on the road plan, the Inyo County Board of Supervisors voiced strong support for extending the comment period on the Proposed Action for Motorized Travel Management past the 45 days allotted.
New Inyo National Forest Supervisor Jim Upchurch seemed receptive to allowing plenty of time for public comment, and stressed closing any road would be a move he would not take lightly.
At the heart of the plan is an “unbelievable effort” by volunteers and Forest Service and Bureau ofLand Management crews to find and map all the roads in the forest, noted Marty Hornick, project leader of the Route Inventory Project.
That effort resulted in the documentation of about 3,000 miles of roads and tracks on the forest, with another 700 miles of county roads in the forest, he said.
Out of that total, about 1,200 miles are officially “forest system roads,” meaning they have been documented and designated by the Forest Service as legal roads, he noted.
Another 1,800 miles of roads are “non-system roads,” meaning they have never formally and legally been claimed by the Forest Service, although many of them have been in use for years and are quite well known, Hornick added.
Of those non-system roads, about 400 miles are located in “inventoried roadless areas,” which complicates the process of making them a part of the designated road system.
Of the 3,000 total road miles (not counting the county roads), about 2,165 are slated to earn a place as an official, “designated” road in the forest’s Motorized Travel Plan.
That means abut 900 miles of existing roads and tracks are currently not included in the Proposed Action’s list of designated roads.
However, that does not mean those roads are out of the picture. Hornick and the rest of the Forest Service staff stressed that public comments will guide the environmental process that will eventually result in a final decision. Thus, all comments and suggestions about adding those roads to the official system will be considered.
But it will be a long haul for the public to comment on the 900 miles of roads that might not make it to the final map, noted the supervisors as they started to tick off reasons for extending the public comment period on the Proposed Action.
Plus, the change in the status of about 1,500 miles of road that was mandated by the regional office in the last month (see related story) will likely create some confusion, the board noted. Those roads will appear with a different notation on the maps presented with the Proposed Action. Citizens will have to use the previous set of Route Inventory maps to compare against the newer maps, they noted.
Plus, the Forest Service is still scrambling to produce a second set of maps that will allow people to compare the roads in the Proposed Action with all the roads that were mapped out during the route inventory work.
The change in the baseline amount of “system roads,” the need to comment on 900 miles of roads and the need to get good sets of maps to work off of were the main reasons the supervisors said they would be asking Upchurch to extend the comment period past Nov. 15.
The public, however, will have plenty of opportunity to comment in the coming year, and comment on a more varied and specific range of alternatives than the Proposed Action.
“I think this Proposed Action is not going to be the Preferred Alternative” that emerges at the end of the Environmental Impact Statement process, noted Hornick.
But there are some limitations concerning adding roads to the designated forest road system, no matter how long they have been around and how much use they get.
Hornick noted that 40 percent of the Inyo National Forest is made up of wilderness areas, and another 40 percent consists of “inventoried roadless areas.”
Roads are not allowed in wilderness areas, obviously, and changing roadless rules complicates the roadless area situation. Hornick said that, yes indeed, there are roads that run into or through “roadless areas.” At one time, the Forest Service was required to plan for keeping those roads, since the idea was to come up with several types of “roadless areas,” one including some limited roads.
However, new laws and regulations have been put in place, and now, it is illegal to officially include any road in a roadless area as a designated, Forest Service road, he said.
Thus, about 400 miles of existing roads in “roadless areas” cannot be added to the forest’s legal, official road system.
The Proposed Action is actually the move that starts the whole EIS process, said Susan Joyce, who is spearheading the EIS work on the road system.
All the work done prior to the release of the Proposed Action is basically “scoping,” or identifying issues and concerns that should be addressed more fully in the EIS, she said. Joyce added that more information and public participation during the scoping phase of the process helps ensure the EIS includes a more complete range of variables, issues and alternatives.
That said, now is the time for the public to make official, on-the-record comments about the route inventory, individual routes and roads, resource concerns and any other issue related to the road system.
Adding those comments to the data already collected will allow the Forest Service to arrive at a group of alternatives in a Draft EIS, which should be complete in the spring of 2008, she said. The public will have a chance to comment on the DEIS, and those comments could help shape the final decision. That decision will be made by Upchurch in the fall of 2008, she added.
The end result should be a legally defensible road system created with public input that tries to accommodate public access and motorized vehicle use with minimal resource or environmental damage.
While the supervisors might be pressing to extend the comment period, Forest Service officials said people should get their comments in as soon as possible.
In response to the supervisors’ verbal desire for a longer comment period, Upchurch said “we’ll provide adequate time for public comment,” within the national timelines dictated for completion of the travel plan.
As for road closures, Upchurch said he would make “no decision to close or obliterate a road unless there is a good reason to do it.”
Actually, the current process won’t exactly close any roads, anyway. Hornick said the end result will be “designating roads” for inclusion in the forest road system. While the cost of closing a road might be considered during the EIS process, questions about what to do with existing roads that don’t make that list will be left for another day.
And another debate.
This debate, though, is just getting going.
To help the public decifer the different maps and what roads have been included or dropped from the latest plan, an all-day Saturday meeting/workshop has been scheduled.
The Advocates for Access to Public Lands and the Eastern Sierra Four Wheel Drive Club will be setting up shop on Saturday, Oct. 20, from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. to help with map reading and answering questions about how the public can comment on the proposal. The groups will be located at the Presbyterian Church meeting room, 585 N. Main St., in Bishop. There will be table-sized maps on view and comment cards to submit to the Forest Service. “Numerous well-traveled roads are proposed for closure and your comments will help protect your right to motorized access to our spectacular forests,” said a press release from the groups.
Maps and other related material about the pending transportation plan will be available at Forest Service offices, on the Web at www.fs.fed.us/r5/inyo/ and on CDs which contain maps and other documents. Request a CD via e-mail at
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, which is also the e-mail address where the public can send comments on the plan.
For more information, call project managers Marty Hornick at (760) 873-2461, or Nancy Erhardt at 873-2490.
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 12 December 2007 )
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