OHV users outraged by sudden move
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management locked up 31,000 acres of
public land last week until further notice.
Since the closure of the unique southern San Benito County
landscape covers key access routes, it effectively pushes users out
of an area more than twice as large.
OHV users outraged by sudden move
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management locked up 31,000 acres of public land last week until further notice.
Since the closure of the unique southern San Benito County landscape covers key access routes, it effectively pushes users out of an area more than twice as large.
The decision to close the area, popular with off-road vehicle enthusiasts, rock hounds, hikers and hunters and native plant fans, was made April 30 and made effective May 1.
While the closure is described as “temporary,” Rick Cooper, field manager for the Hollister area BLM office, confirmed during a May 1 press conference that it will be at least two years before the area is re-opened, if ever.
The reason given for the closure is a just-released study from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, indicating high levels of airborne asbestos in the area. Asbestos occurs through much of the serpentine barrens that characterize the Clear Creek region. It’s visible as white, fibrous veins appearing in rocks there.
The EPA study was conducted over four sampling periods in 2004 and 2005, according to Geri Johnson of the EPA. It found that the highest levels of asbestos exposure occurred when people in off-road vehicles were following other vehicles. Walking and riding in closed vehicles resulted in lower exposures. The study found that the exposure could bring cancer risk greater than one in 10,000, a number BLM found unacceptably high. Asbestos is linked to a number of respiratory diseases, including lung cancer
“The Clear Creek Management Area is closed year-round starting today,” Cooper said May 1. “It will not be open for at least two years while we determine … whether the public can use the area safely. After we complete our planning process we will issue our final decision.”
The decision was met with rage and skepticism from off-road vehicle users. Many of them believe the type of asbestos that predominates in the area – chrysotile asbestos – is not particularly hazardous. They challenged federal authorities to find any instances where it could be linked conclusively to respiratory disease.
“There are dead bodies from smoking,” said Ed Tobin, of Marina. “There are no dead bodies from chrysotile asbestos. This is another Alar scare.” Tobin was referring to a once-popular apple pesticide linked to a public health scare in the 1990s.
Tobin is a member of the Salinas Ramblers, a group of off-road enthusiasts who own property near the closed area. He maintains a blog at http://www.salinasramblersmc.org/Tobin/Blog/blog.htm and has been an advocate for public access in the area for 30 years.
A normally soft-spoken man, Tobin clearly loves Clear Creek. He has lots of company. The American Motorcycle Association rates it among the nation’s top 10 places to ride off road.
“I can’t think of a place around here that would replace it,” Tobin said after the decision. “I went on their [BLM Resource Advisory Council] tour of Clear Creek in mid-March and there was no mention of closure. They just spent $50,000 pulling gravel down to an entrance area, and at upper Jade Mill did thousands and thousands in improvements. Why?”
Tobin did not blame Cooper or local staff for the closure.
“We don’t know where the decision was made,” Tobin said. “He’s doing his job. Probably the decision was made by … BLM’s state director, or in Washington.”
The handful of people owning pockets of property inside the closed BLM area can petition to retain access, Cooper promised. And in another development, the public can, too.
The Board of Supervisors Tuesday voted not to close county roads through the site. The only roads to the area are narrow gravel tracks, often barely passable in wet weather.
“They lied to us,” Tobin said. “They lied to their own civilian advisory council. They said they’d issue a report. Now, all of a sudden out of the blue, they take away access. This takes away all the pressure from them. Now they have no time line.”
The year-round closure follows a seasonal closure that was instituted during the dry summer months, starting in 2005.
BLM and EPA staff were to conduct a public “informational meeting in Santa Clara Thursday night, after Pinnacle deadline. Other public sessions are planned for May 19 in Hollister and May 21 in San Jose. The Hollister meeting is set to begin at 6 p.m. at the Veterans Memorial Building.
For Tobin and others like him, the next step is already clear, meeting or no meeting.
“You’ve got not a whole lot of recourse except the courts,” he said. Tobin’s already promised to sign his federal income tax rebate check over to a Clear Creek legal fund, and he is encouraging others to do the same.
Timeline for Clear Creek
Ed Tobin of Marina has been one of the most outspoken critics of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s stewardship of the Clear Creek Management Area.
The chronology that follows is taken directly from Tobin’s Web site, found at http://www.salinasramblersmc.org/Tobin/Blog/blog.htm.
1986: The Clear Creek Management Plan calls for the Clear Creek to be managed as Open unless posted Closed. A quarter mile limited use buffer was designated around Clear Creek and the San Benito River. Areas outside the hazardous asbestos zone were designated Limited but in the rest of the area, 30,000 acres, OPEN use was permitted.
Circa 1990: A senior manager in the Hollister Field Office says to me: “Face it, Ed, Clear Creek is going to be shut down.”
Circa 1991/2: Close to 500 OHVers turned out for an EPA meeting in Sunnyvale. The event is later used by the government in a training video as an example of how not to conduct a public meeting.
Circa 1994: A HFO staff member tells me during a field trip: “We don’t have the time or resources to do it right so this is what you get” – referring to the Draft EIS.
Circa 1995/6: A HFO employee, together with a Sierra Club work party, builds a “warning fence” across a heavily used trail above a new fence line. The posts are hidden in manzanita bushes and there is no flagging attached to the wire to warn riders. AMA lawyers determine that this constitutes a trap that was meant to cause harm. The employee is wisely transferred to another BLM location.
1998: BLM discovers a large San Benito Evening Primrose population in Larious Canyon and fails to protect it as required by law and the Biological Opinion.
1998: State Director Ed Hastey approves a Record of Decision for Clear Creek. It designates the area as ‘Limited’ meaning use is restricted to existing routes. Adopts Encourage, Allow, Prohibit management philosophy. Decision calls for 270 miles of encouraged routes and leaves all other routes open unless they are signed or otherwise physically closed. This language essentially keeps Clear Creek “Open unless posted Closed”. Designates 937 acres of barrens to be open.
1999 to 2003: By their own admission, nothing happened…except that they posted a bunch of signs and trail markers without following NEPA procedures and the OHV community wasted of bunch of time attending TRT meetings because the BLM never listened to what we had to say.
2002: Without doing the required NEPA process, BLM closes the Tunnel of Trees trail that leads to Larious Canyon using Sierra Club volunteers.
2003: BLM announces the start of an Environmental Assessment in April but has no material available for the public to review. As we now find out, they had not even gone through the trail assessment process before starting this NEPA process. In September they put the EA on hold after lawsuits threatened by California Native Plant Society and OHV groups led by the Blue Ribbon Coalition.
2004: BLM uses excuse of controversy (that they created) to justify the publishing of an EIS, further lengthening the time until they implement the 1998 ROD and wasting a whole bunch of our tax dollars.
