To no one’s surprise, the Bureau of Land Management has, essentially, decided to close permanently the approximately 31,000 acres of public lands in the Clear Creek Management Area (CCMA) and portions of BLM-administered lands located in southern San Benito and western Fresno Counties. We should cease calling them public lands because with the coming fences, gates, GSA-approved padlocks, special passes and fees; the land is public in name only.
This area will be intensively managed, meaning, your ability to use it will be severely limited. The justification is the theoretical cancer risk associated with exposure to airborne asbestos from the New Idria Formation, a serpentinite rock outcrop of naturally occurring asbestos, the largest such deposit in the United States.
I use the term theoretical advisedly, because it applies in this case. None of the EPA studies cited a single case of cancer that could be attributed to the decades-long recreational use of Clear Creek.
Nonetheless, government documents are emphatic and scary, “The [study] results showed that visiting CCMA more than one day per year can put adults and children above EPA’s acceptable risk range for exposure to carcinogens and increased excess lifetime cancer risk from many typical CCMA recreational activities.”
Sounds deadly, yet visits will be allowed. The management plan authorizes motorized access in the area by permit, limiting visitor use to five days/year for motorized activities and to 12 days/year for non-motorized activities. Curiously, both schedules exceed the EPA “acceptable risk range.” How does that square with the risk claims? Recreation supporters say they have photographs of BLM employees working in the danger zone without protective equipment. The manager of the local Field Office did not bother to deny it and seemed strangely disinterested in who, what, when, or where.
Look, cancer and humans do not go together, if the human is a child it is even worse, but at some point the glaring inconsistencies and lack of direct evidence has to interest even the most jaded data analyst at the EPA. Under some conditions, the report puts the risk at an enormous two per 1,000, so where are the cases?
I am not a big conspiracy guy. I don’t believe there was a shooter on the grassy knoll, a UFO at Roswell, a TWA 800 missile, an ATF bomb at Oklahoma City, or a CIA attack on 9/11. However, understanding human nature, I am a little unspoken conspiracy guy and those, often a few people, sometimes a bureaucracy, all have similar biased outlooks based on various forms of self-interest. All sides see what they want to see – officials just like average citizens – but the danger from former is far greater (see “IRS”). Persistent pressures, tunnel vision, groupthink, personal and professional bias, philosophical outlook, political preference, empire-building and advancement opportunities all contribute to prejudicial decisions.
Limiting off-road vehicle use fits this administration’s worldview and that of the BLM professionals – the more they manage, the more they make and the longer their careers. Many believe independent-minded humans are destructive and, unlike sheep, difficult to heard. Who knows what was said at the closed-door management meetings, perhaps; I don’t care how you do it, but get this done or you will be counting moose turds in Alaska next winter.
The county supervisors can talk forever, it will not matter; we do not have the votes, money, or clout to fight this ruling – it’s political, evidence obviously does not count. The only thing to do is make a cause out of finding the truth; anything less is just a waste of time.
