August 7, 2004
Chronology
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Since the BLM was so kind as to provide the public with a chronology of events and plans affecting Clear Creek, I thought it might be helpful to add some things they left out or glossed over.
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.