TO BE RESTORED: DOSEWALLIPS RIVER ROAD!
A small assortment of radical Greens have been attempting to keep some very real people from easily accessing the Olympic National Park, and they are not finished yet. Four front page news articles appeared right after the announcement that the U.S. Forest Service has decided to repair the Dosewallips River Road.
The text of the two best articles , are abbreviated here:
Peninsula Daily News Story 159455 and
Peninsula Daily News Story 159456.
An article at
TheSunLink.com voices the radical view. Mr. McNulty wants the Park for the agile only (himself). If he succeeds in his effort, it will mean that disabled and handicapped, and young children, will be unable to access the park. See:
TheSunLink.com.
News Coverage: The Dosewallips River Road Washout
(Op-Ed by Ken Shock)
In reviewing the Press coverage of the Dosewallips Road situation, I have sensed a lack of coverage of the business and economic aspect. South Jefferson County is acknowledged to be an economically depressed area. The National Park access road is one of the few positive factors for the local economy.
These are real people and situations down here, in South Jefferson County. Young people are leaving or getting into drugs. There are NO JOBS! A responsible local paper should continue to come down here and interview business leaders or attend the Chamber of Commerce meetings.
The fact is that
all local business people are
very concerned. From all that I have read,
The Bremerton Sun doesn't get it! Instead of attending the local
Chamber of Commerce meetings, they seem to have primarily interviewed the radicals who want the road closed. Do these radicals come from Jefferson County? NO! Will they lose his jobs if there are no tourists coming to Brinnon? NO!
Only the
Peninsula Daily News and the
Port Townsend Leader have appeared to attend our local meetings. They have reported our concerns. Unfortunately, they do not offer old articles on their websites, and the ones available through search engines, are abbreviated.
Like I said, I am doing this
BrinnonProsperity.org website because our people just don't get heard. It's a pretty bad scene when a nice rural village gets targeted for downsizing by outside forces, using foundation money, and all this PC Wilderness jargon. It is another thing again, when the villagers can't even get their story told.
-- Ken
Read some letters in support of reopening the Dosewallips River Road.
Janet Huck, Staff Writer for
The Port Townsend Leader, has written an article in which she details how the U.S. Forest Service has three options for the future of the Dosewallips River Road: "It can end the road at the pile of dirt 10 miles up the Dosewallips Valley from Brinnon, decommission the road entirely or it can build a road on the terrace above and behind the massive washout."
Read the full article, here.
For Olympic National Forest general news, check out
http://www.fs.fed.us/r6/olympic/news/.
What
They Say... |
The
Reality Is... |
The
Bush administration is getting ready to harvest hundreds of trees. |
The
Federal Highway Administration and the Forest Service have worked
together to survey a road center line that avoids cutting any more of the
larger trees than absolutely necessary for safety and compatibility with
sound engineering. Trees removed for this project will be used in
other Forest Service and Park Service projects in the region. |
The
entire Dosewallips watershed will be placed at risk. |
The
bypass route is designed to provide the maximum possible protection
to the watershed and the protected species using the area. The watershed
will actually be better protected than when this section of the road ran
along the river. |
There
may be disastrous results for salmon, owls, eagles, marbled murrelets,
and other wildlife. |
Only
4.5 acres of surface will be used for the road. This represents a
very tiny portion of the available critical habitat in the Dosewallips
watershed. Impacts to wildlife will be minimal,
and are not expected to result in the loss of individuals of any protected
species. |
The project is illegal under present laws. |
Legal
research conducted by the Forest Service, the Park Service, and other federal
entities find this assertion to be without merit. |
Building the bypass will eliminate protections for
watersheds and wildlife. |
The
Dosewallips Road has been present in the watershed for more than
seventy years. Over time, watershed and wildlife protections have
become much more stringent. Restoring access to the upper campgrounds
will not eliminate any of these protections, and the existing protections
are respected in this project. |
Decommissioning the final 5.5 miles of road to trail
status is the only ecologically and legally sound option available. |
Environmental
and engineering studies, along with legal research, indicate that this
opinion is simply that...an opinion. Decommissioning the section
of the road upstream of the washout would deny access to the disabled,
the elderly, and the very young. It would also compound
the economic loss already suffered by the South Jefferson County since
the washout occurred. |
Building the bypass would seriously degrade critical
habitat for ESA-listed northern spotted owl and marbled murrelet. |
4.5
acres of habitat suitable for the northern spotted owl and marbled
murrelet would be affected by the bypass. Portions of that acreage
will be replaced by decommissioned portions of the road between the ends
of the bypass and the washout. Another portion of the road acreage
has been replaced by accretion on the south side of the Dosewallips River,
as a result of the natural movement of the river's course when it caused
the washout. Tree
harvesting for the project will take place outside of the nesting seasons
of these species. |
Building
the bypass would obliterate a Coho salmon spawning/rearing tributary. |
The
original version of "Option C" would have affected a small portion
of an unnamed tributary of the Dosewallips River. The current
modification of this option has routed the bypass beyond the spawning/rearing
portion of this tributary. |
Building
the bypass would jeopardize an ESA-listed
run of Puget Sound Chinook salmon. |
The
bypass will be further from the river than the road was before the washout. With
the much wider buffer between the roadway and the river, the Dosewallips
salmon runs will be better protected from runoff from the road. |
The
bypass would be prone to road failure because of the steep slope
and wet, unstable soils. |
Road
failure potential has been minimized through the rerouting of the bypass
in the new modification of "Option C". Road grades at either
end of the bypass are much less severe than in the original version of
this option, and are suitable for use by recreational vehicles and trailers. |
The
bypass project would cost millions of dollars. |
The
total cost estimate for the project is less than $560,000. |
Newslinks of interest:
Letters:
Business consequences:
Opponents sites:
Allied Organizations:
Forest Service Proposals:
+
About the effort to rebuild the historic Dosewallips River Trail.
