gcpba NEWSWIRE Sept. 20, 1997
The third, and final of three Colorado River Management Plan meetings was
held Friday night and Saturday in not too hot, but hot enough, Phoenix, at
the YWCA Leadership Center.
The meetings started with a premeeting on Fees. Chaired by Jim Northup and
linda Jalbert from NPS and attended by about a dozen folk representing the
Grand Canyon Private Boaters Association, GCRG,GCROA, interested private
boaters, backpackers, and a couple of folk who came in looking for the free
dinner some of the outfitters were putting on for their commercial
passengers. Ooops, wrong room. Jim showed us a laundry list of projects,
both Fee Demo and CRF funded. Projects include Nankowep wall stabilization,
site restoration, increased law enforcement by one seasonal ranger, interp
center at Lees Ferry, water line to Phantom Ranch boat beach, trail work,
and Pierce's Ferry road improvement among other things. As NPS 53 is under
review, we did not spend a lot of time on cost recovery fees. Boatingand
backcountry use may not be classified as a special use,upon completion of
this study, which would cut the fee burden by over 50%. Jim hinted that the
$25 per year filling fee may be dropped, but $4/night impact fee would
remain. GCPBA board member Byron Hayes presented a cost sharing arrangement
to reflect allocation, which was well recieved. Jim encourages all
interested folk to continue to send the Park your suggestions as to how to
spend $160,000 discretionary funding as yet not spent. One thought on this
matter was that the funds could be used for immediate improvement in the
staff of the river ops office.Send your comments to your congress folk, cc
Jim Northup, District Ranger, Grand Canyon National Park, PO Box 129, Grand
Canyon, AZ 86023. GCPBA representatives encouraged the park to immediatly
turn some of this money over to the ongoing CRMP planning project. At this
time funding for the CRMP is coming from the Park's base funding, and, as
this is a costly process, the additional funding would be welcome to insure
a comprehensive and complete job.
Speaking of which, attendence. totaling about 100, on Friday night was,
suprisingly, less then Portland and Salt Lake. Saturday morning Saw 70 or
so people break into four groups to discuss the private waiting list,
allocation, visitor experience, and general info. Some good progress was
made in exploring a reservation system with increased numbers of private
launches in the shoulder season to replace the current waiting list.
Allocation at all three meetings was probably the most widely discussed
issue. Thorough discussions were held probing the depths of increased
allocations and what that might mean to both users and resource impact,
changing allocations or even doing away with them. Overhauling the permit
system was also a topic receiving a great deal of attention. Suggestions
and discussions ranged from a privitization of the system to revamping the
Park's current system to include the gathering of pertinent data. Strong
sentiment was expressed by many that the park needs more data to understand
use patterns and user needs, specifically, how long is a reassonable wait,
how may would they like to take on their trip for how long, etc. Stay
tunned to gcpba NEWSWIRE as focus groups continue to hammer this out over
the coming months.
Best quote's of the session were from commercial outfitter, Gaylord
Stavley, who noted "Commercial passengers get an immediate window, while
all that the private boaters get is an ever lenghting hallway," and "what
we don't want to do is increase the burden on commercial patron's, but to
decrease the burden on private boaters."
GCPBA would like to thank NPS staff, in particullar Dave Haskell and Linda
Jalbert, for their energy in getting us through the rough water, to Jim
Northrup for sitting down with and taking the time to get to know and
communicate with the boating community. Thanks to the River Management
Society and Carolyn Tan for hosting and facilitating these events, as well
as Greer Shearson and Barbara Sharroew, for there tireless skills as
moderators for, the sometimes immoderate.
This process could not have gone on without the encouragement of GCNP
Superintendant Rob Arneberger. Thank you, to Rob, and all, very much, and
we look forward to the continuation of this effort which, I beleive
everyone involved with, hopes will result in an excellent CRMP plan, taking
into account the needs of all the users of the river corridor.
With a couple of years to go on this river trip, we've gotten past House
Rock.
Tom Martin/Richard Martin
Permission to copy or reprint ok/ please credit "gcpba NEWSWIRE" and
correct misc. spelling and grammer errors!
Leonard Thurman http://river.ihs.gov
Len@Songbird.com Grand Canyon River Running
====================================================================
To subscribe, send email to majordomo@songbird.com, with "subscribe
gcboaters" as the only line in the message body. To unsubscribe send
"unsubscribe gcboaters". For further information send "info
gcboaters", or see http://www.songbird.com/gcboaters
====================================================================