FULL ACCESS TO CEDAR CREEK FALLS WILL OPEN APRIL 5 WITH VISITOR USE PERMIT SYSTEM
March 26, 2013 (San Diego’s East County)–Starting April 5th, hiking to Cedar Creek Falls will require a visitor permit. Access from the San Diego River Gorge Trailhead in Ramona is also set to reopen. The trailhead has been closed since the death of an El Cajon teen who fell over the top of the falls in July 2011. A second trailhead reopened last year. With the opening, the U.S. Forest Service is implementing a Visitor Use Permit System that will limit the number of visitors to Cedar Creek Falls, while providing for protection of natural resources and enhancing public health and safety. Under the visitor use permit system, a permit will only be required while recreating within the Cedar Creek Falls visitor use permit area, which is located in the immediate area around the falls. Visitors will need to make a reservation online and pay a $6.00 permit fee. Other trail users who are not recreating within the visitor use permit area surround the falls will not be required to obtain a visitor use permit. All users of the trailhead are allowed to use and park in the San Diego River Gorge Trailhead parking lot free-of-charge. It is important to note that the visitor use permit is a not a parking permit – limited parking space is available at the San Diego River Gorge Trailhead and is offered on a first-come, first served basis. Cedar Creek Falls has long been a popular recreation destination in the Cleveland National Forest. Although members of the public have been visiting the falls for many decades, dramatic growth in visitation in recent years has resulted in a variety of issues, including medical emergencies, natural resource degradation. In addition to impacts on natural resources, high levels of public use have resulted in social issues related to parking and traffic congestion on County streets in the San Diego Country Estates (SDCE) neighborhood adjacent to the trailhead. “Our plan for implementation is the most balanced approach available to us to restore public access to Cedar Creek Falls while addressing natural resource and public concerns,” said William Metz, Cleveland National Forest Supervisor. The plan also permanently prohibits the possession and consumption of alcohol in the visitor use permit area, at the San Diego River Gorge and Saddleback Trailheads, and along the San Diego River Gorge Trail and Eagle Peak Road that lead to the falls. Additionally, a permanent closure of cliffs immediately surrounding the falls will prohibit jumping and diving from the cliffs. Managing the appropriate level of public visitation in the Cedar Creek Falls visitor use permit area requires the Forest Service to monitor the performance of the visitor use permit system. “I recognize the importance of providing a level of certainty and transparency as to how the Forest Service will operate this visitor use permit system,” said Metz. “Therefore, I’ve decided that the permit system will be governed by an adaptive management that uses a series of three metrics to address natural and social resource issues.” The metrics under this adaptive management system are specifically related impacts to the public lands of the Cleveland National Forest. The metrics are: 1) litter left behind by area visitors, 2) wetland and riparian health, and 3) erosion resulting from the proliferation of user-created trails in the visitor use permit area. The Forest Service is not able to establish or use a metric that is not directly under the jurisdiction of the Forest Service, such as impacts to the surrounding privately owned lands. Based on the monitoring, the number of permits issued per day can be decreased or increased. “The implementation of a visitor permit area is intended to reduce the number of daily visitors to a manageable level,” added Metz. “It is our intent to continue to provide for an outstanding outdoor recreational opportunity, while being proactive about caring for the natural resources on these public lands, and to assist the public in providing for their own health and safety.” Initially 75 visitor use permits for individuals and/or groups of up to five people will be available each day by reservation. Permits to visit the falls will be reserved through the National Recreation Reservation Service (NRRS) website. Reserving a visitor use permit will require visitors to pay a $6 administrative fee per permit for up to five people to NRRS. This administrative fee allows NRRS to operate and maintain the reservation system – these fees are not retained by the Forest Service. The on-line system provides flexibility to the public in that visitor use permits can be reserved 24-hours per day, 7-days a week. The rules and regulations of the permit system will be enforced by Forest Service law enforcement officers and violators will be fined. The NRRS website for permits is located at http://www.recreation.gov. For additional information, please contact the Palomar Ranger District at 760-788-0250.
READER’S EDITORIAL: A DECISION IN YOUR FAVOR
Court rules that CA Public Records Act applies to public officials’ private e-mail accounts By Lou Russo March 24, 2013 (Alpine)–In a Superior Court in California on March 19, 2013, a decision was filed which should make every Californian happy. The Honorable James P. Kleinberg decided that you, a citizen of California, have the right to view the records of public servants concerning the public’s business, in any form, regardless of where they are stored. Let me quote from the decision: “[It is] unlikely the Legislature intended to render documents confidential based on their location, rather than their content.” Why is this so important? Well, in California there are a number of statues to ensure that our government operates in an open manner. One of these is the Brown Act, the open meeting law which states: “The people of this State do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created.” The other important statue is the California Public Records Act (CPRA) which states: “…every person has a right to inspect any public record,…” subject to particular exemptions. However, as stated by Peter Scheer, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, “All public officials favor open government in principle. Who would dare say otherwise? In reality, however, they are in a perpetual search, guided by clever lawyers, for new ways to circumvent disclosure requirements–at best, because they view requests for records as a nuisance, and at worst, because they have something to hide (which can range from the merely embarrassing to the indictable).” One of the ways public officials have been avoiding open government, even here in Alpine, is by using private email accounts. County Counsel has been steadfast in asserting that private email accounts are not subject to the provisions of the CPRA because those records are not, as required by the CPRA, “… prepared, owned, used, or retained…” by the County. In fact, at the required planning group training sessions, the County has been recommending that local planning groups not have a planning group webserver and email accounts, presumably because they could be searched for “public records”. (You will have to ask the County Board of Supervisors and the County Planning Commission why they would want County Counsel to give that “counsel”, though I think we all know why.) That argument has now been vaporized by Judge Kleinberg. All of us may now request to see “public records” on officials’ and government employees’ private, personal email accounts; and not just personal email accounts the officials say they have created for their public business, but ANY private account where they may conduct ANY public duty and where ANY “public record” may be stored. In the case of the local planning groups, the County can now extend its search for public records into the private email accounts of public officials. Read more: http://firstamendmentcoalition.org/2013/03/judge-plugs-private-email-loophole-in-public-records-law/
CAL FIRE TARGETS ONE-THIRD OF STATE FOR CLEARANCE: SEEKS EXEMPTION FROM ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW
Your right to challenge clearance projects may be taken away UPDATE: COMMENT PERIOD EXTENDED TO APRIL 8 By Miriam Raftery Updated March 28, 2013 (San Diego’s East County)–The California Board of Forestry and CalFire has released a proposal to target about 38 million acres (1/3rd of the entire state) to be burned, chewed-up, or sprayed with herbicides. This increases its habitat clearance program five times over current levels in what the California Chaparral Institute (CCI) calls a “major threat” to wildlife. Robert S. Taylor Jr., a fire specialist with the National Park Service, has also blasted the proposal as a “very poor use of public funds” that would cause irreversible environmental damage. “I strongly recommend that Cal Fire withdraw the current proposal and produce a new one based on best available science,” he wrote. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has also criticized the plan. If approved, the proposal will exempt individual clearance projects from the citizen and independent scientific oversight that is currently required under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). The Los Angeles Times has called for Cal Fire to “withdraw the EIR and start over — consulting the experts who pointed out its flaws. If California is to have a comprehensive plan for surviving in a fire-prone region, it should be the strongest one possible.” The comment period has now been extended to April 8, after originally closing February 25. East County Magazine was not notified of this proposal by Cal Fire, despite the fact that we are on Cal Fire’s media notification list and operate the Viejas Wildfire & Emergency Alert service. East County Magazine editor Miriam Raftery asked Cal Fire to reopen the comment period be reopened because of the failure to notify ECM, which has 150,000 readers a month in the most fire-prone regions of San Diego’s East County. ECM operates the Viejas Wildfire & Emergency Alerts service and is on the media notification list for state and local Cal Fire news releases. We are pleased to announce that the comment period has been extended to April 8. View the Cal Fire proposal here. CCI submitted a detailed letter along with a petition with 3,080 signatures (with citizen comments) that called on the Board of Forestry to retract its proposed habitat clearance program and to instead to work with the California Natural Resources Agency and the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Water to create a Comprehensive Fire Protection Program that: – focuses on actual assets at risk rather than habitat clearance – preserves the rights of citizens to object to destructive projects – incorporates the most current science – understands the difference between forests and other ecosystems We are waiting to hear back from the Board of Forestry. To stay up to date on this matter please go to CCI’s CONTACT page and sign up for an email list. You can sign a petition here . Submit your comments here: VegetationTreatment@fire.ca.gov To view the CCI’s proposal please go here: Vegetation Treatment Program Document and see CCI’s highlights of its proposal below: 1. We Requested the Board of Forestry to retract the Vegetation Treatment Program Program EIR (Environmental Impact Report) and create a program that will properly consider the entire fire environment, reflect regional differences, allow for independent oversight, and incorporate the most up to date science. 2. The Wrong Focus. This program focuses entirely on clearing vegetation, despite extensive scientific research that clearly indicates the best way to protect lives, property, and the natural environment from wildfire is by addressing the entire fire environment: ignitability of structures, community and regional planning, and science-based vegetation management within and directly around communities at risk. Leave the natural landscape alone! Concentrate where the actual risks are: in and around communities. Additional details here: Protecting Your Home 3. Inadequate Alternatives. By law this document is required to offer reasonable alternatives to the proposed program. The only differences between the alternatives offered are different mixes of methods to clear vegetation. There is no alternative that looks at the entire fire environment (see #2 above). 4. Impossible to Determine Impacts. The Vegetation Treatment Program is so generalized that it is impossible to determine its environmental impacts on wildlife, plant communities, water and air quality, visual and aesthetic resources, recreation, soils, and invasive weed spread. There are no maps showing the location of clearance projects, only estimated number of acres per region. 5. Taking Away Citizen Rights. All projects within the scope of this Program will only be evaluated by a yet-to-be formulated checklist. They will not be reviewed through the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) as they normally are now. This will prevent citizens and independent scientists from challenging a project under CEQA that they feel is environmentally damaging. Citizens have the right to have individual projects thoroughly evaluated under CEQA. 6. Underlying Bias. This proposal is based on the questionable, overly-broad assumption that past fire suppression efforts have allowed a buildup of unnatural amounts of vegetation across the landscape, thus creating a fire hazard. While it may be true that some forests have been negatively impacted by fire suppression, this is not true for many other ecosystems, especially the chaparral. The proposal takes a simplistic, forest-centric approach that attempts to make fire issues out as broadly similar across the region, when in fact they are very different. Additional details here: Fire and Science 7. Ignored Contrary Views. By law this document is supposed to make an honest effort to review points of disagreement among experts. It failed to do so in areas such as the effectiveness of vegetation treatments, prescribed burns, and impact of fire severity in forests. 8. Cumulative Impacts Dismissed. The document only considers clearance programs conducted by other agencies and timber harvest activities in determining cumulative impacts. It does not include the impact of increased fire frequency on ecosystems, such as chaparral, already impacted by such a trend. Such an approach precludes a proper analysis of cumulative effects.