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October 17, 2004
Wet Weather Closure Flexibility
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Last night I gave you the web sites to watch for rainfall amounts. Tonight I need to tell you about the screwed up wet weather closure criteria the BLM has for Clear Creek. The wet weather closure criteria published in the federal register claims to give the BLM "flexibility" but in fact does not. More...
Consider what happened this past February: We had a relatively dry period from early January until the end of February with just one wet spell in early February when .8 inches of rain fell between 2/2 and 2/4. The cumulative total for the year, though, was only at 6". This has been a common pattern the last couple of years where we have gotten a lot of rain in November and December and then it stays dry until the night before the Quicksilver National enduro. How we missed it this year was a minor miracle! The day after our national enduro, a wet pattern started and lasted for almost two weeks, culminating with a downpour on Wednesday the 25th (1.42").
Robert La Fleur, who was then the Clear Creek Project Coordinator, contacted me on Thursday (2/26) to ask my opinion about the conditions after the rain. I suggested that by Friday the Creek may have dried out enough to allow motorcycles and ATV out on the trails over the weekend but that I would restrict large vehicles from the dirt roads for a couple of days. They were considering this when, I understand, a "stakeholder" named Tom Hopkins of the Ventana Wilderness Alliance apparently threatened a lawsuit if they did not follow their wet weather closure to the letter.
Now, I don't have a problem with a closure if it is going to keep the roads and trails from being torn up, especially after periods of heavy rain. It is expensive to maintain the roads with heavy equipment. The problem I have is that there is no flexibility in the rule. This inflexibility could cause Clear Creek to be closed for three days even though the trail conditions are perfect. How could that be? Well, if we were to have a very wet Fall and early Winter with over 8"of rain and this was followed by several weeks or even a month of dry weather (as is very common for January), the BLM would still be forced to close Clear Creek for three days after a 1/2 inch of rain in a 24 hour period.
Anyone who has spent any time in Clear Creek knows that just a day or two after a rain the roads will be dry and perhaps dusty, especially after a prolonged dry spell. What I really fear is that a similar scenario could cause our national enduro to be cancelled under sunny skies and perfect trail conditions because of the inflexibility of this rule.
I was disappointed to see that the BLM had made no change in the DEIS to the wet weather closure criteria even though they acknowledge to need to do so. The OHV community needs to demand that the rule be modified so that situations as I described can be addressed on a case by case basis. Please include in your comments that these criteria need to be amended to really give the BLM some flexibility
So, with some weather people predicting a wet winter, you better keep close tabs on the rain gauges. If it rains hard on a Wednesday or Thursday after we have had a total of eight inches of cumulative rainfall, there is a possibility that the BLM will be closing Clear Creek for three days.