Massive NPS "Environmental Assessment" may allow f

Alaska Daily News:
http://www.adn.com/front/story/4663151p-4618297c.htmlPilgrims may get road permit
RESTRICTIONS: Temporary agreement would be applicable in winter conditions.
By TOM KIZZIA
Anchorage Daily News(Published: January 24, 2004)Federal officials appear ready to grant a temporary permit allowing
the Pilgrim family to drive a bulldozer up a historic road through a
national park to their home -- but only in winter when there is snow
on the ground and the local creek is frozen.The National Park Service released a 126-page environmental assessment
of the family's access request Friday, The park's preferred option is
a temporary one-year permit allowing nine round trips over the 14-mile
road through Wrangell St. Elias National Park near McCarthy.Robert Hale, his wife and their 15 children, who go by the name
Pilgrim, have been locked in a two-year battle with the Park Service
over access to the remote mining property in the park that they
purchased in 2002.The fight seems far from over. The family's attorney said Friday the
park's proposal is not safe because of winter hazards. The Pilgrims
had sought access in fall, after the ground freezes but before snow
falls and before freeze-up on McCarthy Creek.A whole new round of debate is likely if the family applies for a
permanent access permit. The family, backed by Lower 48 support
groups, contends no permit is needed to use the historic mining road,
though their arguments have been unsuccessful in the federal
courts. Some environmental groups say they will support the family's
effort to bring in building supplies by bulldozer but would oppose a
permanently open road.A Pilgrim supporter dismissed the whole environmental study process as
heavy-handed. The park could have offered the same solution last
September, in time for the family to haul in supplies for this winter,
said Anchorage property rights activist Ray Kreig."This isn't about the environment," Kreig said. "This is about
pressure and intimidation and punishment of anybody that tries to use
their access rights."A 30-day public comment period opened with release of the study
Friday. Gary Candelaria, the superintendent for Wrangell-St. Elias,
said he hopes to reach a final decision within 10 days of the close of
comments.He said the new study was prepared in three intensive weeks of work.Citing concerns about harm to spawning Dolly Varden, park officials
want to restrict stream crossing until after freeze-up on McCarthy
Creek, except with special permission. The preferred alternative calls
for 12 inches of ground frost and six inches of snow cover to protect
vegetation before travel can begin.Two small detours of the historic road, around uninhabited private
inholdings, would be allowed. Rangers would travel with the family on
most trips, Candelaria said.The Pilgrims' lawyer, J.P. Tangen, said winter can be dangerous
because glaciation across the mountain road can slide a bulldozer and
heavy trailer sideways into the creek's canyon. Correspondence from
the family, included in the environmental report, raises several other
objections to winter travel, including the difficulty of crossing
shelf ice which drops off into the streambed.In dismissing the Hales' legal challenge late last year, U.S. District
Judge Ralph Beistline told them to follow the permit process and then
come back to court if they didn't feel the park was following federal
laws regarding access.The whole controversy started after Hale, who calls himself Papa
Pilgrim, used a bulldozer to clear an old access road to their former
mining property. The road had grown over with brush and small trees in
a decade of disuse. The park ordered the road closed and is preparing
a legal case for civil damages against the Pilgrims.The Pilgrims said they needed the road open to haul building supplies
after one of their two houses burned down. Supporters flew in some
supplies for them last fall.Kreig called the park's environmental anxieties absurd in light of its
own decision to allow surveyors to clearcut a rectangular line around
the Pilgrims' remote land last summer. That did far more damage than
Papa Pilgrim's clearing of the old roadbed, Kreig said -- and it was
done without any environmental assessment.On the other side, a conservationist who has followed the case
closely, called it a "weird irony" that the new environmental study
was done for a road that had already been bulldozed open. The call
would have been tougher if it were still overgrown."Looking at it from one angle, they're being rewarded," said Jim
Stratton, regional director for the National Parks Conservation
Association. "But you couldn't go back and pretend the road isn't what
it is today."Stratton said he favors letting the family haul in building materials
with a bulldozer. But the family should be able to move their normal
supplies through other means such as airplane and snowmachine, like
other Bush residents, he said. He called nine trips excessive."Are they building a resort hotel back there?" he said.Stratton also said he would object to keeping the road open
permanently to the Pilgrims' inholding.Candelaria said he has not yet received an application for a permanent
permit. Such a bid would be more serious and probably require a
full-blown environmental impact statement looking at a broader range
of issues than does the current 126-page report.

The National Park Service has now produced a 126 page "Environmental
Assessment" in consideration of a temporary permit for the Pilgrims to
access to their own property. The permit, if granted at all, would
allow use of the long-existing road a total of 9 times, and then only
when the ground is frozen. The National Parks and Conservation Association (NPCA) is quoted in
this Alaska Daily News article as continuing to oppose the access,
claiming 9 trips is "excessive" and insisting that any future
permanent access be denied. Meanwhile, the family continues to be
denied access to its own property on the only existing road. The
bureaucracy, which has unlimited resources supplied by the taxpayers,
is going to blatantly ridiculous means to ruin the lives of these and
other people they want to get rid of. It has the full support of the
mainstream viro pressure groups, who along with government agency
activists have used their connections in the media (such as the
Washington Post and Harper's) to smear their victims. They don't want
the public to know what they doing.The guaranteed right of access to private property owners trapped by
the National Park Service was part of the "compromise" in the Federal
legislation imposing National Park Service authority in Alaska. But
it hasn't stopped the bureaucracy and its viro supporters, who have
always wanted absolute control and pursue it with the unending
tenacity of Palestinian terrorists. This is what can be expected
from the viro power-seekers seeking control over rural Maine.