Page 10 - Flathead Beacon // 2.3.16

NEWS
Conservation Groups Counter Kootenai Snowmobile Lawsuit Snowmobilers hope to overturn motorized restrictions in proposed wilderness areas
BY TRISTAN SCOTT OF THE BEACON
A coalition of conservationists has asked to intervene in a lawsuit led by snowmobilers challenging wilderness provisions in the Kootenai and Idaho Panhandle national forest plans.
The Ten Lakes Snowmobile Club, Cit- izens for Balanced Use and ve other interest groups sued the U.S. Forest Ser- vice in November, accusing the agency of improperly excluding snowmobile use from the forest’s recommended wilder- ness areas and improperly recommend- ing new waterways for the national Wild and Scenic River Act designation.
On Jan. 25, The Wilderness Society, Headwaters Montana, Idaho Conserva- tion League, Montana Wilderness Asso- ciation, Panhandle Nordic Ski and Snow- shoe Club and Winter Wildlands Alliance formally asked to intervene in the case.
At issue are the Forest Service’s 2015 revised forest management plans for the two forests, which recommended certain rugged and unspoiled areas for wilderness designation, according to a statement by Earthjustice, which led the petition to intervene.
“Snowmobilers already have access to 86 percent of the Kootenai forest and 70 percent of the Idaho Panhandle forest,” said Earthjustice attorney Tim Preso, who is representing the six conservation groups. “We are standing up to defend the peace and solitude of the last pock- ets of wilderness-quality lands in these otherwise heavily logged and motorized forests.”
The snowmobile interest groups argue the recommended wilderness designa- tions should be overturned, and opened to motorized use by snowmobiles and four-wheelers.
The conservation coalition includes Winter Wildlands Alliance, Panhandle Nordic Club, Idaho Conservation League and Montana Wilderness Association.
The snowmobiling groups include Ten Lakes Snowmobile Club, Montanans for Multiple Use, Citizens for Balanced Use, the Glen Lake Irrigation District, Back- country Sled Patriots, the Idaho State Snowmobile Association and the Blue- ribbon Coalition.
Both the Kootenai and Idaho-Pan- handle forests issued new forest plans last January, replacing versions dating back to 1987. They also issued draft travel management plans, which closed access to some recommended wilderness areas where snowmobiles had been allowed to ride in the past.
According to Ten Lakes attorney Paul Turcke, the Forest Service’s process for determining wilderness areas in its new
plans was awed.
“The criteria and procedures used for
determining wilderness suitability in the Forest Plans Revision process were vague, subjective, internally contradic- tory and not rationally connected to the factors established by Congress and/or the Forest Service Handbook in deter- mining the suitability of any area for pos- sible designation as Wilderness,” Turcke wrote. “Even where some of the Wilder- ness suitability evaluation criteria were correctly identi ed, those criteria were applied in the Revised Forest Plans pro- cess in an arbitrary manner.”
The suit speci cally named the Roder- ick and Scotchman Peaks recommended wilderness areas as examples of what Turcke calls a awed process.
tscott@ atheadbeacon.com
EPA, USFS Create Virtual Model of Asbestos Mine Wild re Local and federal agencies study what would happen should a wild re spark at old W.R. Grace & Company site
BY JUSTIN FRANZ OF THE BEACON
An incident management team has
arrived in Libby to work a wild re at the shuttered W.R. Grace & Co vermiculite mine.
But this wild re isn’t spewing ash and smoke into the sky above Lincoln County. It’s all being created on a com- puter simulation to help re managers determine what would happen if a re started in the 35,000-acre area north of Libby known as Operable Unit 3.
Local o cials have long worried about a wild re in the heavily contam- inated forest around the old vermicu- lite mine, speci cally about what type
of contaminants would be released into the air in the event of a large re.
In the years after the mine closed, the local community learned the asbestos pro- duced by W.R. Grace caused cancer and other health issues. More than 2,000 cur- rent or former residents have been diag- nosed with asbestos-related diseases and at least 400 have died in the last decade. Libby was declared an Environmental Protection Agency Superfund in 2002.
While the cleanup in Libby and Troy winds down, the work is just beginning at the old mine site. The project man- ager for OU3, Christina Progress, said the EPA is in the nal stages of the remedial investigation and are now moving into
the cleanup feasibility stage. As part of that e ort, the EPA and the U.S. Forest Service (which owns much of the land in OU3) brought in an incident management team to create a wild re simulation.
“Because of the level of asbestos found at the mine site, we’re very concerned about that material spreading should a re ever start there,” she said. “This will help ( re ghters) understand where re would spread on the landscape so that we can do some fuel reduction in the OU3.”
Progress said re managers look at a variety of data points to create the model, including terrain and weather patterns. The incident management team started working on the project on Jan. 21 and
expect to wrap it up sometime this week. USFS expects the simulation to cost more than $50,000 and is being funded with grants from the EPA and the Lincoln
County Asbestos Resource Program. Asbestos Program Manager Nick Raines said should a re ever start in OU3, the EPA and county are prepared to deploy air-quality monitors throughout the area to ensure the safety of the public. He said these simulations will go a long way toward helping re ghters working at OU3. Because of the possible dangers of battling re at the mine site, the USFS has established a specially trained team of re-
ghters on the Kootenai National Forest.
jfranz@ atheadbeacon.com
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FEBRUARY 3, 2016 // FLATHEADBEACON.COM