Travel Management open houses begin

The first of three open houses for the West Side Snowy Range Travel Management project was held from 5 p.m.- 8p.m., Thursday in Elk Mountain.

Citizens attended the open house on Thursday to look over the three different alternatives that the Forest Service has released to the public.

The three different alternatives chosen for analysis within the Environmental Assessment were the No Action Alternative, the Modified Proposed Action Alternative and the Less Roads Alternative.

According to Melanie Fullman, District Ranger of the Brush Creek/Hayden Ranger District, the No Action Alternative is included as an alternative within every Environmental Assessment and has no changes to the road system.

The Modified Proposed Action is based off of the Proposed Action that was presented this spring. However, Fullman says that there have been some changes made.

"In the Modified Proposal the 103 road is back to being open to all vehicles. So is road 105 coming out of the backside of Overlook Retreat and going over to Turpin Reservoir."

However, to open those roads, the ORV loop had to be removed from the proposed action.

"When we modified both of those we had to go in and tweak some of the Off Highway Vehicle (OHV) because you would up cutting off a major component - there was no way to loop back around. So some of these others change cause their wasn't a viable OHV loop at that point anymore so then some of those opportunities went away.

In addition, 261, also known as Cedar Pass Road, remains closed to most vehicles except in a portion of the road-where it has been converted to OHV.

"Its still landslide prone and its still falling off the mountain, but this piece now is proposed to be open to OHV's," said Fullman. "It is a change in that is does provide a continuous route of access. For those folks who think it should remain open as is, that's the no actions alternative, the existing condition."

In addition, some changes were made around Ryan Park, according to Fullman.

"We also did a couple things in and around Ryan Park in response to the meeting I had there," said Fullman. "The most significant change was in the proposal I believe it was the 221 road we had proposed to close this sections it is now proposed to remain open to ATV's."

The Less Roads Alternative was created as their was a displayed need for one based off of the public comments from the proposed action, according to Fullman.

"We received a number of comments from both agencies and individuals that supported having fewer roads so there's an opportunity to analyze that."

Cooperators were involved, according to Fullman, in assisting with other aspects of the proposal. Government agencies such as the Carbon County Commissioners, the Saratoga Encampment Rawlins Conservations District and various other state agencies sat down with the Forest Service about a month ago to discuss the Travel Management project.

Fullman said that one of the major suggestions that the group had was clarifying the terminology within the proposed action to make it more user-friendly.

"They made comments mostly about this form and how the information was presented and gave us several good suggestions on how to present the information so that it would be easier to understand."

The second open house will be from 5-8 p.m. Aug. 5, at the BLM Rawlins Field Office and the third open house will be from 5-8 p.m., Aug. 6 at the Platte Valley Community Center.