This is a newspaper article from three years ago:
Public access to High Lakes may require major public fundingBy Tom Paulu The Daily News Online |
Posted: Friday, March 20, 2009 12:00 am
Public access to High Lakes may require major public funding ...A Cowlitz County building moratorium could postpone development of the High Lakes area near Mount St. Helens. Restoring public access to the land, however, would require more than $4 million at a time when public and private foundation budgets are tight.
Members of a task force devoted to keeping the High Lakes available for public recreation discussed the pros and cons of a development moratorium and tossed around ideas for funding during a Wednesday meeting in Longview.
The group’s focus is the area around Elk, Hanaford, Forest and Fawn lakes, which are a few miles north of Spirit Lake Memorial Highway, near the closed Coldwater Ridge Visitor Center.
With its cool lakes, steep ridges and long views, the area has long been treasured for outdoors recreation.
“My very first camping trip was to Forest Lake,” said Darcy Mitchem, a fifth generation Toutle Valley resident. She said she found articles in the Cowlitz County Advocate about stocking the lakes with fish in the 1920s.
“This has been used by the public for nearly 100 years,” Mitchem said.
Most of the region was owned by the Forest Service until around 1990, when Weyerhaeuser Co. acquired it. Weyerhaeuser allowed walk-in access to the trout-stocked lakes through most of the year, and the company opened its gates for hunting season.
In 2007, Weyerhaeuser sold 4,100 acres including the High Lakes to two men from the Tacoma area. The new owners, Kurt Erickson and Fred Wagner, have sold some of the parcels, but most of the land is still on the market.
Jessica Walz, conservation director of the Gifford Pinchot Task Force, said Erickson and Wagner are open to selling the approximately 3,000 acres that remain to a non-profit organization or governmental agency.
“We just have to get the money,” Walz said. The owners’ asking price is $8 million, Walz said, or $4.6 million for a conservation easement that would guarantee public access.
The Task Force continues to apply for grants to buy the land, Walz said. “It’s very difficult,” she said.
Several people at the meeting suggested asking the Forest Service to buy the High Lakes — as long as the agency didn’t require people to stay on a few trails as it does in the Spirit Lake basin.
Cowlitz County Commissioner Axel Swanson suggested people lobby the Mount St. Helens advisory committee, which has come up with a draft plan for future volcano management, to include the High Lakes in that plan.
Most of the High Lakes is in Skamania County, which has a building moratorium on the land. Skamania County plans to zone the area for commercial forestry, which wouldn’t allow construction of residences.
The GP Task Force is urging Cowlitz County commissioners to adopt a building moratorium for its part of the High Lakes, which includes Fawn Lake.
Cowlitz County Commissioners will meet at Toutle-Lake High School to seek public comment on the merits of a building moratorium at 7 p.m. March 31.
Swanson said the High Lakes have become a “lightning rod issue” in the moratorium debate. However, a moratorium would likely cover any part of the county that’s outside a fire district, not just the High Lakes, Swanson said.
“Moratorium is a word that scares a lot of people and makes a lot of people angry,” he said. It would prevent people from building on land, but not from selling it, he said.
Building moratoriums elsewhere have been challenged in lawsuits, Walz said, though a county can defend itself by showing that it’s working on a permanent land-use plan for the area in question.
Swanson said Cowlitz County is interviewing candidates for the position of planner, and it would be that person’s responsibility to update the county’s comprehensive plan. But the current budget crunch could hinder that hiring.
Walz said the county needs to have rules in place as private timberland companies sell off more property for residential development.
The High Lakes area is the first big chuck of timber land sold for residential use by Weyerhaeuser, Walz said. “It will not be the last.”
Read more:
http://tdn.com/lifestyles/public-access-to-high-lakes-may-require-major-public-funding/article_15302e79-0262-5131-812a-6d5ba929a2d3.html#ixzz1umttpdSX
