Idaho Republican: Forest Service “too broken to fix”

Scott Sonner

Tuesday, Nov. 16, 1999 | 10:07 a.m.

ELKO, Nev. - The chairman of a House panel overseeing the Forest Service says mismanagement of a washed-out road along trout habitat in Nevada revived her belief that states should control national forests because the agency is "too broken to fix."

Rep. Helen Chenoweth-Hage, R-Idaho, said she will subpoena documents the Forest Service refused to turn over during a weekend field hearing in Elko on the bull trout and South Canyon Road.

Wildlife biologists for the Forest Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Trout Unlimited say rebuilding the road in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest would harm the threatened fish.

But Elko County officials who want to rebuild the road say the government has no jurisdiction because the road was built before the national forest was established in the early 1900s.

"This is a situation that shows some of the most high-handed, arbitrary and capricious actions I've ever seen," Chenoweth-Hage said.

She called it a prime example of Clinton administration efforts to end commercial uses and close off public access to national forests for the sole purpose of protecting wilderness.

"By closing roads and submitting the forests to one use, we are literally destroying the culture of this great West," said Chenoweth-Hage, chair of the House Resources subcommittee on forests and forest health.

Chenoweth-Hage became upset at the close of Saturday's four-hour hearing when a Forest Service official refused to answer some questions. He said the U.S. Attorney's office in Las Vegas advised against answering because of pending litigation.

"Our position is the federal government does indeed own that road," said Jack Blackwell, the Forest Service regional boss for the Intermountain Region. He believes it was built in 1910 or 1911, after the forest was established between 1906 and 1909.

"There's nothing I'd like to do better than discuss the merits of the case. But under direct orders from the U.S. attorney, I'm prohibited from discussing the merits of the case," he said.

Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., said it was "highly improper" for Justice Department lawyers to deny information to Congress on any case in which Congress was not a legal party.

Chenoweth-Hage said it was "no small matter" because Forest Service head Mike Dombeck earlier assured her his staff would cooperate and no subpoenas would be necessary.

Kristin McQueary, deputy district attorney for Elko County, testified during the hearing that U.S. attorneys assigned to the case "have been assigned the task of punishing Elko County for daring to assert its rights."

She said the normal administrative appeals process does not work because federal land management agencies "are staffed by people with their own radical environmental agendas."

McQueary and Mike Nannini, an Elko County commissioner, said the dispute isn't really about protection of the bull trout. Rather, he said, it focuses on access to the national forest.

"I feel the South Canyon Road debate has been a pawn in a much bigger issue of who has the power to control," Nannini said.