Feds, Elko County reach tentative deal in Forest Service dispute

Scott Sonner

Saturday, Feb. 17, 2001 | 9:51 a.m.

RENO, Nev. - Government negotiators reached a tentative agreement Friday with Elko County officials who want to rebuild a washed out Forest Service road, a move federal biologists have opposed for fear of harming threatened fish.

"It's a pretty big victory for us," said state Assemblyman John Carpenter, R-Elko, one of the leaders of the effort to rebuild the road.

Carpenter said earlier this week the pending settlement would allow the rebuilding of the South Canyon Road by hand along the Jarbidge River in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest.

He said Friday night he was prohibited from discussing any details.

"The county had to get their road back in order to agree. So you can put two and two together," Carpenter said in a telephone interview from Elko upon returning from the settlement talks in Reno.

"It's not everything we wanted, but I think it is 80 percent," he said.

Forest Service officials refused comment Friday on the nature of the agreement.

The proposed settlement was presented to U.S. Magistrate Robert McQuaid Friday in federal court in Reno, agency spokeswoman Erin O'Conner said.

It is being kept secret until it receives final approval from the Elko County Commission, the U.S. Attorney's Office, the Fish and Wildlife Service, Forest Service and Environmental Protection Agency, she said.

Carpenter said he was confident the county commission would approve the deal and expected the federal agencies would follow suit.

"With the change of administration, I just don't see any problem," Carpenter said.

To allow Elko County to rebuild the road would be a sharp reversal on the part of the Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife Service, which have argued that reconstruction of the road could push the threatened bull trout past the brink of extinction.

It also would be a change of heart for the Justice Department, which has threatened civil and criminal prosecution of Elko County officials and others who would violate environmental laws protecting the fish and the water quality of the Jarbidge River.

O'Conner would confirm only that "the representatives of the parties involved in the settlement conference have reached tentative resolution of their dispute regarding the Jarbidge South Canyon Road that they will now recommend for approval."

"The proposed terms are confidential and cannot be discussed publicly," she said Friday afternoon.

The controversy has become a rallying point for private property activists who say the federal government has gone too far in enforcing environmental laws.

Carpenter and other leaders of the effort staged demonstrations last July 4 reopening part of the road the Forest Service had closed off to keep four-wheelers away from the river.

Last year, they paraded down Main Street with 10,000 shovels donated from allies across the country to help rebuild the road.

U.S. District Judge David Hagen ordered the government, Elko County and others into mediation last year after federal prosecutors said they were going to file a lawsuit to force protection of the fish.

The county responded with the threat of a counter suit to establish what the county maintains is its ownership of the road that washed out in 1995.

The county says it does not recognize government jurisdiction over the road because the road was there before the national forest was established in the early 1900s.

The Forest Service originally planned to rebuild the remote road. But Trout Unlimited objected and additional review persuaded agency biologists that the roadwork would accelerate soil erosion and threaten survival of the southernmost surviving population of the bull trout in North America.

Bob Vaught, supervisor of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, told a state legislative panel in Carson City on Wednesday he was optimistic an agreement would be reached.

"In our view it is fair to Elko County," he said.

Vaught won't comment further until Tuesday, O'Conner said.

Bob Williams, Nevada director for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, also was refusing to discuss the proposed settlement, his spokeswoman Randi Thompson said Friday.

Carpenter has been one of the leaders in the movement to force the Forest Service to reopen the road. He's named as one of the parties in the mediation along with Elko attorney Grant Gerber and O.Q. Chris Johnson, chairman of the Elko County Republican Party.

"We are going to gain access, and we will put the river back where it had been for 100 years (before the flood)," Carpenter told the Las Vegas Review-Journal earlier this week.