New fee stations to open at Lake Mead area

By Jean Reid Norman

Monday, Oct. 5, 2009 | 1:55 a.m.

A new fee station is being built on the road to Cottonwood Cove and Six Mile Cove on Lake Mohave.

It is one of two new fee stations the National Park Service plans to open by Memorial Day of next year, spokesman Andrew Munoz said. The other one is at Temple Bar on the Arizona side of Lake Mead.

That will leave three major entrances into the Lake Mead National Recreation Area that do not require fees: Willow Beach and Mead View in Arizona, which both have boat launches, and Overton Beach in Nevada. Plans are to build fee stations at those three locations within five years, Munoz said.

The fee stations, which are costing more than $1 million apiece, are about more than collecting revenue, Munoz said, though the four current stations together bring in $3.5 million to $4 million a year. The Cottonwood Cove station is expected to add another $500,000 a year to that.

“They are to serve as visitors centers and points of public access,” he said.

With 4,200 miles of perimeter around Lake Mead and Lake Mohave, “If a visitor doesn’t stop at our visitors center, they can come into the park and never have contact with a ranger,” Munoz said.

The fee station provides a presence for the National Park Service, allowing visitors to ask questions and giving rangers the opportunity to offer advice about safety and explain the rules of the recreation area, he said.

“Park rangers are out patrolling all the time,” Munoz said. “The entrance station has full-time staff, and in an emergency, it’s a place someone can go to get a law enforcement ranger there to assist.”

However, the new fee stations may not be staffed all the time. The Cottonwood Cove and Temple Bar stations will come equipped with an automated system to collect the fees when no one is there, Munoz said. Park officials refer to them as “iron rangers,” he said, but payments will be on an honor system. No gates will keep out those who do not wish to pay on off-hours, he said.

Past fees are paying for the new stations and have gone toward other park improvements, from extending launch ramps as the lake has receded to picking up litter, he said.

The station for Cottonwood Cove was placed a couple of miles outside the recreation area’s boundary to catch traffic before the turnoff for Six Mile Cove and Tamarus Cove, popular undeveloped areas in the recreation area, Munoz said.

Several drownings have occurred near Six Mile Cove this year, and the hope is that by getting information to visitors about water safety, officials can reduce accidents, he said.

“We’ll be watching to see how this station affects incidents that happen routinely in this area,” Munoz said.

Visitors to Cottonwood Cove on a recent weekday said the fee probably wouldn’t keep them away.

Larry Kellerman of Capistrano Beach, Calif., said he’s been coming to Cottonwood Cove since he was a child in the 1940s, and while he doesn’t like the fee, it won’t deter him.

“It’s not the money,” he said. “They just get more out of the taxpayers.”

But Tom Haren of Temecula, Calif., who was at the cove with his wife, son and two grandchildren, said the fee might get visitors to take better care of the area.

“If it makes people adjust their lifestyle, I’m for it,” he said.

Collette Carter, general manager of the Forever Resorts facility at Cottonwood Cove, agreed and saw only benefits from the station.

“I look at it as a positive thing for Cottonwood Cove,” she said. “I think it allows the Park Service to have a lot more communication with visitors coming into the park.

“I don’t think the fees are so high that it will impact anybody’s decision to come to the lake,” she said.

CORRECTION: The fee station revenue figures cited in this story were clarified. | (October 5, 2009)