Snake River Landowner letter to Nebraska Environmental Trust- March 24, 2011
By frito at March 30, 2011 | 12:15 am | Print
Editor’s Note: The following is a letter sent from one of the landowners affected by the proposed Snake River Acquisition project, Dr. Cleve Trimble, to the Nebraska Environmental Trust. dated March 24, 2011
…
Mark Brohman, Executive Director
Members of the Board
Nebraska Environmental Trust
700 S. 16th St.
Lincoln, NE 68509-4913
March 24, 2011
Via e-mail
Re: NGPC grant application #11-130
Mr. Brohman:
I respectfully request that this letter be distributed to members of the NET Board in advance of the April 7, 2011 meeting that will announce grant awards. That which follows stems from the public meeting held in Valentine on March 11, 2010 and does not rehash my previous letters, each of which I request that you append herewith for reference. Attached is a letter to the editor published 10/27/10 in the Norfolk Daily News, which rounds out my prior public comments; I will be unable to attend to speak on 4/7/11.
Departure from grants purposes: Title 137, Chapter 5, Section 001.07 notes that grants should assist projects which offer greatest environmental benefits relative to costs. Section 001.08 emphasizes that they provide clear and direct environmental benefits. In reviewing the grant application, and in having heard public input and staff responses, I submit that these above requirements have not been met. It has not been shown that the environment is at risk under extant stewardship. The sole focus by NGPC has been recreational, not environmental, and NETF monies are not to be so directed. The sole testimony of potential environmental concern was by a man from Sioux City who observed that cattle sometimes defecate and urinate in the river; no plan has been submitted by NGPC to correct this alleged problem.
Nowhere in the grant application, or in subsequent commentaries, has environmental threat or adversity been sufficiently demonstrated to justify its funding, let alone the relative cost of $9,200,000. When the protection of any resource is proposed, it first must be clarified ‘who’ it is to be protected from. In this instance the intent seems to be to ‘protect’ it from those responsible for maintaining sufficient desirability that others from elsewhere suddenly distrust the very stewardship which has kept it so in the first place. Moreover, insufficient evidence has been presented by NGPC in response to concerns that their plan to introduce an unsupervised public in itself doesn’t pose a significant environmental threat.
Section 002.01 requires that projects not jeopardize the continued existence of or result in modification of critical habitat. Section 002.02 requires that the project minimizes adverse impacts and adequately addresses existing cultural resources; and results in environmental net gain. I again note that the proposed acquisition is at the headwater of the lower Snake River watershed, and that the potential for downstream impacts has not been addressed or mitigated. No evaluation of critical habitat or cultural resources on any adjacent properties has been carried out despite the fact that this corridor is ecologically contiguous. Mr. Gabelhouse told me — in response to my concern that no one from NGPC had even met with the neighbors within the corridor, much less addressed concerns about impacts or trespassing upon adjacent lands – that “fences would be erected.” He was oblivious to the terrain and the migration requirements of wildlife. Any claim that this proposal is environmentally responsible is not true because there has been no evaluation of neighboring and downstream habitats.
Section 006.01 states that a project is feasible only if sufficient funds can be made available to complete the project; and if sufficient annual revenues can be obtained to operate, maintain, and replace the project as applicable. Unless NET intends to fund this acquisition and its on-going operations in perpetuity, the budget submitted by NGPC is woefully inadequate, as is the assurance of future funding. NGPC is already legendary for not keeping up its current inventory of properties; it is relinquishing wildlife management areas as we speak; there is but a single conservation officer in all of vast Cherry County; and it is subject to the overall budgetary cuts that our state faces now and going forward. It would be a travesty to give NGPC a property now acknowledged as pristine because of private stewardship, only to have NGPC’s funding woes result in a decline similar to that which characterizes its overall portfolio. NGPC finds it convenient to blame a division within its own agency as the problem, which is petty hubris.
This week, on 3/21/11, Gabelhouse promised the fishing club in Omaha, in response to a question about NGPC’s funding problems, “don’t worry about the money, we have the money”. On that same day, NGPC announced the elimination of 59 employee positions; the closing of 2 outstate offices; and the reduction of enforcement functions of conservation officers by half. Gabelhouse’s unabashed cultivation of this special interest group again demonstrates a primary focus on recreational, not environmental, concerns. For NET to furnish funding for a conflicting objective within its own guidelines raises potentially legal questions.
The supposed ‘Partner’: The NGPC grant application emphasizes a purported alliance with the “Sportsmen’s” Club’s essential role in making the overall purchase, and in its intended granting of a conservation easement and future right of refusal. On February 18, 2011, a letter of solicitation was issued by the president of that club, asking for 200 people to come up with $50,000 apiece to make the acquisition. It is reasonable to ask: who would pay $50,000 to join 199 others on non-contiguous waters downstream from a public fishery? Moreover, the terms outlined in the lease document filed with the Cherry County Clerk, which detail events necessary to give the club standing, have never been met. And it was perhaps indicative of the club’s interest that no officer of or spokesman for the club appeared at the public meeting in Valentine. Nonetheless, in the event the club doesn’t follow through with its essential expectations – and there is no assurance whatever that it will — the grant application is profoundly affected. Any contingency to the club’s failure to perform would merit separate hearings, if not a separate, de novo grant application. How can NET even consider making an award with these unresolved issues?
Purported economic benefits: The benefits touted in the grant application are far-fetched and contrived. As you know, an earlier letter of support by the Valentine and Cherry County Economic Development Committee has been withdrawn because it was based on incomplete and misleading information.
Moreover, there are negative economic aspects which have not been considered: the proposed project would compete with landowners and ranchers whose economic diversity relies upon the offering of sporting opportunity; and the opening of a public fishery upstream from any private fishing club would diminish that club’s ability to recruit and retain members, and to remain financially sound. Both of these possibilities would have a greater negative impact on the local economy than would any positive impact associated with the limited public access proposed and required. And greater public access than proposed, especially if lacking in supervision for even a moment, could devastate the local economy.
By way of addressing this point, the Prairie Club is immediately downstream and next-door to the proposed NGPC acquisition. It is a project entering its second year of operation and has an investment in-the-ground of tens of millions of dollars. It went through 5 years of pre-development effort that included grueling public meetings and formal approvals. It provides an enormous real estate tax contribution to the county that is over 20 times what NGPC proposes to pay in lieu of current taxes. It creates jobs; provides youth scholarships; and fuels Main Street with the purchasing activity of its thousands of national and international participants. Floaters with boom boxes or a canyon fire would jeopardize the ambience it relies upon, and would compromise its opportunity for success in an economic environment that is and will be challenging for years to come. If it would fail as a result, over 50 local members who have invested over $800,000 would lose that stake, a concern not voiced at the public meeting for obvious reason. For a public agency to enter the neighborhood without an accurate map of neighboring holdings; without a plan and budget to mitigate its accompanying risk; and without conversation within the community until a scant three weeks before its anticipated award is beyond un-neighborly – it is unacceptable economic folly.
Unintended consequence: The vast majority of outdoor sporting activity throughout Cherry County, and Nebraska as a whole, takes place on private lands that are accessed by way of traditional means: the sportsman simply asks for permission which a landowner is often willing to grant when he or she knows who is on the land and is assured that they agree to the owner’s expectations. In a personal sense, over the past 25 years I have admitted hundreds of people I did not know beforehand, without any charge whatever, because they were willing to abide this tradition. Many neighbors follow a similar practice, but our inclination in the future, if the proposed transaction takes place under the approach that has unfolded, will be to advise those who ask for access to instead go to public land otherwise available. Rather than increasing sporting opportunities, this grant application could paradoxically diminish overall access.
Moreover, a prime recommendation of the SCORP plan — that NGPC build relationships with private landowners — is not being advanced. A NGPC blog site has fomented resentment toward private landowners on the Snake River. NGPC presented this plan to a fishing club in eastern Nebraska 8 months ago but has yet to even meet with resident landowners whose adjoining borders would be impacted. NGPC’s actions are not furthering the overall interests of sportsmen in Cherry County.
A seemingly predetermined process: As one of many downstream landowners whose habitat and culture would be affected, I have had difficulty entering into the process at hand. My concerns about the errancy within the grant application have been minimized and demeaned by staff. Yet sufficient response to my concerns was reflected in the NET’s February meeting’s 5 to 3 vote ‘against’ this grant application by members of the review committee. That a vote was even held would suggest that it should be respected, but Chapter 8, Section 006 was somehow reinterpreted thereafter to require 8 votes ‘against’ (that specific text seemingly applies only to the purpose of the upcoming April meeting; yet the vote at the February meeting should have eliminated this grant application from even appearing on the agenda in April). To get 8 votes ‘against’ in April to then defeat the application will be problematic because, of the 14 members, there will undoubtedly be absences and abstentions. Curiously, it would be no less unlikely if 8 ‘for’ votes were required to approve the application instead of 8 ‘against’ to reject it. The deck is stacked.
When this grant application is approved on April 7, as appears predetermined, NGPC will receive public monies to become a landowner in Cherry County before NGPC itself has held the necessary public hearings on the matter. (NGPC’s Commissioners weren’t even informed until 2 months after the fishing club’s endorsement and contribution of funds had been secured by its staff.) It will be appropriate for that hearing to take place in Cherry County because the overwhelming sentiment of its citizenry, including a formal resolution of opposition by its Commissioners, has seemingly gone unheard up to the present.
As a public process, this grant is, thus-far, a public embarrassment. Why must more follow?
Sincerely,
Cleve Trimble
Cherry County, Nebraska
402-376-1330
cc:
Gov. Dave Heineman
Sen. Deb Fischer
Sen. Chris Langemeier
Sen. Mike Flood
Atty. Gen. Jon Bruning
Commissioners, Cherry County
Eric Scott, County Atty.
Rex Amack, NGPC
Clint Miller, TCF
Mark Olson, Pres. TU #710
Kent Warnecke, Editor, NDN
Resident landowners and others
