January 30 2013 - Village At Wolf Creek EIS Update

Out of curiosity I wrote Mike Blakeman the Public Affairs Officer at the Rio Grande National Forest asking him how the Village at Wolf Creek Environmental Impact Statement was progressing.  He replied with the following, which I pass along with his blessing:

Quite frankly, we aren’t sure when the Village EIS will be completed because the proponent and the Fish and Wildlife Service are negotiating the conservation measures that will address the anticipated adverse effects to the lynx.  

Once agreed upon, these will be incorporated into a final Biological Assessment, which is part of the analysis of effects in compliance with the Endangered Species Act.  

Once this BA is finalized, the FWS uses it to complete a Biological Opinion, which we must have before making a decision about the proposed land exchange.  

What is important to understand is this process is required and in no way means any decision has been made.       

[M.B. - 1/29/2013] 

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Thank you for the information Mr. Blakeman.

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As a footnote.

In putting together this post I looked over the visits to these various blog-pages over the past few months and noticed a few have received over one hundred hits.  But, I bring this up because one blog-post sky-rocketed past the others with over 750 hits.  Needless to say, I hope the powers that be take notice; this is a crucial issue and people are paying attention.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2012
The Impact of Climate Change on Ski Resort Operations and Development: Opportunities and Threats
To support my claim in yesterday's VWC-DEIS Comment, namely, that the future bodes ill for such grand speculations as Mr. McCombs dream of bulldozing the Alberta Park Watershed into a luxury vacation village.   I submit a few highlights from the following report, but encourage you to view the entire study at: continue here

Climate Change's broader effects cause more worry

I would like to offer some more background supporting my claim that VWC-DEIS authors - and in fact, Mr. McCombs and his developer Clint Jones - need to start paying attention to the complex realities that climate disruption will be forcing on us.  

Whether you want to admit it, or deny it, we are entering a brave new world where global warming driven changes are going to overwhelm those who choose to continue ignoring it!

Destroying the integrity of the Albert Park Watershed for an unfeasible speculative scheme is not in the best interests of anyone.  

Public Interest Determination of the RGNF - Feasibility Analysis

Well friends, 

This was on my "to do list" but I've spent all day working on the hard copy of my official comments to the Rio Grande National Forest Village at Wolf Creek Access-Environmental Impact Statement team  {nine pages worth*}.   

Also my 100% freebie time for working on the VWC-DEIS is just about over, don't know when I'll get to this.

I'm hoping someone else might be able to do a critique of this document.  I'm also hoping some of this engages some of you out there.  Could be I'm crazy, but I do know if we don't use this one month - SEPTEMBER - they offer us, we may as well give up.  Your emails or US Post Office letters to the RGNF will matter, but only this September.

9/3/12

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Feasibility Analysis Public Interest Determination of the Rio Grande National Forest
Village at Wolf Creek Land Exchange Proposal

Public Interest Determination of the Rio Grande National Forest 

Based upon the above information, the proposed Wolf Creek Land Exchange may be in the public interest and merits additional evaluation. The merits include:Moves much of the private development farther away from the ski area, thus potentially reducing some of the expressed conflicts which previously surfaced as part of the environmental analysis for the easement grant. 

Development approvals would be staged and directly tied to increased development at the ski area (as specified in the 12/30/10 proposal supplement) thus potentially reducing some of the expressed conflicts relating to the scale of the private development and its affect on the character of the ski area. 

WCSA appears to support the proposed exchange, in contrast to the development plan previously approved by Mineral County. It provides for a net gain of approximately 27 acres of wetlands and 8500 linear feet of perennial stream.. It increases skiable alpine terrain. 

A grade separated interchange off Highway 160 will be built for access that will accommodate traffic volumes at full buildout, and so will not need to be revised/revisited for future phases. This location and design will be agreed to by the proponent, CDOT and the USFS (including WCSA as FS permittee) prior to the completion of the exchange analysis. 

RecommendationIt is my belief that the merits of completing an exchange must be evaluated in contrast to the grant of an easement for access to the property. The owner has a right of access under ANILCA and that LMJV has every intention of securing access to the property either through land exchange or direct easement grant. 

Based on the above analysis, and when weighed against the proponent‟s existing ANILCA access right and subsequent request for a road easement, this exchange appears in the public interest. It is my opinion that this proposal is technically feasible, and an Agreement to Initiate should be entered into. It is my belief that the tangible physical resources to be acquired, when accompanied by the intangible benefits of reduced, staged and partially relocated development, make this exchange worth moving forward on. If faced with the alternative of an easement grant, the Forest Service would receive none of these benefits. 

http://www.fs.fed.us/nepa/fs-usda-pop.php/?project=35945

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And that settles that.  ;-)

Never mind that the “above analysis” ignores several glaring contra-indicators for this development.

Such as climate change, water supply challenges, financial viability;

Challenges of an altitude of 10,160 to 10,880 feet above sea level;

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It also occurs to me that given the state of the dying forest at and around Alberta Park.  

The prognosis is that an extreme fire event will occur up there in the foreseeable future.  

Given this situation wouldn't it be good for USDA-RGNF officials to think past that imminent event and consider how important a hydrologically unmolested Alberta Park Fens-land and wetland matrix will be for the recovery process from the damages this inevitable forest fire will inflict on the Rio Grande River Basin Watershed?

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*  {List of my comments to the EIS team.} 

    •    VWC-DEIS 1.6.5 Climate and Air Quality

    •    VWC-DEIS 4.6.1.2 Indirect Consequences - Bark Beetle 

    •    VWC-DEIS 1.7.1 Health and Human Safety at a High Altitude
 

    •    VWC-DEIS 1.10 ANILCA 1980 - Road Access Rights
 

    •    VWC-DEIS Chap. 2 Page 46/47 - Employment Status

    •    VWC-DEIS 3.4 Water Rights and Use

    •    VWC-DEIS 3.1 Surface Water – Water Quality, Stream Health
 

    •    VWC-DEIS 3.7.6 Fens

    •    VWC-DEIS 4.7.1 (Wetlands) Direct and Indirect Consequences

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Dear Friends of Alberta Park and Wolf Creek, 
we have this one moment to tell the Rio Grande Forest Service and the US Department of Agriculture's powers-that-be what a destructive boondoggle this luxury Village at 10,500± elevation would be.

But, they'll never listen to you, if you don't contact them!

Here's where to do that, but you need to do it now, in September:

Village at Wolf Creek Land Exchange Proposal #35945
https://cara.ecosystem-management.org/Public/CommentInput?Project=35945 

Commenting on This Project

The Forest Service values public input. Comments received, including respondents’ names and addresses, will become part of the public record for this proposed action. Comments submitted anonymously will be accepted and considered; however, anonymous comments will not provide the agency with the ability to provide you with project updates. The Forest Service wishes to provide you with as many opportunities as possible to learn about our activities. 

Official Deadline for comments: 9/30/2012. (or is that Friday the 28th, or Monday the 1st?)

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By the way, thanks for looking in on this blogspot,  Peter

Why no Impact Study of the costs of a failed VWC venture?

{Comment sent to USDA Forest Service regarding the VWC-DEIS - 
feel free to copy and use... this, or any other post here at NO-VillageAtWolfCreek.blogspot.com}


It occurs to me that the Village At Wolf Creek Environmental Impact Study does not study the important question of the Environmental Impacts of a failed Village At Wolf Creek luxury village.

The VWC-DEIS does a good job of presenting the developer's rosy economic argument and promises.

Why no assessment to measure the extend of damages a failed project will have on the Alberta Park eco-system and the local economies?

The VWC-DEIS should be required to do a down to earth examination of the contra-indicators of this speculative real estate project.

We should be aware of what would be destroyed should the USDA Forest Service continue their efforts to facilitate this speculator's gamble that in the face of current events has every prospect of becoming a spectacular failure.
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It also occurs to me that given the state of the dying forest at and around Alberta Park.  The prognosis is that an extreme fire event will occur up there in the foreseeable future.  
{Actually, given Alberta Park's soil is moisture laden that forest fire may be many years and an exceptionally severe drought away - see Massive Forest Die Off in and around Alberta Park, Wolf Creek Colorado}  
Given this situation wouldn't it be good for USDA-RGNF officials to think past that imminent event and consider how important a hydrologically unmolested Alberta Park Fens-land and wetland matrix will be to the recovery process from the damages this inevitable forest fire will inflict on the Rio Grande River Basin Watershed.

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Dear Friends of Alberta Park and Wolf Creek, 
we have this one moment to tell the Rio Grande Forest Service and the US Department of Agriculture's powers-that-be what a destructive boondoggle this luxury Village at 10,500± elevation would be.


But, they'll never listen to you, if you don't contact them!

Here's where to do that, but you need to do it now, September:

Village at Wolf Creek Land Exchange Proposal #35945

https://cara.ecosystem-management.org/Public/CommentInput?Project=35945

Commenting on This Project
The Forest Service values public input. Comments received, including respondents’ names and addresses, will become part of the public record for this proposed action. Comments submitted anonymously will be accepted and considered; however, anonymous comments will not provide the agency with the ability to provide you with project updates. The Forest Service wishes to provide you with as many opportunities as possible to learn about our activities.

Official Deadline for comments: 9/30/2012. (or is that Friday the 28th, or Monday the 1st?)

INDEX OF AUGUST POSTS

•  
• feel free to copy and use any of the posts here at NO-VillageAtWolfCreek.blogspot.com
   

Agencies clash over mapping of ‘old-growth’ fens

Speaking of protecting the wetlands.

I think it's a good time to reprint this Durango Telegraph article from 2005.  While this article is out of date regarding the legal details - when it comes to describing the complexity of the situation up there

{... that is wetlands threats; protection; to say nothing of all the agency cooperate that's needed}

this remains as informative as they get.

I'm sharing this because it highlights a few more hurdle$ this project will have to clear.   Thus shedding more light on the impracticality of this speculator's pipedream.  

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I'm contending that the "impracticality of the VWC project" is a central issue needing official examination.

Given that: so far the USDA and the USFS and the RGNF seem to be doing everything within their vested powers to facilitate a development at Alberta Park... and in the process side stepping countless contra-indicators... contra-indicators that spell financial disaster.  Who's going to be left to clean up the mess?

We the People should be able to raise the question of the project's viability. 
Particularly since any development will cause irreparable harm to the health of the headwaters of the Rio Grande River Basin wetland; and that such destruction of a needed biological productive area needs to be justified to our youngsters.

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Wetlands and ‘old-growth’ fens heat up Wolf Creek debate

Originally posted Tuesday, May 15, 2012

It Takes A Village: Proposed land swap reopens debate about Village at Wolf Creek

I thank Missy Votel 

for permission to post the full text of this informative article

{PS.  Congratulations Missy on ten wonderful (for us) years of 

publishing Durango's beloved weekly, 

Long live the Durango Telegraph!}

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It Takes A Village - The Durango Telegraph

Volume XI, No. 34, Aug. 24, 2012

In its Draft Environmental Impact Statement, the Forest Service examined six designs for the Village at Wolf Creek, three if an access road was built to the private property and three if the land swap occurred. The “Moderate Density Development” option for the access road alternative called for 523 units, including 244 condos, 168 townhomes and almost 50,000 square feet of commercial space.

This rendering was prepared by SE Group, a mountain planning and design firm, for the U.S. Forest Service in May 2012./Photo Illustration by SE Group

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Proposed land swap reopens debate about Village at Wolf Creek

by Tracy Chamberlin
(http://www.durangotelegraph.com/index.cfm/archives/2012/august-23-2012/news/it-takes-a-village/)

Like the flashing lights at the end of intermission, the publication of an environmental study signaled the start of Act II for the Village at Wolf Creek.

Wolf Creek Needs Friends Now!

I received the following Email from
Friends of Wolf Creek this evening.

Please pass it on. Action is needed immediately,
September, 2012 is all the time we have to comment on this
Village at Wolf Creek land swap -
with it's proposed speculative luxury resort village.

Here's the deal sitting on the public land swap block:
177.8 acres of Leavell-McCombs Joint Venture's 
turned nightmare to develop land for...
204.4 acres of Prime Grade "A" US Highway Access -  
{elevation 10,160 to 10,880 feet above sea level}
Rio Grande National Forest, real estate.
Sweet deal if we allow him to swing it.

We only have September to influence the Final Environmental Impact Statement!

Here's our challenge:

Why do you think developing Albert Park should be rejected outright?

Can you explain it in a thoughtful constructive manner?

Do you have a speciality giving you insights into an aspect of this question?

County finances and liabilities,
Real estate appraisal,
Urban planning,
Recreational,
Biological,  
Economic,
Scientific,
Medical,
ANILCA
Legal, 
Fens,
etc.
?


psst...
Latitude 37°28’20”N
Longitude 106°47’00”W

Elevation approximately 10,160 to 10,880 feet above sea level.
{Air pressure and available oxygen a touch under 70% of what it is at sea level.}

Can you list thoughtful reasons for why the VWC should not be attempted?


Now is the time to explain it!

link here

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Read the DEIS here:

http://www.fs.fed.us/nepa/fs-usda-pop.php/?project=35945
             
Overview of the DEIS:
The proposed land exchange involves approximately 204 federal acres and 178 non-federal acres within the boundaries of the Rio Grande National Forest. Part of the federal land proposed for exchange would connect the private land to U.S. Highway 160, thus precluding the need for securing access across the national forest.  
 
There are three alternatives considered:
               --The NO ACTION alternative,
               --the land exchange briefly described below, and
               --The Forest Service building an (Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act)  ANILCA-compliant road over their own property to provide legal access to the inholding.
 
The Forest Service believes it is not responsible for and cannot directly analyze development on private property, but they do acknowledge that the point of the proposed land exchange is to facilitate some level of residential/commercial development on private land.  Therefore, in order to be able to analyze the indirect impacts, the Forest Service considers three versions of possible development of the so-called “Village at Wolf Creek.”
 
The range of environmental and social/economic impacts analyzed in the DEIS gives a picture of how broad and far-reaching the effects of a 10,000 or even a 5,000 person city on top of a 10,000 foot mountain pass would be.  The DEIS finds measurable impacts from the Village on
    •    endangered lynx and other wildlife
    •    wetlands
    •    water quality and loss of soil
    •    greenhouse gas emissions
    •    long-term population trends in the surrounding region
    •    public safety and emergency services
    •    local schools

According to ColoradoWild:


Talking Points
    •    a large commercial development on top of Wolf Creek Pass is still a bad idea that doesn’t fit with the character of the local area, even if the Forest Service is required to analyze it
    •    The Forest Service is right to acknowledge that construction of a big commercial development with hotels, condos, and parking garages is the point of the land exchange to begin with
    •    The effects on a critical wildlife corridor—which provides essential linkage for endangered lynx as well as mule deer, elk, and other wildlife—could be serious
    •    Wolf Creek Pass is too important environmentally to be sacrificed to the ambitions of one absentee landowner, whose plan is out of step with the surrounding communities

 
Your voice is essential!
The Forest Service and elected officials will read a lot into the number of people who show up for the open house meetings and the kinds of questions they are asking about environmental impacts and whether a land exchange like this is in the public interest.  So please do 1) show up for one of the open house meetings if you can, and 2) send a written comment to the Forest Service by
 
Public Comments are to be emailed to: 

comments-rocky-mountain-rio-grande@fs.fed.us.
Please include “Village at Wolf Creek Access Project DEIS” in the subject line of the e-mail.     

Hardcopy comments should be addressed to:
Village at Wolf Creek Access Project
c/o Tom Malecek, Divide District Ranger
Rio Grande National Forest
13308 West Highway 160
Del Norte, CO  81132
 
Stay tuned for more information at:
    •    http://friendsofwolfcreek.org
    •    http://rockymountainwild.org
    •    http://slvec.org
    •    http://sanjuancitizens.org

It would also be good to send a copy of your comments to our Congressional delegation - let them know you object to this Land Swap Deal:

Wanda_Cason@MarkUdall.Senate.gov
John_Whitney@bennet.senate.gov
Adam.Eckman@mail.house.gov
Scott.Streit@mail.house.gov

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Dear Friends of Alberta Park and Wolf Creek, 
we have this one moment to tell the Rio Grande Forest Service and the US Department of Agriculture's powers-that-be what a destructive boondoggle this luxury Village at 10,500± elevation would be.


But, they'll never listen to you, if you don't contact them!

Here's where to do that, but you need to do it now, September:

Village at Wolf Creek Land Exchange Proposal #35945

https://cara.ecosystem-management.org/Public/CommentInput?Project=35945

Commenting on This Project
The Forest Service values public input. Comments received, including respondents’ names and addresses, will become part of the public record for this proposed action. Comments submitted anonymously will be accepted and considered; however, anonymous comments will not provide the agency with the ability to provide you with project updates. The Forest Service wishes to provide you with as many opportunities as possible to learn about our activities.

Official Deadline for comments: 9/30/2012. (or is that Friday the 28th, or Monday the 1st?)

VWC - Alberta Park Needs Friends. Can you help?

Since the Rio Grande Forest Service seems mandated with being pro-development and turning a blind eye* to the cascading damages the proposed Village at Wolf Creek Speculative Development will inflict on this watershed and quite probably local governments and economy - it's up to citizens to use their one short window of opportunity - which closes at the end of September! - to convince the powers-that-be that this speculative luxury development is out of step with time and reality.

Without your help, this

US Forest Service Photo

Will become this - 

The Durango Telegraph

Except the pretty picture hides all the damage that bulldozing Albert Park will inflict.
(Please note the lower portion of this image is the existing Wolf Creek Ski Area and parking lot)

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For more on the story here are links to the recent news:

Village at Wolf Creek Land Exchange Proposal - official information

{Since the Rio Grande National Forest Service is mandated with being pro-development and turning a blind eye to the cascading damages the proposed Village at Wolf Creek Speculative Development will inflict on this watershed and local governments and economy - it's up to citizens to use their one short window of opportunity - which closes at the end of September! - to convince the powers-that-be that this speculative luxury development is out of step with time and reality.}

The “Moderate Density Development” option for the access road alternative called for 523 units, including 244 condos, 168 townhomes and almost 50,000 square feet of commercial space. This rendering was prepared by SE Group, a mountain planning and design firm, for the U.S. Forest Service in May 2012./Photo Illustration by SE Group

Courtesy of The Durango Telegraph

see their informative story at

http://www.durangotelegraph.com/index.cfm/news/it-takes-a-village/

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The following is copied off of the Rio Grande National Forest's website:
http://www.fs.fed.us/nepa/fs-usda-pop.php/?project=35945

Village at Wolf Creek Land Exchange Proposal

The Rio Grande National Forest is preparing an Environmental Impact Statement to analyze the effects of the proposed Village at Wolf Creek land exchange.

Village at Wolf Creek Access Project - Forest Service seeks comments

Contrary to assurances that I was on the mailing list I received no notice from the Rio Grande National Forest - and due to being out of state I'm out of the loop.  I'm glad my curiosity about the continued delay got the better of me this morning. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ http://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/riogrande/news-events/?cid=STELPRDB5386742 Forest Service seeks comments on Village at Wolf Creek Access Project Release Date: Aug 17, 2012    Monte Vista, Colo., August 16, 2012 –TheRio Grande National Forest (RGNF) is seeking comments on the Village at Wolf Creek Access Project Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) during a 45-day public comment period upon publication in the Federal Register on Friday, August 17.  The analysis was initiated as a result of a land exchange application submitted by Leavell-McCombs Joint Venture (LMJV).