Public can comment at 7 p.m. Thursday at Fidalgo Center, 1701 22nd St.

ANACORTES — Keep those dirt and mountain bikes under 15 mph, leash your dog, and don’t try geocaching without a permit.

Matt Wallis

John Gunn runs on trail No. 102 near Little Cranberry Lake on Thursday in the Anacortes Forest Lands.
 
 These restrictions, including a ban on motorcycles on trails from November through March, are among the proposed changes to the Anacortes Community Forest Lands management plan. Others include adding a restroom at Mount Erie and some off-leash areas for dogs.

The 58-page draft was released this week, and the Anacortes Community Forest Lands Advisory Board will hear comments and discuss the proposals Thursday.

Thursday is the first of at least three chances for the public to comment on the draft, which will need to go to the city Planning Commission and then City Council before it is adopted.

Jonn Lunsford, parks and forest lands manager, said the draft is meant to encourage discussion.

“The public gets to look at it and weigh in about what they want. This is not the be-all, end-all,” he said.

The proposed changes came from a resident survey last summer and a series of public meetings in the fall, as well as staff recommendations, Lunsford said. The draft, which is expected to be updated every five years, will set the goals and management philosophy of 2,800 acres of city-owned land, including 52 miles of trails, three lakes and several wetlands. The Mount Erie area of the forest lands also overlooks two other lakes not in the city’s forest system.

More people visit the forest’s trails and Mount Erie’s cliffs for hiking, horseback, mountain or motorbike riding and climbing since 1991, when the forest’s management plan was last updated, according the draft. Since then, the city’s population has grown from 11,500 to 16,400 people.

“We’ve taken a lot out of the forest plan,” said Gary Robinson, Anacortes Parks and Recreation director. Conservation and recreational uses are being played up more than logging in the proposal, he said.

Other proposals include:

* Capping the old city dump in the South Cranberry Lake area and turning it into an off-leash area for dogs

* Considering a section of Heart Lake for off-leash dogs

* Closing at least eight trails or sections of trails to motorcycles

* Opening two trails to horseback riders and one trail to mountain bike riders while restricting one trail to hikers and joggers only.

The proposed speed limit on mountain and motorbikes, dropping from 25 to 15 mph, arose after some users complained about out-of-control bikers and motorcyclists, Lunsford said.

Geocaching, a scavenger-hunt-like sport that involves using global positioning satellite equipment and maps to find caches hidden in urban and wildland environments, has become popular in the forest lands. But finding a cache hidden off a trail violates the forest lands’ regulation of staying on the trail.

Under the proposed plan, geocachers would need to apply for a permit to hide their caches.

The forest board is unlikely to act on the draft Thursday and likely will ask for public comment at its May 1 meeting. Written comments will be taken through April.

* Marta Murvosh can be reached at 360-416-2149 or mmurvosh@skagitvalleyherald.com.

WATER RIGHTS DEBATE STILL BOILING AFTER 10 YEARS
From:     Diane Freethy, Skagit Citizens Alliance for Rural Preservation

SKAGIT COUNTY (June 14, 2007) -- Several concerned citizens, elected officials and city/county employees gathered at the Mt. Erie fire hall last night to review the status of a long-running legal battle over Skagit River water rights.
    

Will Honea, Chief Civil Deputy for Skagit County, presented an historical summary of events evolving from a 1996 Memorandum of Agreement which set the ground rules for drafting a fifty-year plan for managing Skagit River water resources. By 2001, however, the eight parties signatory to the MOA had not reached consensus, so the Washington State Department of Ecology created an instream flow rule and subsequently imposed it on local jurisdictions in the Skagit Basin.   
  

Apparently there was no public input between 1996 and 2001 and Ecology's new rule, therefore, was very unpopular with local residents -- particularly among some parties to the MOA. In fact the County sued Ecology for failing to protect exempt-well water rights in the eastern part of the County and the City of Anacortes, along with the Swinomish and Sauk-Suiattle tribes, sued the County.
  

In 2006 the State Supreme Court ordered the County and Ecology to work out a separate agreement to settle, among other things, the exempt-well issue. That agreement includes a $750,000 US Geological Survey study to determine the impacts, if any, of groundwater withdrawals on streamflows in the area, as well as an attempt to establish the demarcation between the Samish and Skagit watersheds. The USGS team's work, which will continue into 2009, is funded by federal, state and local agencies.
    

In an effort to get the public involved in future water rights decisions, the County is in the process of forming a new citizen group. The Water Resource Advisory Committee (WRAC), comprising about 15 members, is tentatively scheduled to meet during the first week of July.
    

Meanwhile, the City of Anacortes has filed a series of lawsuits against the County, alleging breach of the 1996 MOA contract. Several of those suits have been dismissed but City Councilman Bill Turner told the audience last night that the City will continue to stand up for the six parties to the MOA who were denied a voice in the 2006 agreement between the County and Ecology. Whether the new WRAC will be able to heal old wounds remains to be seen, but it surely can't do any harm at this point.