Environmental Damage / Human Presence

Environmental damage is not the same as detectable human presence. With today's sophisticated powers of observation, we can find evidence of "damaging" human presence almost anywhere. This means that we need to be able to determine when evidence of human presence is associated with unacceptable damage and when it is merely evidence that humans are part of the ecosystem.

Environmental Constituency

Policies which build barriers which separate humans from their natural environment (something I call "separation ecology") are likely to diminish the number of people who will develop strong personal connections with the natural world. This, in turn, threatens to weaken the environmental constituency which is, in a democracy, essential to environmental preservation. Still, building environmental connections is about more than political expediency. It is about enhancing human quality of life. If environmental connections are good for people, and I believe that they are, we should try to figure out how to extend those benefits to as many people as possible. It would be tragic if an overprotective environmental movement were to confine an increasing number of people to life in which their only contact with the
natural world was through Sea World-type theme parks and nature television.

US 36 Dispute Reveals OSMP Anti-people Bias

According to a recent Camera story, there are plans to construct a bikeway as part of the expansion of US 36 to 6 lanes. Included in the plans is a bikeway designed to give commuters an alternative to jamming the highways, filling the air with pollutants, and cultivating the couch potato physique. According to the article, the plan was to build the bikeway 30' (10 yards, 1 1st down) off a major freeway. Something to be encouraged, right? Not for OSMP. That would be an unacceptable encrouchment on open space. They're insisting that the bikers ride on the shoulder and breath the fumes (with a concret barrier). How many people do you think would do that. Where does human quality of life fit in their priorities?

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Boulder Daily Camera
http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2006/dec/13/boulder-leaders-transit-officials-clash/

Boulder leaders, transit officials clash
Bike path through open space one point of contention

By Ryan Morgan (Contact)Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Boulder's elected leaders and officials planning traffic improvements for U.S. 36 clashed Tuesday night over bike paths and bus lanes.

The City Council met with Rick Pilgrim, project manager for the Environmental Impact Study along the U.S. 36 corridor, which is slated for more than $1 billion in improvements. A draft of the study — which will determine what gets built on the Turnpike once it's complete — is due to federal officials at the end of the month, and Boulder's leaders aren't happy with what it says.
The first bone of contention concerns a proposed bike path for commuters along U.S. 36. Pilgrim said an initial proposal to build a separate bike path 30 feet from U.S. 36 isn't feasible because it would run through sensitive Open Space and Mountain Parks parcels and wetlands.

That leaves two options, Pilgrim said. The path could run directly adjacent to the highway, separated from traffic by a maintenance wall. If that doesn't get approved, he said, another option would be to build on-street bike lanes on South Boulder and Cherryvale roads to take bicycle commuters around the sensitive areas.

Pilgrim said a third option, to upgrade an unpaved path that currently runs alongside South Boulder and Cherryvale roads, had been taken off the table. "After looking at this long and hard, and considering all of the details, our recommendation was to set that one aside, because it's clearly inferior," he said. But Boulder's open space and City Council officials disagreed.
"I don't know why we would do something different than take advantage of an already-existing bike path," said Mike Patton, the city's open space director. "From that standpoint, there would be very little environmental impact."

Mayor Mark Ruzzin said bicycle commuters would much prefer their own path than rubbing shoulders with traffic on a busy street like South Boulder Road. And he criticized Pilgrim and other planning officials for waiting to reveal the new options. "It leaves a bad taste in our mouths," Ruzzin said.

Council members said they're also unhappy that U.S. 36 planners are considering ending designated Bus Rapid Transit lanes at Cherryvale Road rather than at the Table Mesa Drive bus stop. City officials said the bus service depends on having its own dedicated lanes, and they worry about creating a bottleneck before the buses reach their destination.
"Clearly the idea is that we could have a very nice BRT system that works great, as long as you want to get off at Cherryvale," Ruzzin said.

Pilgrim said adding dedicated "flyover" lanes just for the buses would significantly increase the project's cost, and would only improve their travel time by 11/2 minutes, at most.
"We've not found that there is a problem with the bus leaving that lane and weaving over a lane and getting over," he said.

Equitable Access Problems

Fern Meadow, the Devil's Thumb Homeowners Associations virtually private City of Boulder Open Space land.

Perhaps more than anything else Boulder’s soul is embodied in its trademark Flatirons and its much loved and always busy Chautauqua Hill. In the 1970s, recognizing continuing population pressures, Boulder residents approved a tax to fund the acquisition of the rest of Boulder’s mountain backdrop and its other "Chautauqua Hills." While this effort has been a great success there are areas in which a muddled coincidence of a "preservation over visitation" environmental philosophy and the selfish desires of neighbors to limit public access to taxpayer-funded backyard playground has effectively subverted original goals of the program.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the effectively private, neighborhood-only trails in Devil’s Thumb and Eldorado Springs area. The Fern Meadow trail, for example, (south of Stoney Hill Drive) is especially problematic. This unmapped trail (which is actively being maintained with water bars) follows an old road bed and offers, for South Boulder, a view comparable the Chautauqua Hill. For years access to this area was in dispute. The Devils Thumb Homeowners Association put up fences and gates informing the public that this area of the public Open Space was only for the Homeowners Association members and guests. Alternative access points required cumbersome, boring approaches along completely unmapped and unmarked social trails.

My understanding was that the agreement between the Homeowners Association and the City resolving these access issues included the understanding that this access point (Fern Creek at Stoney Hill Drive) would either be open to the general public or closed to all. That, unfortunately, is not what has happened. There is still a gate with a sign stating that the area is private and referring visitors to a much inferior trailhead.


The gate and sign on Stoney Hill Drive.

A similar problem exists in the Eldorado Springs area where two maintained trails lead north and south in the valleys west of the Dakota Ridge. Public access to both of these is blocked by "no trespassing" or "no open space access" signs.

Research to "finds out" vs. research to "prove"

With respect to OSMP research (and most other public policy research) there is a great deal of interest in research which "proves" that what people want to believe is actually true. There is much less interest in real research -- the kind that "find outs" whether one might, in fact, be wrong. If you are serious about protecting the environment and human quality of life then we must resist the tendency to focus only on reaserch which "proves" and embrace reaserch which "finds out." We must also resist the common belief that, since there are always irreducible uncertainties it must be true that I was right all along.

Eldorado Mountain / Dowdy Draw

OSMP Board of Trustees Meeting Comments October 11, 2006
Guy Burgess

NOTE: After these comments were made, OSMP decided to retain the under the powerline alighnment and continue to deny access to the Flatirons Vista.

As someone who has made something of a career in environmental dispute resolution, I'd like to start by complimenting the Department on the process used to secure public input on the Eldorado Trail Study Area. Still, the test of environmental decision-making is not the nature public input process but the decisions that are ultimately made.

At first blush, you seem to have crafted a workable compromise. From what I've been able to gather everyone seems equally disappointed. Still, when I look at the plan I am struck by its missed opportunities.

It seems to me that the Department's mission is pretty clear. You need to find ways of equitably maximizing visitor opportunities while maintaining a high degree of environmental protection.

Key to success of such a balancing act is the active pursuit of the least restrictive way of achieving each environmental objective. Also key is the avoidance of policies which do not balance the costs of visitor restrictions with comparable environmental benefits.

Here I feel that the current plan has serious shortcomings. I'll offer a couple of examples.

First, current trail alignments strongly discourage or outright deny visitor access to the grand vistas off the north rim of the Rocky Flats Mesa (both east and west of Doudy Draw). I can't figure out how the environmental benefits these alignments could possibly justify their costs, in terms of lost visitor opportunities. Surely the Department could push the ground nesting bird protection area back 100 feet and allow visitors to enjoy the view from the rim. Similarly, it could push the least part of the Spring Brook trail out the rim.

This is the big, Flatirons vista / Dowdy Draw overlook--the best view on the whole hike. Surely they could have found an environmentally responsible way to let people see the view away from the power lines!

Flatirons Vista trail is really the access road for the power line. OSMP seems to think that, if it good enough for Public Service trucks, it's good enough for OSMP visitors.

By the same token I can't figure out what environmental benefit justifies funneling all those visitors under the high-tension power lines. Would you like to listen to the wind whistling through these power lines? Or, or would you like to listen to the birds?

There are lots of other examples:

• Why are equestrians arbitrarily excluded from a program to evaluate the environmental impacts of off-trail visitation?


• Why doesn't the plan take advantage of the opportunity to offer visitors a chance to literally walk along a beach visited by dinosaurs?

Correcting these oversights would be pretty simple. All it would take is the political will to move a few lines on the map and make corresponding changes to the text. The failure to make such changes would say a lot about how much you care about the quality visitor experiences.

Remember, OSMP visitors are your natural allies. How sustainable do you think the environmental movement will be if you treat them like enemies?

See Final OSMP Plan