WinterSports2002.com, Wednesday, April 03, 2002
Rings pave the way for ORV bunch
By Diane Urbani
Deseret News staff writer
Lighted Olympic rings may have been removed from the Wasatch foothill they once illuminated, but their installation has brought another threat.
Four-wheelers are now taking advantage of a road the Salt Lake Organizing Committee widened in November and are using a gate below the Avenues hillside to gain access to city watershed property.
Together, the gate and widened road have created an "explosion," says Avenues resident and Save Our Canyons member Bill Thompson — a kind of attack that jeopardizes the foothills' future more than the Olympic rings and 1,850 light-bearing stakes did.
"This whole south face is going to be an ORV (off-road vehicle) park if the city doesn't block access," he says. Thompson has been calling city officials for months, urging them to block off the road he says SLOC widened last November. As city watershed property, the land is off-limits to four-wheelers. But far below the hillside is a subdivision where homes have yet to be built, and a security gate is wide open.
"It's been broken since June," Thompson says of the gate, and since then off-roaders have been charging through it, headed for the ridgeline.
"There's nothing the city can do to force the developer to lock that gate," says Salt Lake City environmental coordinator Lisa Romney. But "the police have been put on notice that there's a great need" to apprehend illegal four-wheelers.
When notified of the gate problem, Lewis, Wolcutt & Dornbush real estate agent Babs De Lay, who shows the property to prospective buyers, said she wasn't aware of any malfunction. "To my knowledge, it's not broken . . . we've been up there on a weekly basis . . . we have somebody go up there and check on it." The only calls she has received from the city have been about watershed workers needing access, De Lay said.
Thompson says neighbors in nearby Perry's Hollow call police often about off-roaders on the hillside — to no avail — and that his own complaints to the city about the gate have produced too little action. He and Save Our Canyons president Gale Dick wanted SLOC to require the post-rings "remediation" of the hillside to include blockage of the access road.
Impossible, said SLOC venue compliance manager Mary Barraco: She says there's no way to transport boulders big enough to effectively obstruct passage.
Now Dick says foothill ORV traffic "has turned into an even bigger problem than we expected. It's a byproduct" of the rings-placement process.
Brtried," said Barraco.
In October, when the Salt Lake City Council voted 4-3 to allow SLOC to raise the rings onto the hillside, Mayor Rocky Anderson joined Olympic organizers in saying that the foothills would be in better shape, with reseeding, than they were pre-rings. Now Thompson gives credit to SLOC for "making an effort to repair the damage they did. But that effort won't be successful unless ORV access is blocked."
"I would do anything to keep people off of this hillside," says Vicki Bennett, senior environmental adviser for Salt Lake City. But "we can't fence the foothills." She adds that she's asked the developer whose security gate is open to keep it closed and locked, and "we've met with some resistance." When construction of homes starts, Bennett says, she expects the gate will be repaired to keep equipment secure. She doesn't know when that will be, however.
Signs are being posted in the area, adds Romney, to warn would-be four-wheelers that driving on the foothill land, be it public or private, is illegal. "The city is working very hard" to address the ORV problem, Romney says.
The city did require SLOC to post a $10,000 bond, in case the work was not done correctly, Romney said. But "it becomes a whole other issue if SLOC's work is degraded by four-wheelers."
Thompson agrees that ORV damage is the city's problem, not SLOC's. But the city doesn't have the money for 24-hour enforcement, Bennett said.
E-MAIL: durbani@desnews.com
© 2002 Deseret News Publishing Company