NOTICE: The meeting location and times have been changed. Please read the new USFS press release below for details.
American Whitewater’s appeal of the ban on paddling the Chattooga River’s uppermost 21 miles resulted in the Chief of the USFS ordering the Sumter National Forest (SNF) to conduct a user capacity analysis to determine if any limitations on any uses are justified. The SNF is now beginning that study process with an open public meeting at which they will present their proposed study process and listen to concerns and recommendations from interested citizens.
American Whitewater will have our dedicated small team of volunteers, board members, and staff present at the meeting to formally represent our interests. Our simple objective for this meeting is to assure that the user capacity analysis be conducted in an objective and fair manner – that gives paddling equal footing with other backcountry uses. We strongly maintain that there is no existing or potential justification for the ban on paddling this stretch of Wild and Scenic River, and that the ban is illegal.
Paddlers that are interested in this issue are encouraged to attend this meeting to learn more and offer ideas and comments.
We recommend that paddlers read our appeal and the Chief’s decision prior to attending.
Read the Chief’s Decision: http://www.americanwhitewater.org/resources/repository/Chattooga.Appeal.Decision.doc
For more background and to read our appeal, view the following link: http://www.americanwhitewater.org/archive/article/1127/
News Release
USDA Forest Service
4931 Broad River Road
Columbia, South Carolina 29212-3530
For More Information:
John Cleeves
(803) 561-4058
FMS 0523
For Immediate Release
Public Meetings about Chattooga River Scheduled for October 13
Changed Location and Time
(Columbia, SC, October 4, 2005)
Two meetings kicking off a public process to reanalyze recreation use on the upper reaches of the Chattooga Wild and Scenic River will be held Thursday, October 13, at St. John’s Lutheran Church, 301 West Main Street, on SC Highway 28 in Walhalla, SC. One meeting will be begin at 4 p.m., and the second one will begin at 5:45 p.m. giving members of the public a choice about which one to attend.
Each meeting is expected to last about one hour and fifteen minutes. These meetings are the first step in an anticipated two-year process to analyze recreation use on the river above the Highway 28 Bridge, according to USDA Forest Service officials. “Involving the public in this work is the most important part of this process,” said Jerome Thomas, Supervisor of the Francis Marion and Sumter National Forests in South Carolina.
At these first meetings, the public will help the agency design the process it will use to reanalyze recreation use on upper reaches of the river. The Chattooga River is the upstate boundary between South Carolina and Georgia, and its headwaters are in North Carolina. Since the mid-1970s – when the Chattooga was designated by the U.S. Congress as a Wild and Scenic River – boating there above Highway 28 has been prohibited.
In January 2004, the Forest Service revised its plan to manage the Sumter National Forest, including the Chattooga River. That plan, signed by the agency’s Regional Forester in Atlanta, allowed floating to continue only on portions of the river downstream from the Highway 28 bridge.
Boating organization American Whitewater didn’t agree with the portion of the plan focusing on the Chattooga River, and filed an appeal with the Forest Service’s Washington Office. In April 2005, the Reviewing Officer for the Chief of the Forest Service decided to send that part of the plan back to the Sumter National Forest for additional work. While the appeal decision does not direct that the decision be changed, it does direct the forest to conduct additional analysis regarding social and natural resource impacts on the river and to involve affected and interested parties.
The Sumter National Forest will lead the analysis, working with two national forests who share the river: the Chattahoochee National Forest in Georgia, and the National Forests in North Carolina. But the public will be the key to a successful process, Thomas said. “We will conduct this work openly and collaboratively with people who care about the river,” he said. “That means the process may change once we get into it, but we’ll work through it together and in the open.”
Until the additional analysis is completed and a revised a Forest Service decision is submitted to Washington, floating on the Chattooga River is not allowed above Highway 28, per the 1985 plan.
Additional information about this process is available on the web at http://www.fs.fed.us/r8/fms.