This is the week that Cape Point closed ?temporarily? to off-road vehicle and pedestrian access because a pair of piping plovers is courting in an area of the beach between Ramp 44 and the Point.
The Park Service?s ORV plan requires a mandatory buffer of 75 meters around the birds, which has cut off access.
There have been two piping plover nests at Cape Point so far this year, and one has been lost already, perhaps in last week?s especially high lunar tide. One nest remains.
Last week, about 20 groups of folks in ORVs were stranded at the Point because the high lunar tide cut off the beach at the ?narrows.? With the natural resource protection in place, the folks had no passage off on dry sand.
The Park Service declined to allow them to pass through the resource closure. One man who was stranded with his wife and two young children tells his story in a guest column on the Commentary and Letters Page.
Here is a roundup of a few other items of note from the week:
BULLETIN ON JONES BILL
Just as I was finishing this blog, Joshua Bowlen, legislative aide to U.S. Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., called to confirm that HR 4094 will get a hearing before the House Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands on Friday, April 27, at 9 a.m.
HR 4094, introduced by Jones in late February, is called The Preserving Access to the Cape Hatteras National Seashore Recreational Area Act and would return management of seashore resources to the Interim Protected Species Management Strategy and Environmental Assessment, issued by the Park Service on June 13, 2007.
In a media release, Jones said the bill would ?restore reasonable pedestrian and motorized access? to the seashore.
Bowlen said the bill be discussed with several other federal land access issues.
The chairman of the committee, he said, is U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah.
Bowlen said a list of the witnesses that will be called to testify has not been finalized yet.
The hearing will be streamed live on the U.S. House of Representatives website, and Island Free Press will follow up with a more complete story next week.
FERRY TOLLS
The Hyde County Department of Public Information today had some bad news for Ocracokers and visitors to that island about increasing ferry tolls — or taxes, as they are being called.
The legislature had ordered the N.C. Department of Transportation Ferry Division to raise more money on the state?s tolled ferry routes.
The governor tried to head off the increases with an executive order prohibiting the increases for at least a year.
Lobbyists from McClees Consulting, hired by Hyde and several other counties to head off the tolls reported today that the state?s Attorney General sided with the legislature on the ferry tax issue during his report to the N.C. Joint Legislative Transportation Oversight Committee.
The Chief Deputy Attorney General wrote the following:
“It is, therefore, our opinion that a direct conflict between a law enacted by the General Assembly and an Executive Order issued by the Governor must be resolved through implementation of the law.”
Now, ferry riders must prepare to pay the increased tolls, which will cost a family $104 for a round-trip ticket on the Swan Quarter ferry. It?s just $30 now. In Pamlico and Beaufort County, commuters are facing a tax of $100 per week just to get to work.
“It isn’t good,” said Hyde County Manager Mazie Smith. With the tolls initially set to increase April 1, she worried the costs could soon become a reality and advised Hyde department heads to budget accordingly.
The county manager also pointed out residents on Hyde mainland who don’t even ride the ferry will still have to pay the price for the ferry tax. Smith estimated the increased tolls will cost the county of Hyde an extra $60,000 in travel costs for government business. These extra costs will have a direct bearing on county jobs, programs and services.
Hyde is urging its citizens to get ready to march in Raleigh.
?We invite you to stand with us in Raleigh on the opening day of the Legislature on Wednesday, May 16,? a media release noted.
Island Free Press will have a more complete article on Monday. More information is available on the county website, www.hydecountync.gov.
CHANGING SIGNS
The Park Service has decided to change its signs in some vehicle-free areas that include pre-nesting resource closures, such as the Hook at Cape Point.
The signs caused quite a stir when they went up last month with coverage in print, online, and broadcast media and plenty of discussion in the social media and blogs. (Click here to see my March 23 blog titled ?Walking in Water.?)
Under the new ORV plan, pedestrian access is allowed along the shoreline in vehicle-free areas until shorebird breeding activity is observed.
However, some folks thought that the Park Service took its new rules just a bit too far.
?Leave no footprints behind,? the signs advise. ?Walk in the water where footprints wash away.?
In other words, stay in the ocean if you want to take a walk.
U.S. Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., was among those who thought the signs were over the top.
In a letter to seashore superintendent Mike Murray, Jones said that ?the signs falsely convey a level of restricted pedestrian access that goes beyond park laws and regulations.? And he asks Murray to replace the signs.
Jones? office reported this week that Murray replied earlier this month, and the signs will be changed.
The new signs will read, ?Walk near water?s edge. Stay below high tide line.?
LAWSUITS
This is the week that the federal government was to respond to a lawsuit filed on Feb. 9 by the Cape Hatteras Access Preservation Alliance, seeking to overturn the Park Service?s new ORV plan and final rule.
CHAPA filed the suit in federal court in the District of Columbia against the Department of Interior, the National Park Service, and the Cape Hatteras National Seashore. It asked that the Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar and his folks go back to the drawing board and come up with a plan that allows more reasonable access.
As of mid-afternoon, no response had appeared on PACER, the federal court website.
David Scarborough, a spokesman for the Outer Banks Preservation Association, said he spoke yesterday with CHAPA?s Washington-based lawyer, who also expected either a response or a request for an extension by today.
We?ll check back with PACER the first of the week.
And for those who are wondering what is happening with the lawsuit that environmental groups filed to stop the plan to replace the Bonner Bridge with a new span parallel to the current one, the answer is ?not much of anything.?
Defenders of Wildlife, National Audubon Society, and the National Parks Conservation Association, represented by the Southern Environmental Law Center, filed the lawsuit last July against the Federal Highway Administration and the N.C. Department of Transportation.
A check of the PACER federal court website shows mostly procedural filings since then.
Most of the filings this year have concerned the administrative record of the decision to build the short bridge, which is apparently a gazillion megabytes. The plaintiffs, the defendants, and the courts have gone back and forth on how physically this information will be put in the public record of the case.
When DOT produced the administrative record, the plaintiffs claimed that it lacked key documents.
It will likely be months before this lawsuit moves forward in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina in New Bern.
THE RUMOR MILL
A friend told me this week that information is popping up on some blogs about the bar codes on the new ORV permits the Park Service is issuing for beach driving.
The story is supposedly that the Park Service has bar-code scanners at every ramp and can tell when every permit holder goes onto and off the beach.
Absolutely not true, says Park Service chief ranger Paul Stevens.
The permits were designed with a bar code on them, he says, and he supposes that if the park had the money for the technology, rangers in the field could have scanners to swipe the code and come up with the information on the vehicle. But, for now, he says, they will have to do it the old-fashioned way ? calling in the permit number.
What some folks assume to be the bar code scanners may be cameras that Stevens says the Park Service has at some of the ramps. They have been there for several years.
