Aspen
Two words really get the blood boiling for Robert Funkhouser and legions of recreationalists visiting the national forests: fee demo.
The federal government’s fee-demonstration program, a pilot project intended to shore up visitor services at some of the most popular natural sites in the country by charging entrance fees, has won permanent approval from Congress and scorn from many users, particularly those in communities bordering national forests.
In Colorado, visitors pay to hike on the trails around Brainard Lake and Green Mountain Reservoir, to ski or ride snowmobiles at Vail Pass and to glimpse the famed Maroon Bells near Aspen – all in the national forests.
“The problem is the public already pays taxes to these agencies, and the fee-demo program essentially represents double taxation,” said Funkhouser, president of the Western Slope No-Fee Coalition, based in Norwood.
Established by Congress in 1996 as a temporary support for a few popular but deteriorating sites, the fee-demo program now entails more than 4,300 individual fee-charging sites nationwide, with an undisclosed number of additional ones anticipated in the next year under the new Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act, which authorized fee collections for another 10 years.
“Americans are now being charged fees for such basic services as picnic tables, roads and trails and for access to vast tracts of undeveloped public lands,” Funkhouser testified before the House Committee on Resources last year.
At the Maroon Bells, where 5,000 people can visit on a typical weekend, fees are used to maintain trails, improve campsites, clean bathrooms and staff the “visitor-contact center,” said Martha Moran, a Forest Service recreation manager who oversees the site.
“That was a place that we recognized as very special, and scenery is the No. 1 value that we’re protecting there,” Moran said. Visitors in the summer are prohibited from driving to the area during the day – and instead must pay $6 to ride shuttle buses.
Tourists willing to enter the park before 9 a.m. or after 5 p.m. – when the buses aren’t running and the road isn’t restricted – pay $10 per vehicle directly to the agency.
Local forest officials absorbed withering criticism when they spent $800,000 in 2001 to build a new subterranean rest room facility – framed with fake giant red boulders and derisively dubbed the “Flintstones toilet” – and then another $1 million in 2004 to minimize its visibility.
Adding insult to injury, according to critics, is that the agency now needs fee-demo funds to keep the facility clean and filled with toilet paper.
Rick Newton, Dillon district ranger, acknowledged public criticism of the fee program but pointed to budget constraints as the culprit and suggested that an alternative would be to shut down facilities that can’t be maintained sufficiently.
“Certainly we as a society are having discussions over what is appropriate to be funded by taxpayer dollars and what places we should use fees,” he said.
In a 2003 study, the congressional General Accounting Office found that federal land agencies had collected more than $900 million from the fee-demonstration program.
The Forest Service collected $160 million in fees, but the agency could not accurately measure how much of a dent that money made in its maintenance backlog.
Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth defended the program at a time when the agency is seeing huge demands from ever-increasing numbers of visitors at its 122,000 campsites, 11,000 picnic sites and 133,000 miles of trail, among other attractions.
“The rec-fee program has been a valuable tool for allowing forest managers to meet visitor demands for enhanced visitor facilities and services,” he said.
Funkhouser, among others, disagrees.
“If we allow the agencies to charge a fee or require a permit to enter these lands, then we have given ownership of the lands to the agencies and taken it away from the people.”
Staff writer Steve Lipsher can be reached at 970-513-9495 or slipsher@denverpost.com.
