March 1, 2019
Last January we reported that the proposed “Village at Wolf Creek” had been defeated after decades of litigation and opposition. What a surprise when this week the Forest Supervisor of the Rio Grande National Forest approved a road across our National Forest land to access 420 acres so that a Texas company can build thousands of residences and stores on 420 acres of wetlands and alpine forest on Wolf Creek Pass. What a surprise that he ignored decades of litigation and court rulings to give the industrialists what they want. These are the Trump years after all.
Back in the 1980s the piece of land that is endanger of being turned into a little city was just pure national forest land. It was wild public land surrounded by more public land with nobody thinking it was anything but high forests, meadows and wetlands, bear, lynx, martin, elk, bobcat habitat. Your land, my land. Wild and beautiful.
And the Wolf Creek Ski area nearby is also on public land. As with many ski areas, the runs and the lodge are built on national forest land leased by the ski area operator. Wolf Creek Pass is our land.
Then came a real estate developer/sports team owner/ ultra conservative billionaire from south Texas who didn’t see this as beautiful wilderness but saw the potential to urbanize it, turn it into stores and expensive condos with Chevy Suburbans parked in front of each. He saw our public land as a place for him to cash in and add to his millions and serve his fur-coat crowd. He used his lawyers to buy land elsewhere and then trade it, for the national forest land on Wolf Creek Pass, over the objection of the locals and the Forest Service… at first. (The Forest Service objected to the land exchange at first then quickly changed its tune.)
So now we have former public land in danger of becoming a sewage and pollution spewing city after the bulldozers push the wilderness into piles and scare all the wildlife away. The American dream for the Texas boy, a hot nightmare for those of us who love Southwest Colorado.
The environmental groups opposing the development were premature in declaring victory last January when the Forest Service failed to appeal a court ruling – that the Forest Service environmental analysis of the development violated at least two federal laws. Conservation groups wrongly assumed the Forest Service would honor court rulings. No such luck. It turns out the Forest Service was ignoring the court and planning their current move, to bypass the courts and approve a road to the property, knowing the Trump gang in Washington would have their backs.
Legally, this has been a roller coaster for the environmental groups that have represented wilderness, wildlife and the public for almost 30 years against the Wolf Creek Pass development. Environmental attorneys have consistently won against the developers and the Forest Service, which has been helpful to the developers and dismissive of public concerns.
The Village at Wolf Creek has two legal angles that make it particularly interesting. First, the Texans who want to build the little city obtained the property on Wolf Creek Pass by exchanging private land for US Forest Service land back in 1986. They then tried to do another land exchange to get access to their island of private property on the pass off US Hwy. 160. Because these land exchanges had to be approved by the Forest Service and involved public land, they were “federal actions” under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
Second, the US Forest Service not only approved the land exchanges and was sued for their failure to evaluate the potential environmental impacts of those land exchanges, but they then failed to look seriously at what damage would be done to the land, economy and endangered species if a little city was built on top of Wolf Creek Pass. In effect the Forest Service said that the land exchanges in themselves were not damaging to the land, a position that the courts have rejected in many similar situations.
The Forest Service claimed that the formerly Forest Service land in question was outside of their jurisdiction once it was private land and therefore they had no obligation to study the impacts of a small city at 10,300 feet. The land is right in endangered species habitat and critical migration corridors for wildlife passing between the South San Juan Wilderness Area and the Weminuche Wilderness Area.
In 2015 a federal judge ruled that indeed the Forest Service does have to evaluate the environmental impacts of the “village” of thousands of houses and condos and stores planned by the Texas developers. The court ruled that under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) the Forest Service was obligated to study the impacts of sewage, lost habitat, roads, noise, trash, mud, and too many people in what is now essentially wilderness.
The Forest Service again lost in court in 2017 when a federal judge ruled that the Forest Service could not “dodge” its responsibility to evaluate environmental impacts under various federal laws including the Endangered Species Act. “The Forest Service cannot abdicate its responsibility to protect the forest by making an attempt at an artful dodge,” the Court declared. The Forest Service seems to have ignored both of these rulings and is pushing ahead with its efforts to assist the Texans in their construction projects.
The Forest Service has long claimed that the formerly public land is now private land and that Mineral County has the only jurisdiction to evaluate impacts of development on private land in that county. The courts have rejected this claim repeatedly but the Forest Service persists in parroting this line while ignoring court rulings.
There is something going on in the background here. We know that Red McCombs sent a letter to the Rio Grande NF Supervisor last June urging him to ignore the courts and grant him a road easement so his bulldozers could start scraping the earth. There is some back channel between Red McCombs and the US Forest Service that stinks of corruption. I have no doubt that the attorneys for Rocky Mountain Wild, San Luis Valley Ecosystem Council, the San Juan Citizens Alliance who have tied this project up in successful litigation for decades will get to the bottom of it.
Clearly its time for the public interest groups to ask for a stay in the road easement decision and put a stop to this extra judicial action by the Forest Service.
Meanwhile you can help stop this ugly mess by
doing two things. First write Rio Grande Forest Supervisor Dan Dalles (1803 W. Highway 160
Monte Vista, CO 81144) and let him know your
thoughts.
Second, consider making a donation to the San Juan Citizen’s Alliance or Rocky Mountain Wild to help them fund this new round of litigation. Click on the names of the groups in the previous sentence for contact information.
To read the federal court ruling against the Forest Service click here.
Tom Ribe
