The Potomac Highlands Dispatch - the online newspaper

Group: ORV trails should remain open
* Conner: Forming new trail advocacy group might yield favorable results

By Kevin Spradlin
PhDispatch.com
AVILTON, April 17 -- If there is a feeling that lawmakers and policymakers downstate don't bother to consider Western Marylanders when making decisions that impact Western Maryland, that sentiment was only strengthened on Sunday night during a Citizens Rights and Heritage Group meeting at the Avilton Community Association Building.

And Senator George Edwards and Delegate Wendell Beitzel all but raised the white flag of surrender.

"We need your help," Edwards told more than 40 people, nearly all of whom oppose the plan by state Department of Natural Resources to close Off-Road Vehicle trails in Green Ridge and Savage River state forests this week.

Edwards reminded those attending the meeting that he and Beitzel are just two out of 188 votes. It's unlikely they can make force change in favor of their district without vocal support from their constituency.

"We keep trying," Edwards said. "We keep asking. We can't twist their arms to get answers."

Beitzel went one step further. He called DNR's actions part of "an assault on Western Maryland."

Jeff Conner, president of Citizens Rights and Heritage Group - the organization that staged Sunday's meeting - said it's likely that Poplar Lick Trail in Savage River State Forest likely won't be reopened. He said advocates time would be better served in fighting for the ORV trail in Green Ridge State Forest.

There seems to be little information to go on. In a meeting in Owings Mills late last month, DNR presented a detailed argument on why Poplar Lick Trail should be closed. Its argument was based largely on environmental impact from off-road vehicles (ORVs) and the impact on brooke trout. Poplar Lick Trail crosses a waterway six times.

When it came to the 16-mile loop at Green Ridge, though, the details were scarce.

Ken Kyler, a Middletown resident and a member of the Northern Virginia Trail Riders, attended both that Owings Mills meeting and Sunday's and said that it seems DNR has already made up its collective mind.

In its presentation - available here - Kyler said there was little analysis done on the Green Ridge trail. There were also no alternate recommendations, he said, which are a typical part of the package when making such a presentation.

Kyler felt that DNR officials had set up the meeting partly as a "smokescreen." In his mind, officials had "already made up their minds to close" the trail.

DNR officials state that the Green Ridge trail is not sustainable. But as Kyler noted in the position paper he prepared for Northern Virginia Trail Rideres, "the report does not state why these trails are not sustainable nor did it explore how the trails could be made sustainable."

"These trails should not be closed without exploring options and giving the trail users a chance to participate in trail mitigation."

A major problem DNR has stated about Green Ridge is the number of unauthorized trails - that is, ORV operators who choose to go off the legal, designated trail and explore new places.

Randy Beeman, of Gilmore, said there must be "hundreds" of such illegal trails in Green Ridge. Officials have talked at length about related erosion problems.

Many ORV trail advocates, including Kyler and Beeman, have advocated an increase in the $15 annual pass to access public trails.

Even if the state upped the fee to $40, "I'd be the first in line to write that check," Beeman said.

Meeting attendees were skeptical about the state's tentative proposal to offer new trails. Why build new ones, they said, when closing a perfectly good trail - and, at Green Ridge, the most popular ORV trail in the state.