In This Issue:

Draft Colorado River Plan Now Scheduled for Fall, 2003 Public Release

AZ Wilderness Coalition Proposes Sixty Percent Reduction in Outfitted River Trip Opportunities

Arizona's Leading Newspaper Calls on President Bush and Congress to Resolve Grand Canyon River Controversy
July 23, 2003

Dear Grand Canyon River News Subscriber:
Draft Colorado River Plan Now Scheduled for Fall, 2003 Public Release

The National Park Service has targeted fall, 2003 for the release of the Colorado River Management Plan draft environmental impact statement. Publication of the DEIS, which will present the full range of river management alternatives under consideration, will be followed by an official public review and comment period.

After the DEIS is released, the NPS is expected to conduct a series of public meetings designed to facilitate citizen feedback. This comment phase should be completed by year's end.

The new river plan will govern access to and activities along the Colorado River for the next ten to fifteen years. Under the terms of a lawsuit settlement agreement, the NPS must implement the new plan by December 31, 2004.

Will the NPS identify a preferred alternative?

Normally, a DEIS contains a "preferred alternative" that indicates what the agency believes is the most sensible management plan given the facts at hand. While identifying a preferred alternative is the traditional and most often used approach, technically, doing so is not required.

Grand Canyon National Park officials have so far refused to commit to identifying a preferred alternative when they release the Colorado River plan DEIS. Why is this?

If the NPS fails to identify a preferred alternative in the DEIS, at no time until after the new plan is implemented will the public have any indication of, nor will it have the opportunity to comment directly on, how the NPS is choosing to manage the Colorado River for years to come.


Arizona Wilderness Coalition Proposes Sixty Percent Reduction in Professionally-Outfitted Grand Canyon River Trip Opportunities

Recently, a group of environmental organizations called the Arizona Wilderness Coalition proposed that professionally-outfitted Grand Canyon river trip opportunities be reduced by as much as sixty percent. For years, roughly 19,000 citizens have enjoyed an outfitted river trip each year. The Arizona Wilderness Coalition proposal would reduce this to just 7,688 full canyon passengers.

The plan imposes such a dramatic reduction in outfitted participants because its central feature is a ban on low-powered environmentally-friendly four-stroke outboard motors. The Grand Canyon River Outfitters Association opposes this extreme proposal.

The Arizona Wilderness Coalition claims that its plan would decrease on-river interaction between river trips. But according to the NPS Grand Canyon River Trip Simulator computer modeling program, this is not the case.

The computer model shows that on-river interaction between river trips would remain the same or increase, despite the huge reduction in both river trips and individual river trip opportunities for the professionally-outfitted public.

For more information about the Grand Canyon wilderness/motors issue, please click here.


Arizona's Leading Newspaper Calls on President Bush and Congress to Resolve Grand Canyon River Controversy

Arizona's leading daily newspaper, the Arizona Republic, has again editorialized strongly in support of environmentally-responsible motorized Grand Canyon river trips, because this use is consistent with resource protection, visitor experience quality, and a reasonable level of public access.

The Arizona Republic wrote:

"The Grand Canyon is a treasured resource where the trick is to balance the wilderness experience and resource protection with access. The park belongs to everyone. It's not an elitist playground for only the strong, the rugged, the fit, the young.

Motorized outfitters provide access to one of the world's spectacular masterpieces. If motors are taken off the river, that access will be denied to many.

It's time for Congress to act."

The full text of both Arizona Republic editorials can be found here.


The Grand Canyon's future is yours to make!

The Grand Canyon River Outfitters Association encourages you to remain involved in the CRMP revision process. For more information, please visit www.gcroa.org. National Park Service information about the process can be found here. To place yourself on the park's official CRMP newsletter mailing list, e-mail a request with your name and both your e-mail and physical addresses to grca_crmp@nps.gov.
 
The Grand Canyon River News Service is provided by the Grand Canyon River Outfitters Association, a non-profit trade group that represents the Grand Canyon's professional river outfitters and the public we serve. We will not share your e-mail address with anyone for any purpose, period. For more information, please visit www.gcroa.org
  

Copyright © 2003 by the Grand Canyon River Outfitters Association. All rights reserved.