Jet-Boat Operators Plan A Protest Blockade Proposal To Curb Jet Boats On Snake River Draws Protests, Claims That Forest Service Plan Has Hidden Clauses

Jet boaters plan a symbolic showdown on the Snake River at high noon Nov. 9 as part of an effort to refocus the debate about visiting Hells Canyon.

Organizer Perry Heinecke, president of Duckworth Boats in Clarkston, Wash., said he hopes the one-hour blockade will show private boaters how a new U.S. Forest Service plan will affect them.

Heinecke sought the advice of the Northwest River Runners Association during a Tuesday meeting in Lewiston.

That group and Hells Canyon Alliance plan to appeal a Forest Service management plan for the Snake in the Hells Canyon National Recreation Area they say is completely slanted toward rafters and kayakers.

The final on-off jet boat plan was released last month.

Heinecke argued the worst provision of the plan is not even common knowledge among jet boaters. That is a limit on the number of boats entering the area to eight on weekdays and 18 on weekends between its boundary at Cache Creek at the Oregon-Washington state line upstream to Pittsburg Landing, the beginning of the deep canyon stretch with its famous rapids.

“I think very few of the public are aware of the low number of starts from Cache Creek,” Heinecke said, accusing the Forest Service of hiding the number.

Attention had focused on banning power boats for 21 days from 21 miles of the river upstream from Pittsburg each summer.

Boat builder Darell Bentz of Lewiston said another hidden clause would allow the Forest Service to expand the plan beyond the traditional summer season from just before Memorial Day to just after Labor Day.

“Steelheaders don’t even realize it’s ever going to affect them,” Heinecke said of fall anglers. “You’ll get a lot of people real mad, real quick.”

The blockade will follow a Nov. 8 rally at the headquarters of the Wallowa Whitman National Forest at Baker, Ore.

“We’ll just jam up bumper to bumper and do whatever it takes to make a commotion in that town,” said Kathi Ballard, River Runners president.

“We have to make sure that if we call one of these that it is really supported,” Heinecke said. A small turnout would send the wrong message to the Forest Service.

The alliance also plans a bus convoy that will take representatives from Bonners Ferry to Boise to Baker to protest the Hells Canyon plan, Ballard said.

The deadline is Monday for appeals directed to Pacific Northwest Regional Forester Robert Williams in Portland.

Comments on the new plan must be sent by Nov. 12 to Williams.

Idaho’s congressional delegation has already written a joint letter asking him to reconsider.