Preservationists Blast Hells Canyon Boating Bill Say Gop Proposal Would Turn Snake Enclave Into Yuppie Playground For Jet Boats And Other Noisy Activities

Jet boaters and river floaters clashed at a Senate hearing Thursday over a Republican-backed bill to guarantee motorized boats daily access to the Snake River through Hells Canyon.

“If this bill passes, Congress might as well go ahead and rename the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act the Wild and Sonic Rivers Act,” said Jack Sterne, a lawyer for the Hells Canyon Preservation Council of Sisters, Ore.

The Forest Service has developed a river management plan that would for the first time restrict jet boat access to North America’s deepest river gorge, 1.5 miles, along the Oregon-Idaho border beginning in 1998.

Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, Reps. Helen Chenoweth, R-Idaho, and Rep. Bob Smith, R-Ore., are among those pushing legislation that would block the plan, which would prohibit jet boat use Mondays through Wednesdays during certain times of the year.

“The Hells Canyon National Recreation Area was not created to become the playground of a few financially capable yuppies,” said Richard Sherwin of Clarkston, Wash., vice president of the projet boat Hells Canyon Alliance.

“There is a rapidly growing trend of preserving access to all natural resources in this nation for those who are considered to be engaged in those politically correct recreational activities,” he told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources subcommittee on national parks, historic preservation and recreation.

Forest Service officials told a House panel earlier this year that the Clinton administration opposes the bill and would rather move forward with the agency plan that was developed with public comment.

Since 1975, increasing use “has changed the river canyon setting from the primitive or semiprimitive experience normally associated with wild and scenic river designations,” he said.

Craig said the law designating the recreation area in 1975 made it clear motorized boating was to continue on the river stretch.

“The Forest Service is playing a game they ought not to be playing if they are required to live by the law,” Craig said Thursday.

The first paying passengers passed through the canyon in 1865 on a motorized craft and ranchers have hauled supplies through the river since the early 1900s, Craig said.

He especially objects to the latest Forest Service plan to “close the heart of the canyon” to motorized use during the summer months.

“This is like closing the doors of J.C. Penney’s stores for the month before Christmas,” said Darrell Bentz, owner of Intermountain Excursions and Bentz Boats, a jet boat operation in Lewiston.

“The tour businesses make their money when the tourists are here,” he said.

Sterne said motorized boaters are the only ones who have been allowed to continue to use the river unrestricted while nonmotorized users have been forced to live with strict regulations and severely limited access to the river.

Craig’s bill would “set a precedent that prohibits river management agencies from protecting quiet solitude,” he said.

The Forest Service proposal would prohibit motorized use for a maximum of 21 days a year. About two-thirds of the wild section of the river would be restricted three days of the week - Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday - during six or seven weeks of the year and only every other week during the primary use season from Memorial Day to Labor Day, he said.