The following editorial appeared in the Denver Post on August 26, 2001.
Sunday, August 26, 2001 - The Taj Mahal outhouse the U.S. Forest Service built near the Maroon Bells symbolizes why Congress should suspend the recreation fee demonstration program.
Placed at the parking lot's edge, the huge privy is the first thing Maroon Bells visitors now see, before the Bells themselves. And more buildings may be on the way, since the Forest Service is also mulling a bus shelter and visitors center at the wilderness entrance.
The Forest Service says the $1.6 million privy wasn't paid for by the recreation fee program. Instead, the fake rock structure was built using funds Congress earmarks for capital construction. But that's the problem. Congress gives the agency money to erect expensive edifices, but won't provide a few nickels to fix trails and picnic tables. Instead, Congress expects people who recreate on public lands to pay special fees to cover basic operations.
The Maroon Bells are one such fee area. Others in Colorado include Vail Pass trails, Yankee Boy Basin, Mount Evans and Fish Creek Lake.
The fee system on public lands has run amok.
When the Clinton administration proposed the fee program in 1996, it included several promises: Fees would be charged at only a few places; the money would fund long-neglected maintenance; 80 percent of the cash would be returned to the sites where it was collected; and in two years Congress would objectively evaluate the program. Based on those promises, many people, including this newspaper, reluctantly supported the fee demonstration project.
But Congress and the Forest Service broke all those promises. The program repeatedly has been extended without meaningful public comment. It now covers several hundred sites nationwide. If the House version of the Forest Service budget becomes law, there will be no limits on how many places BLM and the Forest Service can charge fees - in theory, Americans might have to start paying fees at all trails and picnic areas.
Instead of using the money for pressing needs, the agencies blew millions of dollars on administration and fee-collection stations.
Visitors who refuse to pay the fees are told by armed rangers that they face a $100 fine. Yet the Forest Service absurdly claims that because people pay the fees, the public supports the program.
The Senate even may strike the requirement that the money be spent where it's collected.
Citizens ask: Why do the feds charge us a fee to enter our own tax-supported public lands, when the Forest Service has the bucks to squander on boondoggles like the Maroon Bells privy?
The answer lies in the crazy way Congress allocates money to BLM and the Forest Service. Until Congress infuses sanity into the agencies' budgets, it should suspend the fee demonstration project. And until it straightens out its own spending priorities, the Forest Service should stop pleading poverty.
And without fees.