*Adapted from the
Eugene Register Guard, November 15, 1997: Two Eugene surfers win case against
Forest Service user fees*
A federal magistrate in Eugene dismissed criminal charges on Friday, November 14th against two surfers, Robert Maris and Alan Smith, who refused to pay a $3 recreational access fee at the entrance to the Oregon Dunes last summer. The government had filed criminal charges against them when they refused to pay fines for failing to pay the access fee. Magistrate Thomas Coffin said the U.S. Forest Service has no legal right to collect a fee from people who are merely traveling through the Siuslaw National Forest to get somewhere else. He said such a charge amounts to a toll on a public road rather than a fee to recreate in a national forest.
"As the defendants in this case did not engage in a recreational use of any Forest Service facilities or property, they were not subject to the fee in question," Coffin said in his six-page ruling.
Maris and Smith argued that the Forest Service overstepped its authority by making people pay to use the South Jetty Road near Florence, which goes through the Siuslaw National Forest but provides vehicle access to a popular surfing area managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Smith said he "got steamed" one day in May as he approached the toll booth at the dunes' South Jetty entrance. He said he told the Forest Service person on duty he wasn't going to pay, then drove to the South Jetty. He took the license plates off and covered his vehicle identification number on the dashboard, but the Forest Service called Oregon State Police troopers, who tracked him down and yelled to him that his car would be impounded if he didn't come out of the water to accept the citation.
While Magistrate Coffin dismissed charges against the Eugene surfers, he also said the Forest Service has the right to collect fees from people who use National Forest recreational facilities, such as hiking trails and the dunes. Nevertheless, the surfers' attorney said Coffin's ruling will force the Forest Service to take a hard look at its three-year pilot: the Recreation Fee Demonstration Program, which was launched last summer. "This will set a tremendous precedent nationwide," Eugene lawyer Dan Stotter said. "This is the first case in which recreation fees have faced a court challenge."
Representative Peter DeFazio (D-Oregon) introduced
H.R.
2818 on November 5th to terminate the Recreational Fee Demonstration Program
and to establish a monthly 5% royalty on hardrock minerals extracted on public
lands. These royalties would provide funding for public lands recreation sites.
The receipts would be split between lands agencies with 20% going to the Forest
Service, 70% to the Park Service, 3% to the Fish and Wildlife Service, 6% to the
Bureau of Land Management, and 1% to the Department of Interior to offset the
costs of administering the royalty.