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Snake River in any place or at any time for any reason. This disregards reasons that 

 it might be desirable to do so, including: (a) To accommodate the needs and desired 

 recreation experience of nonmotorized recreationists; (b) for safety reasons, for 

 example, if high sediment loads in the river resultant from landslides or high water 

 flows would make motorized use hazardous; (c) if jet boats were found to be 

 impacting a particular species of wildlife such as nesting bald eagles or spawning 

 salmon. 



2) The bill would require the Forest Service to disregard reality in stating that 

 "...concurrent use of the river. ..by motorized and nonmotorized rivercraft shall not 

 be considered to be a conflict. " It is a conflict as the Forest Service research and 

 surveys have shown. 



3) The bill requires that jet boat use levels that have built up in the absence of 

 legally-required controls be locked in with its mandate that "use of commercial and 

 private motorized and nonmotorized rivercraft shall be allowed to continue 

 throughout each year at levels that are not less than those occurring in an average of 

 the three calendar years preceding the date of enactment of this subsection,..." This 

 disallows any opportunity to fashion future launch levels for motorized craft to 

 address specific considerations for river management. For example, if the Forest 

 Service found that certain levels of jet boat use was impacting beaches by erosion 

 caused from their wakes, or was impacting the experience of aii recreationists, 

 motorized and nonmotorized, the levels could not be adjusted down. 



4) The maintaining of "daily and seasonal use patterns similar to those experienced 

 in those years..." (the average of the three calendar years preceding the date of 

 enactment of this subsection) could mean more than 100 jet boats on the river at 

 one time during summer weekends, according to Forest Service use monitoring. 

 The overall impacts to the river from such numbers of jet boats is not known 

 because these levels have only occurred over the past five years. In particular, this 

 many jet boats on the river at one time could pose very serious safety hazards to 

 kayakers, swimmers, and floaters as well as other jet boaters. The relatively narrow 

 navigating space of this river could be turned into a crowded speedway. 



5) The bill represents micromanagement of federal agency planning processes. It 

 seeks to dictate in general what "appropriate use" of rivercraft on the Snake River 

 will be. In doing so, it voids eight years of Forest Service and citizen planning that 

 was spent to develop a management plan. This work includes conducting and 

 publishing two user surveys, convening a citizens task force, writing an 

 Environmental Impact Statement, and more than a dozen public meetings. 



6) The bill does not serve the public good or seek compromise. It serves only one 

 constituency; The motorized users. It plainly and simply legislates away any 

 provisions of the Forest Service river plan that they dislike. There are no 

 provisions that accommodate the needs of thousands of nonmotorized 

 recreationists, for example, stricter limits on jet boat launches, speed limits, no-wake 



Tesbmony of HCPC on River Management 



