Dust Sure to Fly as Off-Roaders, Foes Battle on Anza-Borrego Use

For the circle of outdoor enthusiasts, the question is like an age-old religious riddle about the nature of man:

Are people who scoot around on dirt bikes, three- and four-wheel all-terrain vehicles and stripped-down dune buggies basically good or bad? Can they be trusted to obey park signs? Or are they speed demons who don’t care if they roar through--and destroy--environmentally sensitive areas?

Environmentalists and state park rangers say their experience tells them to expect the worst, and that’s why they are fighting a proposal to reopen limited portions of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park trails to those riding off-road vehicles.

“Our professional experience has borne out that (off-road) users cannot be trusted to stay on the designated trails,” said Don Murphy, a Riverside ranger and president of the California Park Rangers Assn. “They just don’t care about the resources.”

But off-roaders say that, except for a few bad apples, they are on the side of the angels.

Just because they like to zip around on dirt bikes or dune buggies, they say, doesn’t mean they are disrespectful of the environment and should be prevented from being let back into portions of the 462,000-acre park, most of which lies in eastern San Diego County.

“People have this general consensus that off-roaders, all they want to do is go off and jump off things and go ripping around,” said Lynn Brown, feature editor of San Diego Off-Roader Magazine.

“There’s a very large number of off-roaders, well in the majority of the off-roaders, who want to go touring,” he said. “They’re not out there to go racing, they’re out there to go to see the sights.”

Armed with their viewpoints, the two sides are prepared to lock horns starting next month over a Department of Parks and Recreation proposal to allow off-road buffs in San Diego County and elsewhere back into Anza-Borrego for recreational purposes.

Three years ago, the department angered the off-roaders by declaring the park--the largest in the continental United States--off-limits to the unlicensed dirt bikes, all-terrain vehicles and dune buggies. The ban did not govern so-called “street-legal” vehicles such as four-wheel-drive trucks, cars and motorcycles that have equipment such as turn signals, mufflers, license plates and mirrors.

The decision to ban the vehicles, hailed by park rangers and groups like the Sierra Club, came after persistent complaints that off-roaders were continually veering off of the more than the 500 miles of trails, scaring animals and making a mess of archeologically sensitive sites and environment.

“They’ll leave the trail and they’ll squirrel around, about 100 yards off the trail, and of course disrupt the plants and the trail,” said Lee Chauvet, deputy director of the state parks department’s off-highway vehicle division.

The ban, of course, didn’t set well with the off-roaders, known to be an extremely vocal group with a considerable amount of political clout. Their displeasure received notable mention during the March, 1988, confirmation hearing for Henry R. Agonia as director of the Department of Parks and Recreation.

Confirmation hearings are usually non-controversial, pleasant affairs where appointees and legislators throw verbal bouquets at each other. But Agonia’s hearing had a slightly sharper edge, as leaders of the off-roaders were sitting in the audience.

Sen. Henry J. Mello (D-Watsonville) extracted a promise from Agonia to sit down and work out a compromise to allow access to Anza-Borrego.

And when Agonia seemed to forget his promise to produce a compromise, off-roaders took a different tack and enlisted Sen. Cecil Green (D-Norwalk) to introduce legislation that essentially went around the parks director and decreed all of the Anza-Borrego trails open to off-roaders.

The bill failed to pass, but the political message was clear: Open up Anza-Borrego a little bit or we’re going to force you to open it up all the way.

Agonia and his staff scrambled and came up with a counterproposal that restricts the off-roaders to 75 miles of trails in the eastern section of the park bounded by California 78 on the south, the county dump and private property on the west, County Road 22 on the north and the Ocotillo Wells Off-Road Vehicle Park on the east.

Under the proposed scenario, groups of four to 20 would be allowed onto the trails after group leaders completed a “desert-awareness program,” which is likely to include a videotape and printed materials describing the environmental and archeological resources nearby. Each rider would sign a form agreeing to stay on the trails or else face a $250 fine.

Upon completion of the program, each rider would be issued a special one-day permit and given a map of the desert trails by a park ranger. The designated leader would be required to wear a bright orange vest supplied by the state.

Implementing the idea would require the state to hire two more people at Anza-Borrego--a ranger and an assistant. That would cost $100,000 a year, money that would not come out of public funds but from a pot of about $5 million in “green-sticker” fees from off-road users.

Chauvet said the proposal is designed to make them more sensitive to their obligations as park visitors.

“If you and I were to go down and put our name on a piece of paper and sign it saying we would abide by the rules, we’re probably going to stay on that trail,” Chauvet said. “They (park rangers) know who we are, they know when we went in and they know when we came out.

“The object is to provide a structured opportunity to visit the park,” Chauvet said. “This is not an opportunity to play, for free play with their vehicles. It is an opportunity to experience the beauty of the park.”

The department is currently collecting comments on the proposal, which will come before the state’s Off-Highway Motor Vehicle Recreation Commission, which is under the jurisdiction of the parks department. The commission will pass judgment on the plan at their Jan. 19 meeting before passing it up through the department for review by the full parks and recreation commission, at the earliest in March.

The environmentalists say they are going to dig in their heels to fight the plan. Paula M. Carrell, the Sierra Club’s lobbyist in Sacramento, said the conservation group has already warned the parks department it will ask for an environmental review of the proposal.

Such a comprehensive study will not only point up the environmental pitfalls, but it will also add another six months to the process of approving the plan, say administrators.

Carrell said she doesn’t trust the off-roaders to stay strictly on the trails in Anza-Borrego: “They weren’t allowed to play off-road before but that’s what they did.”

“When you have a relatively large area like Anza-Borrego and a very small ranger staff, they simply can’t monitor (the off-roaders). Historically, these people went off the roadways and did a lot of damage to the natural and historical resources.”

Carrell said environmentalists were particularly upset with the Anza-Borrego proposal because next door to the desert park is the 12,000-acre Ocotillo Wells State Vehicular Recreational Park. Ocotillo Wells is specifically set aside for people who want to race off of trails and throughout the desert.

She said she doubted whether a 20-minute videotape on desert awareness is going to prevent the same type of behavior in Anza-Borrego.

“I don’t know how showing someone a training film is going to miraculously make them an environmentalist,” Carrell said. “You don’t show somebody a movie and--poof!--they care.”

Brown said, however, that the fears of Carrell, her fellow environmentalists and park rangers are exaggerated.

“We have never said that there has never been an off-road vehicle to cause a problem in Anza-Borrego state park,” Brown said. “But the majority of the off-roaders who use the park are responsible, family groups that do not want to destroy the park.”

To make sure enforcement of off-roader guidelines is up to snuff, Brown said, enthusiasts have offered to use their green-sticker fees to pay for additional park rangers, more signs and a mass-mailing to explain the proposed rules.

He said off-roaders even support increase the proposed $250 fine for going off of the trails. “We were willing to have it go up as far as $1,000,” he said.

“We were willing to have them confiscate vehicles if they get caught. We were willing to lobby local judges, who would be hearing those cases in the El Cajon court, to throw the book at these people, to use every alternative they had to put the stiffest penalties and fines on these people,” Brown said.

Despite the support, Brown said that off-roaders are not totally thrilled by the parks department proposal. They object to the rule that no fewer than four riders can go out at a time--a guideline parks staff said was included as a safety precaution.

Brown also said riders are disturbed by the boundaries surrounding the 75 miles of trails. Off-roaders, for instance, will be prohibited from crossing County Road 22 to explore the World War II calcite mines, or south of California 78 to eyeball Fish Creek.

But he indicated there is a sense of compromise and that off-roaders--an estimated 250,000 strong in San Diego County alone--are happy that some move is being made to let them back into Anza-Borrego.

“The vast majority (of off-roaders) are going to comply (with the proposed rules) because they want to, because they want to enjoy what Anza-Borrego has to offer,” Brown said.

“They’re going to say, ‘Hey, if we have to ride 25 miles an hour on this side of the road and wear the orange vests the ranger wants us to, we’re going to do it.’ ”