Critics of U.S. Roadless Plan Cite Americans With Disabilities Act

Polio stole Ceasar E. Salicchi’s ability to hike and hunt some of his favorite stretches of northeast Nevada’s rugged Ruby Mountains 48 years ago.

Now, he says, the federal government wants to finish off his access to some of the West’s most beautiful places by designating tens of millions of acres of national forests as roadless areas.

“They’re putting a limit on your freedom to go where . . . you please in the good old U.S.A.,” said Salicchi, 72, who has been unable to walk without crutches or braces since 1952.

“There’s nothing like going over the O’Neil Basin into Jarbidge,” Salicchi said. “It’s a road that if you take it in the fall, you’ll never forget it.”

Wilderness access for the disabled has been controversial for as long as Congress has been setting aside federal lands where motorized vehicles are prohibited.

Lawyers working for the disabled recently upped the ante by warning the Forest Service that President Clinton’s efforts to ban new roads across large swaths of national forest could violate the Americans With Disabilities Act, which is designed to protect the rights of the disabled.

Forest Service officials say the argument is a red herring because they don’t intend to halt access on any existing roads.

And the head of a group that provides wilderness experiences for about 4,000 disabled people a year says the argument historically has lacked sincerity.

“My personal opinion is it is usually a theme that is raised by people who have less to do with the disability community than they do with the off-road-vehicle community,” said Greg Lais, executive director of Wilderness Inquiry, based in Minneapolis.

Salicchi, who is Elko County’s treasurer, raised the issue at a congressional field hearing last fall urging the Forest Service to rebuild a washed-out road to a campground near Jarbidge despite the agency’s concerns about the effect on the threatened bull trout.

He says that high-profile battle is small compared with the agency’s pending roadless initiative, which would protect 43 million acres of U.S. national forests without roads.

James Burling, a lawyer with the Pacific Legal Foundation, based in Sacramento, warned Forest Service chief Mike Dombeck that the roadless initiative could cause “irreparable harm to the interests of disabled Americans.

“I am writing you on behalf of a class of individuals who are extremely concerned that their access for recreational and other purposes into America’s national forests will be severely restricted if certain proposals to dramatically increase the amount of lands segregated as ‘roadless’ are adopted,” he told Dombeck.

Burling said he’s followed the topic since being involved in a dispute over the closure of a road in Elko County more than a decade ago. He worked at the time with an Elko lawyer, Grant Gerber, who is among the leaders of local citizens upset about the South Canyon Road near Jarbidge.

“This issue has been around, certainly, for a long time,” Burling said. “But nobody has reacted to a great degree until this more recent problem with Clinton’s announcement of a roadless policy. There are a good number of people concerned.”

Burling’s warning to Dombeck came on the heels of a similar notice in February from a Washington, D.C.-based group, Disabled Americans for Federal Forest Enjoyment.

They asked Dombeck to suspend the roadless review and conduct a disability impact analysis.

“In carrying out the president’s direction, the U.S. Forest Service is acting in total disregard of the laws designed to protect our rights to enjoy our national forests,” said Bruce Grefath, the disabled director of the organization.

Only congressionally designated wilderness areas are exempt from the ADA, Grefath said.

Signed into law in 1990, the ADA prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability. It applies to jobs, programs and services provided by state and local governments, as well as goods and services provided by private companies and in commercial facilities. It also established requirements for construction and renovations of buildings to make them accessible to the disabled.

“Mr. Dombeck, we too are hikers, hunters and anglers who have a legal right to the same opportunities afforded others. This administration has a legal obligation to make considerations and accommodations for disabled Americans to obtain the same result as others who use these special areas,” he said.

“We will not sit idly by and concede to this conscious act of keeping disabled Americans from enjoying their national forests.”

Sen. Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho) is the chairman of a Senate subcommittee overseeing the Forest Service and one of Congress’ loudest critics of the roadless initiative. He said the legal warnings under ADA are an “expanding development” in the ongoing controversy over roads.

“In the broad sense, we would never expend tax dollars that didn’t fully reflect the interests of the disabled community. That is our law. But on public lands, we don’t even give them consideration,” Craig said.

The roadless proposal is part of the Clinton administration’s “strategy to lock up the West,” he said. “It is based on an antiquated idea that only a select few, mostly those of the national preservationist organizations, can be trusted with environmental responsibility.”

Lais said his Wilderness Inquiry offers wilderness experiences across North America, from the Everglades to Alaska, for about 10,000 people a year--about 40% of them disabled, about 8% in wheelchairs.

“The purpose of our program is to use outdoor recreation to integrate people who have disabilities with people who do not have disabilities,” Lais said. “There has been much made about disability and discrimination in the outdoors, but for the most part I think it’s not correct.”

Lais conceded the disagreement “has been boiling over more lately.

“But it’s more about states’ rights and motorized vehicles than it is about [the] disabled. I think the ‘disabled community’ sees through that,” he said.

“It is an old argument, and people who are disabled are used as a political football in this case,” Lais said.

Forest Service spokesman Chris Wood said the agency already has initiated a review of any potential impact roadless protection would have on the disabled.

“This looks to me like a blatant red herring because what we are working on will not close a single road--not a single mile of road,” Wood said from agency headquarters in Washington.

The roadless initiative unveiled recently calls for banning road construction in 43 million acres of roadless federal forests. It proposes allowing local foresters to decide whether to bar activities such as logging, mining and off-road vehicle use.

Gerber, the Elko lawyer, said the government often argues in closing off access to wilderness that there are plenty of other wild places available for the disabled and non-disabled to visit in motorized vehicles.

“So my question is, why are they closing more? Why do you close places that have been available in the past?” Gerber said.

“Once somebody has been there as a handicapped person and then you close it, it isn’t like they haven’t seen it and don’t want the opportunity to go back there.”