Appalachian Trail dispute intensifies > Saddleback lawyer blasts park service

AUGUSTA — Representatives of the Saddleback Mountain Ski Area have stepped up their complaints about a National Park Service effort to protect the Appalachian Trail, charging the federal agency with wasting time and money and blocking business opportunity in western Maine.

“The Appalachian Trail Project has become a government boondoggle of the worst order,” wrote Owen Wells, a lawyer for the ski area, in calling for a congressional investigation of the park service.

“While I do not oppose government acquisition of a corridor for the Appalachian Trail, I certainly oppose the National Park Service’s clear overreaching to attempt to acquire nearly 3,000 acres of the Saddleback Ski Area’s land, seriously jeopardizing an economic base for the Rangeley area,” Wells said in a July 26 letter to Sen. William Cohen.

The acting project manager of the Appalachian National Scenic Trail said Friday that while negotiations that have gone on for years are “at a standstill,” he remained optimistic that a resolution could be reached.

“We have been negotiating for years … and we have not been successful in those negotiations,” Donald King said in a telephone interview from his office in Harpers Ferry, W.Va. “But I think it’s something we can work out an agreement on.”

The long-standing dispute has risen to a new level at a time when future funding for trail-related land acquisition is uncertain. In approaching Congress for support, Saddleback representatives maintain they are willing to take steps to safeguard the trail, as long as they are not subjected to coercion.

Saddleback has offered to donate a corridor across its land for the trail, and the general manager of the ski area, Tom McAllister, said such a move should satisfy the federal agency.

“We have always supported protecting the Appalachian Trail and providing a wilderness experience for hikers,” he said in a statement. “That’s not the issue. Moving the present trail less than 100 feet and accepting an easement across our land would accomplish that tomorrow.”

McAllister denounced park service inaction on the ski area’s proposal, saying it was designed to allow for confiscation of land extending up to a mile in each direction and prevent a future Saddleback expansion.

He accused the federal agency of violating federal law that declares the Appalachian Trail should make minimum impact on the operations of adjacent landowners.

“Instead of making investments that will create new jobs for the Rangeley Lakes region, we have been held hostage to the self-indulgence of the (National Park Service) and the Appalachian Trail Conference,” McAllister he said. “No business should have to operate under these conditions.”

Facing uncertainty affecting 25 percent of its land has hampered Saddleback’s ability to expand and clouds the Rangeley Lakes region’s potential for economic growth, he said.

“At a time when so many of our elected leaders claim to be concerned about creating jobs and bringing the federal budget under control, it is ironic that this flagrant misuse of public funds is allowed to continue,” McAllister said.

Wells said he had written to express his concerns to House Speaker Newt Gingrich and to Sens. Cohen and Olympia Snowe, adding that the Maine senators recently appealed to a Senate Appropriations subcommittee for additional funds for land acquisition.

“It is a mistake to pour more federal money into this project without a thorough investigation of why the National Park Service has failed to follow the directive of Congress, and has failed the American people in fulfilling its mandate,” Wells wrote.

In response to a request for comment, Cohen issued a statement pledging to look into the Saddleback complaints.

“The Appalachian Trail is an important natural and public resource and I support its protection,” Cohen said. “However, I agree that land acquisition must be done efficiently and without infringing upon the property rights of landowners.

“I have urged the National Park Service to act accordingly, and I have requested that the service provide me with review of their actions on this matter.”

In Harpers Ferry, King said talks broke off amid “a difference of opinion” over the value of the land the park service is seeking.

Meanwhile, he said the Saddleback easement proposal fell short of what trail protectors think is needed.

“A small strip of land is not really going to protect the scenic and natural qualities of the mountain,” King said.

The executive director of the Appalachian Trail Conference, Dave Startzell, concurred in judging the Saddleback offer unsatisfactory.

As for the pace of the federal agency’s progress, Startzell said, “I think the park service has moved as quickly as it could, given the limits of its appropriated funds.”

Startzell said Saddleback officials were not alone in feeling frustration, asserting that the ski area itself had been guilty of “foot-dragging” in revising its development plans.

“I’d like to see us get off the dime, too,” he said.