©The East Oregonian
Byline: Kathy Aney

Five Eastern Oregon counties, including Wallowa County, will be acting as a single cooperating agency in the ongoing negotiations with the Wallowa-Whitman Forest Service over road closures.

Wallowa County Commissioner Mike Hayward - who spoke via conference call with the Forest Service and commissioners from other counties on Friday, April 11 - reports that the five participating counties are Wallowa, Union, Baker, Umatilla and Grant.

The counties' position is that of "experts in social and economic impact," Hayward said. They also will need to act in concert in order to make sure counties are properly represented.

"The Forest Service has a team working on this (travel management plan) every day. We certainly can't be there every day," he said.

The counties are planning to hire a consultant with experience in negotiations with the Forest Service to serve as their representative.

"We did this (hired a consultant) when were involved with forest plan revision and it worked very well," Hayward explained. He believes that the Forest Service would prefer this, as well, since it will more likely result in continuity.

Union County Commissioner Colleen MacLeod is currently interviewing potential consultants.

The final decision-making group will be working with multiple plans.

Wallowa County has already submitted its initial alternative travel management plan and supplied the Forest Service planning team with its maps and matrix, along with public comment collected at the March 25 meeting in Enterprise.

"The Forest Service is using our maps and matrix and putting our 'alternative plan' into their own form and language," Hayward said.

Comments received at the public meeting resulted in the addition of several new "Wallowa County principles," Hayward said.

"One of the things the forest service has been saying is that they don't have the money to maintain all of these roads," he said. "So, one of the new principles we have defined is that the budget will not dictate which roads are left open or which roads stay open. Partnerships will be encouraged to address road maintenance, agreements with the private sector, other public entities as well as grant funds will be included in efforts to accomplish road maintenance."

The mapping of the Chesnimnus area remains the final detail to be cleared up for Wallowa County.

"It was unfortunate that we ended up with a fairly significant hole in our maps where we were snowed out at Chesnimnus," Hayward said. "(However) Forest Supervisor Steve Ellis has assured us we can add those, but we need to do those by the first of June."