Jetboats will be banned for 21 days each summer on a
21-mile stretch of the Snake River through Hells Canyon, according
to a Forest Service plan that’s been a decade in the
making.
Environmentalists and recreationists who
float the river between Idaho and Oregon praised the restriction as
a long-overdue first step toward returning quiet to the canyon.
Jetboaters vowed to fight it, and planned a one-hour blockade of
the canyon in November.
Sandra Mitchell,
executive director of the Hells Canyon Alliance, says jetboaters
and other motorized watercraft users acknowledge the need for some
regulation but adamantly oppose the 21-day ban. “Would you go to
Disneyland for solitude?” she asks. “The Snake is a motorized
river. Don’t go there if you don’t want to see a motorized craft.”
Ric Bailey, executive director of the Hells
Canyon Preservation Council, says those claims are all wet.
Jetboaters have no problem sharing the river with floatboaters,
says Bailey, in the same way that smokers don’t mind lighting up in
a room of nonsmokers. “We make all the
sacrifices!’
Although there will undoubtedly be
appeals, a U.S. District Court judge said the Forest Service needs
a plan in place by the summer of 1997.
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Patrick Dowd
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Through Hells and high water.
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