TWENTYNINE PALMS: Marine expansion advances to off-roaders’ dismay
BY MARK MUCKENFUSS
STAFF WRITER
The Press Enterprise: August 1 2012
Off-road enthusiasts said they are neither surprised nor happy about an environmental report that recommends handing a popular off-road area over to the U.S. Marine Corps for expanded training maneuvers.
The Marine Corps’ Twentynine Palms training center expansion would shut off or curtail access to a majority of the Johnson Valley, one of Southern California’s most used off-road vehicle recreation areas.
Marine Corps officials have said the training center must grow to permit maneuvers for a mid-size invasion force, including live-fire operations. About 146,000 acres west of the base’s existing boundary would be annexed. Of that, 38,000 acres would still be available to public 10 months of the year, the report says.
The Johnson Valley off-road area, about 30 miles southeast of Barstow, covers about 188,000 acres of public land and draws an estimated 200,000 visitors annually.
Many off-road proponents question whether the expansion is necessary and say they plan to fight the proposal as it makes its way toward Congress.
“We all want the Marine Corps to be the best-trained fighting force in the world,” said Jeff Knoll, who chairs a subcommittee on the expansion for the California Motorized Recreation Council. “But we don’t believe they need to expand the base to do that.”
Knoll, 42, of Menifee, said he and other off-highway vehicle users fear losing what they see as the state’s best off-roading area.
“Johnson Valley area is the largest OHV area in the U.S., currently. In 1978 in California, we could use 50 percent of the desert for recreation. We’re down to 2 percent. If we lose the Johnson Valley area, it would be less than 1 percent.”
ROOM TO MANEUVER
Enlarging the Marine base was first proposed in 2005, and six options were examined. The option recommended in the final environmental impact statement — issued by the U.S. Navy on Friday, July 27 — takes in the Johnson Valley acreage as well as 21,000 acres on the south edge of the base.
Capt. Nicholas Mannweiler, spokesman for the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms, said the space is needed for exercises involving a Marine expeditionary battalion — an attack force of 15,000 troops. Those maneuvers require three corridors through which troops can advance, Mannweiler said. Currently, the base has two such corridors.
Some expansion opponents said they don’t understand why the Marines need more desert training territory when the war in Afghanistan is supposed to be winding down and when Gen. James Amos, Marine Corps commandant, has said the corps’ focus will shift back to its traditional role of amphibious attack.
Mannweiler said even with that shift, “the action doesn’t stop as soon as you hit the beach. Once you leave the water, what the Marine Corps has to practice is moving the entire (attack force) inland. You need lots of space to be able to do that.”
The space the Marines want is terrain that off-roaders say they are unwilling to relinquish without a fight.
Not only is Johnson Valley the nation’s largest OHV area, it is the site of a popular rock-crawling competition, King of the Hammers, which draws an international crowd of about 20,000 people each year, enthusiasts estimate. The land, under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, also is popular with rock hounds, mountain bikers and as a location for film makers.
OTHER OPPOSITION
Environmental groups also have concerns about the base expansion.
George Barnes is co-chair of the Sierra Club’s California/Nevada off-road vehicle task force. He said his organization is concerned that the planned intensive military exercises “would result in more impact than the current OHV use.”
“This is going to displace a considerable amount of off-roaders to someplace else,” Barnes said. “We don’t know where that would be, but most of the places we could imagine they would go, it would be more environmentally damaging than where they are now.”
The California Motorized Recreation Council’s Knoll says his organization estimates Johnson Valley visitors bring $71 million annually to the local economy. Other figures, he said, run as high as $191 million.
Linda Gommel has been running the Lucerne Valley Market since 1975. She says without the off-road community, she wouldn’t be able to remain in business. She expects the proposed closure in Johnson Valley will cost her between 5 percent and 10 percent of her business.
“When you’re on a razor-thin margin and in a marginal economy or a very down economy, that is a make-or-break difference,” she said.
BLEAK AND BEAUTIFUL
Others say few places offer the kinds of features found in Johnson Valley.
Amy Granat is a spokeswoman for the California Off-Road Vehicle Association. She said the military has failed to adequately assess the impact of its proposal.
Some of the races held annually in the valley have been going on for more than 50 years and should be considered historical assets, Granat said. That, and issues affecting local residents, are not sufficiently addressed in the environmental impact statement, she said.
Granat said her organization will file protests on those issues during the 30-day period that started last week when the statement was released. After those 30 days, a record of decision is filed, then evaluated by the Environmental Protection Agency. Congress ultimately will decide whether to approve the expansion.
Granat hopes legislators will consider the unique characteristics of Johnson Valley.
“It’s not only taking away from our cultural significance and local communities,” Granat said, “but it’s an area where families can go to, to get away. Having an area like that that has no electricity poles — where do we have that? There are wilderness areas, but you can’t access them with a motor vehicle.”
It’s this aspect that worries Betty Munson, who lives in Johnson Valley and heads the Homestead Valley Community Council.
“I can look out my window and what I’m seeing is probably what it looked like 100 years ago,” Munson said. “It’s a very harsh, bleak environment, and it’s just absolutely beautiful. It’s one of the last free areas.
“Before all this happened, we took it for granted,” she added. “We wanted to be able to just roll out and go.”
That sense of freedom, she fears, may soon be choked off
