Knee jerk hysteria. Nobody is taking the Yuba!
Western Aggregates (WA) owns Park’s Bar. Prescriptive easements don’t extend into flood plains so the fact we’ve been ignoring their no trespassing signs and launching our boats for the past 25 years doesn’t mean we turned this into public property.
The parent company of Western has been sued repeatedly for injuries and a death resulting from ATV and dirt bike accidents on their properties across 6 western states. Following these suits, the parent corporation has asked all of their quarries to exclude motor vehicles to prevent them from being “attractive nuisances” to the ATV crowd.
Where needed, a single strand, knee high cable will be strung and Randall Jarvis has been contracted to build and maintain the cable (he has a fencing business). Tentatively, there will be two “official” parking accesses with gates so that people can drag or cart their rafts, kayaks or pontoon boats to the river. Motorists are free to pull over anywhere they like off the frontage road and simply step over the cable to access the river. There is no fee or limit to the number of river users.
A public access, fee-based boat launching facility will be provided. YOA will manage the boat ramp, but other than the launch facility and cable maintenance they will have nothing what-so-ever to do with the rest of the property. The headline that “public access is GONE ”, or that “YOA is taking over” the river is nothing but inflammatory hysteria.
WA is turning 180 acres (over 2 miles) of riverfront habitat into a permanent conservation easement, freely accessible to the non-motorized public. In addition they are donating $50,000.00 of matching funds toward salmon, steelhead and trout habitat development on the property. SYRCL is already three years into a lower river management plan and has matched WA’s $50,000.00 challenge.
As SYRCL noted in their press release, they will NOT condone infringement of private property rights, NOR will they allow infringement of public property rights. It was SYRCL who legally challenged YOA and had them back off on angler confrontation (where were the trout groups?). Because of SYRCL, the aggressive natures of some of YOA versus angler encounters are largely long past history.
That the very anglers who will benefit from WA and SYRCL’s actions have turned this incredible gift against them defies logic. Having to pay to launch a boat on private property is no different than the current system of having to pay to take out a boat on private property at Daguerre or Sycamore Ranch. The benefits of the project outweigh the cost of a boat launch fee by a billion to one.
If the rights of private property ownership don’t jive with your political views, perhaps the best course would be to take it up with the State and have them build a tax-funded public ramp at the Cal Trans easement under the hwy 20 bridge.