Comment on Post on The Great Smoky Mountains Park

[Editor's Note:  For technical reasons unknown to anyone outside of Google and probably many people inside of Google, comments are not being accepted on this earlier post.

A Microcosm of the Federal Spending/Taxation Issue – Fees for Camping in The Great Smoky Mountains

Consequently the following comment is posted in its entirety as a separate post.]

 Reply |Don Casada doncasada@comcast.netby

Mr. Pseudoman Ricardo,

A dear friend of mine spent an hour of time composing the response below to your blog re: fees for camping in the backcountry.  . 

But after spending all that time, this individual found that your blog is basically a spilling of your own thoughts - that comments are blocked. 

Since my brother Jim forwarded your e-mail to me, noting the likely artifice of hiding behind the name of the 19th century economist and philosopher.  I'm going to use the e-mail address from whence it came to forward my friend's comments (below).  To be honest, I don't think you're worth the energy needed for a good spit, but my friend is. 

Unlike you, I'm more than happy to share my real name.  I doubt very seriously if you have the guts to reciprocate, just as you don't have the intellectual fortitude to entertain the views of others on your blog.  Which is far, far more telling about you than any monologue that you could ever gin up.

For the sake of transparency, I will provide a disclaimer....I live in exceptionally close proximity to the park and in fact can walk out my back door and into it in five minutes.  I am a frequent user of the park, and my family (including children) and I are there hiking and biking multiple times during the week, year round. My family did not come from this area, and therefore I am a 'transplant'.

Now that that is dispensed with....

I find your view of this issue exceptionally one-sided and truthfully feel that the injection of politics (and your obvious leanings) into this discourse is designed to provoke an incendiary response. Of course, that is your First Amendment right, and this is your blog.  However, as you have put your feelings out for public consumption, you also have put yourself in the position of attracting opposing viewpoints, and I'd like to offer my own.

I speak only for myself and my family, yet know myself to be supported by many others who live both near to and far from the park.  Had you educated yourself further before posting this, I think you would have found that the singling out of Dr. Casada's comments for your attack was utterly ludicrous, as over 1,000 people have signed online and written petitions opposing this backcountry tax structure. There have also been quite a few heated discussions on park-related blog sites of late, with many folk (who are not petition-signers) opposed as well.

I would make the following points as to my own feelings:

1.  The original (1930's) portion of the park was not created via the use of federal funds.  Its land was purchased by a large grant given by the Rockerfeller family and by private donations, much of which came in the form of schoolchildrens' pennies.  The portion of the park added in the 1940's came from the government's use of eminent domain to condemn privately-held properties on the North Shore of Fontana Lake. Should you wish to delve further into this, you will find that the land prices paid to the families for the 1940's acquisitions were 60% less than the going rate for real estate in the area.  Many, many families were left utterly destitute in the creation of the park, and this is a shameful portion of the park's history that park administration would rather see swept under the rug. 

Lest you think I am a 'Road Supporter', rest assured that I am not.  I love having the North Shore free to roam about without noise pollution and am thankful every day that its natural beauty remains unspoiled.  However, the fact remains that thousands of good, hardworking people were deprived of their ancestral homes in both acquisitions because of what they were told was their duty to the country, both prior to and during WW II.  One of the conditions upon which they did so was that the park ALWAYS be free for the people.  The imposition of a backcountry tax is, in my estimation, a severe wrongdoing to the spirit under which this agreement was made with families.  This is especially true when one considers that, under the current proposal, members of those families would now be charged to camp on their own ancestral land.

2.  Multiple programs exist in this area which take local children into the backcountry for multiple-night stays.  Big Brothers, Big Sisters is only one of these.  One area charter school does a multiple-night stay in the Hazel Creek drainage in order to teach its students about the history of the area. It also does multi-night hiking trips in the park.  To charge any fee to take children into the backcountry, in both economically desperate times and in the midst of a childhood obesity epidemic fueled by television, video game and processed food addiction, is taking a giant step backwards.

3.  The proposed tax upon backcountry users (and that is clearly what it is) is a slap in the face to those of us who do use the backcountry with regularity.  I  doubt that group includes yourself.  My family and I cart garbage bags full of debris out of the park every year, 99% of which comes strictly from frontcountry users in locales such as Clingman's Dome, Newfound Gap, Cades Cove, Deep Creek, Oconalufty, Metcalf Bottoms, and the pulloffs on US 441 and the Little River Road.  If you look into the fiscal (mis)management of federal monies flowing into the park, you will see that almost every bit of it goes toward frontcountry use.  Further to the point, I would venture a well-educated guess that fewer than 95% of the park's users venture more than one mile from the parking lots.  Yet, the park proposes to tax the backcountry users (who are numbered among its finest stewards) and charge the frontcountry abusers nothing.  You see nothing wrong with this picture?

I will even go a step further and say that fiscal policies such as these are what has gotten our fine country mired in its current economic disaster.  But I digress....

4.  I trust not the Park Service to use said proposed fees as they say they will.  After all, they were awarded $64 million in economic stimulus monies in recent years yet failed to utilize this relative windfall to address this apparently 'dire' backcountry use issue.  Now they wish to reach even deeper into our pockets to make up for their  own fiscal irresponsibility.

5.  The Park Service is required by law to notify 'stakeholders' of such proposals prior to their publication and public comment period.  Yet, a poll of counties local to the park in both Tennessee and North Carolina is rather revealing in the fact that county commissions were not notified.  Dubious dealings, no?

6.  Were you a backcountry user, you would understand that, on multi-day trips involving stays at different sites each night, there are often times that plans (and sites) may have to change.  Under the proposed system, if a backpacker came upon their (paid for) site only to find a particularly insistent bear there, there is no recourse to move to a different (non-permitted) site without risking a fine. (No doubt the rangers will not be educating the bears about the fee system).

This proposed system would also make backcountry travel in the GSMNP even more nightmarish for Appalachian Trail hikers than it already is.  The current permit system for overnighting at AT shelters is extremely restrictive to thru-hikers who may wish to hike to a different site than originally permitted (days or weeks ahead of time) and serves as a detractor to the loveliness of the GSMNP....the newly proposed system would only make it worse for this group.

I could go on 'ad nauseum' with reasons for opposing this fee and its implementation, but let me close by stating the obvious.  The Park Service could have avoided much of the uproar it now faces with this proposal by putting the 'problem' out to its stakeholders (with full fiscal transparency), soliciting feedback on possible solutions , THEN proposing fee structures and allowing for public comment.  The exceptionally surreptitious manner in which they have conducted themselves has been counterproductive and smacks of back-door dealings, which I for one do not countenance.