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ORV traffic level in Park concerns advisory panel
Kaimi Rose Lum
BANNER STAFF
Traffic was so heavy on the Outer Beach this past summer that the Off-Road Vehicle Subcommittee of the Cape Cod National Seashore Advisory Commission is recommending a closer look at ORV activity.
The subcommittee's biggest concern, said chair Ed Francis at the Advisory Commission's meeting on Monday, 'was the fact that in 2003 the ORV permits were sold out in two weeks.' Not only did all 3,200 annual permits disappear in record time, Francis pointed out, but with the constant re-issuing of the 200 additional weekly permits, there seemed to be no respite from beach buggy traffic.
'With the recycling of the weekly permits, if you will, over 6,000 vehicles are going out on the beach.'
Francis said the subcommittee had discussed, at length, the question of just how many vehicles the beach can support, but 'the Park doesn't have that kind of information.' Nor were there any concrete figures on just how many vehicles are out there every day or in the course of a season. 'We don't really know how many vehicles can be there at any one time without causing a problem.'
He said the anecdotal evidence suggested a persistent and excessive ORV presence on the beach. 'There was the feeling that there were a lot of vehicles out there. There were days at Hatches Harbor when it was cheek-to-jowl.'
The consensus of the subcommittee was that 'more people is not better,' he said.
When the chair of the Advisory Commission, Brenda Boleyn, suggested that the Seashore conduct a survey of the traffic, Francis said that it would be difficult to get an exact count because 'these are mobile units and they're constantly moving around.' A member of the ORV subcommittee had suggested using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) imagery 'to get a picture of what's really going on,' he said. 'The point of the discussion is that we really somehow should get a better idea of how many vehicles are out there and how many people are out there. It's something to think about.'
Seashore Supt. Maria Burks said that the Park had taken note of the problem. 'We have also wondered about that, when we saw the precipitous way the permits sold out.' She agreed with Francis that the question of ORV use on the beach needed to be examined more carefully. 'We're definitely going to pursue this.'
Contention over off-road-vehicle use on Seashore beaches - as it related to plover protection, dune protection and other issues - led to a negotiated rule-making that in 1995 set the stage for the current annual cap of 3,400 ORV permits. The cap was determined by looking at the number of permits that had been issued in previous years and adding 10 percent to that number.
As Francis recollected at Monday's meeting, since the cap significantly exceeded the number of permits issued on average up to that point, it was not anticipated at the time that there would be any problems with this new procedure.
However, since the cap went into effect in 1998, the permits have been disappearing faster every year. In 1999, all 3,400 permits were sold by July 26. In 2000, the last permit was issued on July 8. The following year, it was June 27; last year it was May 24; and this year it was April 28.
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Nov 27th, 2003