Surfers challenge Oregon Dunes user fee

The Eugene men drove through the property without paying an entrance charge.

The Associated Press
EUGENE - Ticketed for failing to pay a $3 fee, two surfers Thursday challenged new user fees the U.S. Forest Service charges for using national forests and monuments, arguing that the fees amount to an illegal road toll to reach the beach.

U.S. Magistrate Thomas Coffin did not immediately rule after hearing presentations from lawyers for the surfers and the U.S. Forest Service. The challenge could affect user fees the Forest Service is charging on an experimental basis around the West to raise revenues for recreation since logging cutbacks have caused timber revenues to fall sharply.

Rob Maris, 22, and Alan Smith, 36, both of the Eugene area, said they were cautiously optimistic after hearing the questions the magistrate asked.

But Mike Harvey, who coordinates the fees program for the Forest Service in the Northwest, said the agency would be surprised if the magistrate ruled that it has no authority to impose the charges.

Surfers fined

The U.S. Forest Service gave surfers Maris and Smith $40 tickets for failing to pay a $3 entrance fee on the Oregon Dunes National Monument near Florence. They had driven on a former county road from U.S. Highway 101 across the monument to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers property on the south jetty of the Siuslaw River to go surfing.

Lawyer Dan Stotter, who represents the surfers, argued that Congress never gave the Forest Service authority to charge people to pass over federal lands without stopping to use any facilities. He argued that the fee amounts to an illegal road toll.

Under questioning by Coffin, government lawyer William Fitzgerald said he believed the statute gave the Forest Service authority to charge people driving state Highway 126 though the Siuslaw National Forest if it chose to.

The Forest Service got permission from Congress to begin charging recreational user fees at 47 sites around the country as part of a demonstration project.

Fees used at sites

Unlike fees from the sale of timber, which go into the U.S. Treasury, the bulk of the recreational user fees remain at the site where they are collected. The Forest Service raised $3 million this year from fees collected on eight Northwest forests, Harvey said.

Surveys collected last summer at trailheads and access sites to the Siuslaw National Forest, which manages the Oregon Dunes, show that 30 percent strongly support the fees and 26 percent strongly oppose them.

The user fees have come under attack from Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., who filed a bill to eliminate the three-year program and raise the money instead by charging mining companies a royalty on metals extracted from public lands.

The Mount St. Helens National Monument generated $l.8 million in fees, and the Siuslaw National Forest, which includes Oregon Dunes National Monument, generated $400,000, Harvey said.