April, 2006

THE COLORADO RIVER MANAGEMENT PLAN

On November 10, 2005, after a process that lasted more than 3 1/2 years, the National Park Service released the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) and Colorado River Management Plan.  The FEIS covers a broad range of considerations: natural resources, cultural resources, visitor use and experience, socioeconomic conditions, park operations and management, impacts on adjacent lands, wilderness character and sustainability and long-term management. The finished product is more than 1000 pages long and 3 inches thick in paper form!   In preparing the plan the NPS consulted with other federal and state agencies, with affected Native American tribes and with the general public through public scoping meetings, public comment meetings, stakeholder workshops, and a public comment period.  In the approximately four-month period after the publication of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) the NPS received nearly 10,000 comments from interested citizens and organizations.  Representatives of GCRRA, supporting the interests of commercial passengers, attended all of the public comment meetings and submitted a lengthy and detailed response to the proposed plan.

In the final plan the NPS stated its commitment to providing a wide variety of visitor experiences:  motor and oar powered trips, short and long trips, trips starting and ending at different places in the Canyon via hiking or helicopter exchanges, etc.  There are two separate divisions of the plan, one for Lee’s Ferry to Diamond Creek (River Miles 1-226) and a second from Diamond Creek to Lake Mead (River Miles 226-277) with different regulations applying to each.  For the Lee’s Ferry to Diamond Creek section, the NPS has moved to a launch-based plan which reduces the maximum number of trips launching per day, which hopefully will reduce trip contacts and crowding at frequently visited sites.  The plan significantly increases the number of non-commercial launches and user days, but does not decrease the number of commercial passenger user days.  

While the FEIS/CRMP does not incorporate all of the elements we advocated, many of our most important concerns were satisfactorily resolved by the plan.  Use of motorized rafts for both commercial and non-commercial trips will be permitted, a very important issue for commercial passengers, the majority of whom go by motorized raft.  The mixed use (motor and non-motor) season will run from April 1 through September 15 rather than March 1 to August 30 as originally proposed, keeping the very desirable early September weeks available to commercial motorized raft trips.  The very problematic all-user registration/adjustable allocation system for commercial and non-commercial passengers which was proposed in the DEIS was eliminated, and a fixed allocation system reinstated.  The estimated split between commercial and non-commercial passengers is estimated to be 50/50 for user days and 54/46 for launches. 

Although the permit system for non-commercial trips did not directly affect commercial passengers, the wait-list system currently in use has long been a source of complaints from non-commercial boaters and of perceived competition and unfairness between the opportunities available to commercial and non-commercial boaters.  Widespread unhappiness with the waitlist, in fact, led to the lawsuit that launched the new management plan process.  In a very important component of the FEIS, the NPS addressed this problem by changing to a weighted lottery system for non-commercial permits, by substantially increasing the number of opportunities for non-commercial launches, and by limiting all boaters to one trip per year on the Lee’s Ferry to Diamond section of the river.   We were pleased to see that the Grand Canyon Private Boaters Association has responded positively to these changes.

There were also a few elements of the plan which did not follow our recommendations:  maximum allowable trip lengths for commercial and non-commercial trips differ; there will be no special categorical provision for specialty trips such as hiking, painting or photography; the maximum allowable number of persons on commercial trips was reduced and crew will be counted in group size; guides will be required to accompany passengers on hiking exchanges. 

Overall, we see this plan as a reasonable compromise.  Many legal requirements and constraints had to be met and competing sets of values, claims, and desires had to be reconciled.  We did not get all of the things that we wanted, but we got many of the most important ones.  The plan maintains broad public access to the river corridor through permitting a diversity of commercially outfitted river trips during the traditionally favored boating season.   We look forward to many years of great river running when the plan is implemented.   A more complete analysis of key aspects of the plan is posted here on our website :

REVIEW OF THE FINAL ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT for the COLORADO RIVER MANAGEMENT PLAN of  NOVEMBER 2005