Save Blackwater Canyon Trail

The United States Forest Service is threatening to let Allegheny Wood Products destroy irreplaceable cut-stone archways, bridges, coke ovens, culverts, and retaining walls along the Blackwater Canyon Trail.

Blackwater Canyon (Photo by Jason Jack Miller)


Taken from the FRIENDS OF BLACKWATER CANYON Website:

Friends of Blackwater and the Wilderness Society are ..consulting parties.. to the Historic Preservation Act review process for the Forest Service..s Blackwater Canyon Trail Proposal. This review is called the ..106 Process... We have been meeting with the U. S. Forest Service, trying to persuade the agency to protect the historic Canyon Rail Trial.

So far the Forest Services is ignoring our concerns -- as well as concerns raised by the EPA, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, and the State Historic Preservation Office (who are also consulting parties) and the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which has asked to be a party. The Forest Service has not shared with us the proposed Deed of Easement language giving the use of the Trail to Allegheny Wood Products (AWP), or the survey of the Trail. No information has been shared about AWP..s planned uses for the Trail such as the size of logging trucks or construction equipment, weight loads, or the boundaries of the proposed easement. No engineering analysis of the strength of the bridges along the Trail has been made public. The vehicles using the easement area must travel over another 5 miles of Trail to get there but no analysis of cumulative effects on this part of the Trail has been forthcoming.

GO HERE TO SIGN THE PETITION

X-posted to ambasadora, penncamping, thecounty, MySpace, Heidi Ruby Miller, WPF Writers


Blackwater Canyon, Blackwater Canyon Trail, Friends of Blackwater Canyon