Klamath ski area proposal withdrawn

By Jeff Barnard

Associated Press Writer

GRANTS PASS - With no clear signals whether the Bush Administration would make it easier to build ski areas on federal land, Jeld-Wen Inc. has formally given up its $4 million effort to develop Pelican Butte ski resort on the Winema National Forest.

The forest published an official notice in the Nov. 29 Federal Register of Jeld-Wen's decision not to renew its application for a special use permit for the $37 million project outside Klamath Falls.

Jeld-Wen is a leading manufacturer of doors and windows and a major resort developer through its Eagle Crest, Inc., subsidiary. The company last summer began a major expansion at its golf and ski resort at Silver Mountain in Idaho.

Chances for Pelican Butte dimmed last January after President Clinton prohibited development on millions of acres of national forests, known as roadless areas. Plans for the project included nine lifts and 54 ski runs.

When President Bush took over the White House and began looking at ways to change Clinton's roadless policy, the ski resort appeared to have a chance.

"It really never happened," said Kurt Schmidt, environmental coordinator on the project for Jeld-Wen. "Time drug on. ... We just said we had no other options than to withdraw our application."

The Bush administration has yet to complete its review of the roadless policy, which is also being fought over in federal court.

"We broke out a bottle of champagne last night," said Linda Garrison, of Rocky Point. "There have been so many times it sounded like it was going to happen, but turned out not to be."

Opponents, who included the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, had argued that the ski area threatened springs and creeks flowing into the Upper Klamath National Wildlife Refuge on Upper Klamath Lake, as well as birds and fish protected by the Endangered Species Act. Northern spotted owls and bald eagles nest in the area and shortnosed suckers and Lost River suckers live in the lake.

"We know of no single previously proposed project that, acre-for-acre, has more impacts on more different wildlife natural resources than Pelican Butte ski development," said Wendell Wood of the Oregon Natural Resources Council.

Besides the roadless policy, the project faced further difficulties under the Northwest Forest Plan, developed to protect fish and wildlife on national forests in Oregon and Washington.

The ski industry has been flat nationwide, and Roseburg Forest Products is developing its own $35 million golf and ski resort midway between Redding, Calif., and Reno, Nev. That project faces fewer hurdles because it on private land, and is closer to the lucrative San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles markets.

Writing to the Forest Service, William Lyche, director of new development for Eagle Crest, said Jeld-Wen had no choice but to pull out.

"Given the action by the federal government, it is difficult to imagine that anyone else will step forward to pursue the Klamath community's long-standing dream of a developed winter recreation area on Pelican Butte," he wrote.

The idea of a ski resort on the mountain, a sacred site for the Klamath Tribes, has been around for 40 years, but never got off the ground.

In the 1980s, when the city of Klamath Falls was trying to build a hydroelectric project on the Klamath River at Salt Caves, it offered to build a ski area to make up for the loss of whitewater rafting to the dam, which was never built.

The ski area would have increased winter demand at Jeld-Wen's nearby Running Y Ranch golf resort and residential community.