When asked about the proposed “Border to Border” route, David Hann, executive director of Minnesota Townships replied, “We’re not too enthused about this.”
Referred to as the B2B, Hann said the DNR never provided any information to his organization about the plans to use existing state, federal, county and township roads to make an 850-plus-mile trail for off-road vehicles.
“It’s remarkable that no one from the DNR contacted the association at any time about any of this,” he said on Thursday, June 27.
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, Division of Parks and Trails, has partnered with the National Off-Highway
Vehicle Conservation Council (NOHVCC) and the Minnesota Four-Wheel Drive Association (MN4WDA) to develop a route from the border of North Dakota to the Tip of the Arrowhead.
Ending in Hovland, the B2B won’t be a true “Border-to-Border” route because the Grand Portage Band of Chippewa asked not to be included. They were concerned about high levels of traffic on their forest roads and how expanded road usage might impact tribal members exercising their rights to hunt, fish and gather for subsistence purposes.
On Tuesday, May 14 the Pennington County Board voted unanimously to oppose the Border-to-Border plan as it had been proposed.
When asked why, Pennington County Commissioner Don Jensen replied, “I talked to the townships in my district and they were opposed to the route because they did not want the upkeep and maintenance of both the road top or the signage that this would require over and above what they have now. The county roads get no money from the highway distribution fund, and therefore any extra maintenance cost is a burden on the property tax payers of the county.
“Furthermore the route they chose didn’t go through any towns in Pennington County so there was no tourism benefit.”
Jensen also noted that commissioners had asked Border-to-Border representatives to attend a Pennington County township association meeting and no one from that organization attended.
Cook County roads now penciled into the proposed course include six miles on the Arrowhead Trail, .5 miles on the Gunflint Trail, two miles on the Devil Track (County Road 8) Road, five miles on Cook County 27, 1.5 miles on Cook County 4 (Caribou Trail) and 3.8 miles on Cook County 2. Tallied together, that’s 18.8 miles of county roads, and many locals are worried that if these roads are damaged from increased use, the responsibility to fix them will lie with the county taxpayers.
When you add up the mileage in the Superior National Forest, which includes county, state, and U.S. Forest roads, it totals 270 miles with 164 miles run on U.S. Forest Service roads. Opponents of the B2B point out that the U.S. Forest Service doesn’t have much of a budget to improve its roads, and they fear that if there are a lot of B2B tours, the roads will be degraded with little hope of being repaired.
Bearing this fear out is an August 2015 Forest-Wide Road Study (travel analysis report) that cited a decrease in funding by 60 percent since the year 2000 for Superior National roads, without a similar shrinking of total mileage traveled on these back ways.
When decided, the approximately 850-mile route will link existing state and national forest roads—as well as township and county minimum-maintenance roads. This trail and its connecting spurs will be available for any highway-licensed vehicle to use.
This past spring the Minnesota legislature passed a one-time appropriation of $200,000 for repair of county or township roads used by B2B trail riders. The funds are available until 2023 but there is a caveat.
For a county or township to be eligible for reimbursement, “the claimant must demonstrate that the needs resulted from additional traffic generated by the border-to-border touring route,” states the appropriations bill.
Plus, the increased use must be attributable to a border-to-border touring route that has caused at least a 50 percent increase in the maintenance cost for roads under the claimant’s jurisdiction, based on a 10-year maintenance average.
The DNR commissioner can accept an alternative to the 10-year maintenance plan if a county or township does not have sufficient maintenance records, but “any alternative should include baseline maintenance costs for at least two years before the route begins operating.”
As to the ability of townships to receive aid to repair roads damaged by vehicles used on the B2B route under the state’s new legislation, Hann said the state didn’t ask for input from the townships about a plan for reimbursement for repairs, “Which was ridiculous. Townships don’t have the ability to track a baseline over many years, this is unworkable.
“For a township to try to keep track of off-road vehicle use on their roads is crazy. Who’s going to pay for the maintenance and repair of those roads? The townships, that’s who,” he said, adding,
“One township just repaired five miles of road at a cost of $35,000. How far will that $200,000 go?”
The next step for the Minnesota Association of Townships, said Hann is, “to try to meet with the commissioner and see if we can slow this thing down or stop it all together.”
Part 2 next week.
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