White Pass halts expansion work

Published 9:56 pm Wednesday, December 19, 2007

YAKIMA — The White Pass Ski Area has agreed to halt work on a major expansion project until a federal judge rules on an appeal by environmental groups seeking to block it.

The agreement is designed to avoid the time and expense of arguing a request for a restraining order to halt all work.

White Pass Co., which owns the ski area, has been seeking to expand for years to reduce congestion at the site, located 55 miles west of Yakima on U.S. Highway 12. The ski area draws an average of 108,000 visitors a year.

After conducting an environmental review, the U.S. Forest Service issued a record of decision in July to let the ski area add two chairlifts and a midmountain lodge, expand a trail network and move paved parking to reduce ski area congestion and improve safety. The 805-acre ski complex would gain the use of 767 acres in the Hogback Basin, a roadless area now used by backcountry skiers, for a total of 1,572 acres.

The expansion would nearly double the size of the ski area, though the resort would still be smaller than Washington’s largest ski resorts.

The Hogback Basin Preservation Association and the Sierra Club filed suit in federal court in Seattle. They maintain that the Forest Service decision violated rules established for roadless areas and failed to comply with environmental and other federal statutes and administrative actions.

Kevin McCarthy, general manager of the ski area, said Tuesday that White Pass and the groups have reached an accord in principle to delay any further expansion work pending a hearing on the appeal, likely next spring.

“Both sides worked to come up with a voluntary stay so we don’t go through the courts,” he said. “We agreed to stop at a certain point and let the courts hear the merits.”

David Bahr, a Eugene, Ore., attorney representing the Hogback Basin groups, said, “White Pass is being reasonable and we are trying to be reasonable and get this whole thing reviewed.”

Enlarging White Pass has been the subject of discussion and planning for more than two decades. Previous attempts to obtain approval have been thwarted by lawsuits over road-building in the Hogback area, a roadless expanse adjacent to the Goat Rocks Wilderness Area that conservationists want to see protected from development.

Congress withdrew the Hogback Basin from the Goat Rocks Wilderness in a 1984 wilderness bill.

The lawsuit contends the Forest Service’s environmental review failed to consider all alternatives or look at the cumulative impacts of increasing human activity near wilderness.

“This is the first instance we are aware of in which a ski area is proposed to develop into an inventoried roadless area,” Bahr said. “We see it as an important test of whether the rule will survive the threat.”

McCarthy said the construction work at White Pass was already under way when the two conservation groups filed suit. But he said the work can be halted temporarily without hurting the project.

“We are at a logical stopping point,” he said.