[Geysers] Orange Mound Spring Damage

[David Monteith]

While in the park over Memorial Day Weekend, I visited Orange Mound Spring.  
The activity was fantastic.  Water was pouring off the mound, especially on 
the side closest to the road.  New formations are building fast.  This leads 
to the problem.  It appears that park maintenance is still up to its old 
tricks.  The damage to the formations next to the road was disgusting.  While 
it was probably necessary for the park service to do something about the 
formation's encroachment on the road, the way they did it showed no respect 
for the resource, and left an ugly scar on the landscape.  

At the time I visited, it was obvious that over the winter, Orange mound had 
encroached on the road.  It appears that the flow of water came off the 
mound, flowed along the ground beside the road, forming small terraces and 
areas of travertine ice, the flow then diverted across the road where it 
started building formations across the entire width of the road.  

When I arrived, the damage had already been done.  I was not pleased at what I 
saw and tracked down information on what had happened.  Maintenace, used 
heavy equipment to scrape the formations off the road, they dug a very ugly 
ditch through the formations alongside the road to divert the water towards a 
small hole, and probably worst of all, they reamed out that hole making it 
large enough to act as a drain for the water.  The drain not only diverted 
water from the road but dried up an area off the road where some nice 
formations were building.  Of course, when I saw them they were dry and 
beginning to crumble.  No attempt was made to mitigate the impact of these 
changes are to try to make them fit in with the surroundings.

The park service did not learn from Pink Cone.  Their resource protection 
track record especially near roads is not good.  They complain about visitors 
damaging resources but two of the worst examples of deliberate thermal 
resource damage in the past few years have been through the actions of the 
park service.  

It will be interesting to see if there are ramifications from this event.  My 
understanding is that there are individuals in the Park hierarchy that are 
not pleased with what happened at Orange Mound.  To their credit, the park 
had apparently been trying to come up with a low impact plan to address the 
issue.  Unfortunately, maintenance, went out and did its own thing.  

The park talks about resource protection and uses it in its arguments for the 
proposed closure of some thermal areas to the public.  This is an interesting 
argument when some of the worst offenders are in the park service itself.  
The park administration needs to hold park employees to at least the same 
standard it holds the public.  I would argue, that since they understand the 
resources better, the park service should be held at a higher standard.  In 
either case, they are failing miserably.

Dave Monteith
P.S.  I'm still working to get some pictures of the damage loaded to my 
computer.  If I'm successful, I'll forward them.