[Geysers] Old Faithful Area Comprehensive Plan, WYS Meeting

[Barbara Lasseter]

I attended the West Yellowstone meeting at 1800.  It went much as M A
Bellingham described of the session she attended.

Park Service folks: Alicia Murphy, Eleanor Clark (Chief of
Comprehensive Planning), Bob Fuhrmann (lead planner for Bridge Bay,
Fishing Bridge area), C M Rawlings (Colleen?) ( District Ranger OF),
and Zehra Osman (Chief OF Planner) who made the presentation.

At the end of the meeting, I was able to pick up a sizeable stack of
comment forms and a few printouts of the OF area Comprehensive Plan as
presented on the website.
Also on display were a few copies of the Roosevelt-Tower Comprehensive
Plan, done in 9/09, which I found helpful in seeing how they were
formatting this, and the kind of things the plan covered.  Although OF
is rather a specialty area, the Tower-Roosevelt Plan is a prototype of
sorts that may or may not be followed in designing the OF plan.

Any plans are to work both for summer and winter visitors.  Apparently
at an earlier meeting someone had mentioned wanting the basin to
remain open at night, so lighting was mentioned.  I was not pleased at
the thought of artificial lighting. Trams (possibly optional) have
evidently been discussed.  The chemical toilet at Morning Glory is
outside the boundary of the plan, but as with M A, I was told to
"write it down".  The challenge may be to determine what kinds of
plans they may be considering in order to get a vote in yea or nay.
Widening boardwalks was mentioned, as were bicycle paths.  They may be
considering things we never dreamed of!  The plan may be "no action".
If there are things important to us (current level of access to
thermal features, existing trails, hearing the sounds of the geysers,
etc.) we need to include them.  If remote parking with a shuttle may
delay getting to an impending eruption, or if you feel shelters will
interfere unduly with basin views, be sure to specify the reason WHY
you are for or opposed to any given action.  It sounded as though
traffic flow of both vehicles and pedestrians would be addressed.
Extending the comment period throughout the summer to get more visitor
input was proposed.

The meeting began just a bit late with 6 non-park folks there.  3
others came in later.  It was a small group, none of whom I
recognized, so more Free Chocolate for all!

Barbara Lasseter