Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission
Conservation Committee
November 7, 2001
Commission Hearing RoomTexas Parks & Wildlife Department Headquarters Complex
4200 Smith School Road
Austin, TX 78744
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7 BE IT REMEMBERED that heretofore on the
8 7th day of November 2001, there came to be heard
9 matters under the regulatory authority of the
10 Parks and Wildlife Commission of Texas, in the
11 commission hearing room of the Texas Parks and
12 Wildlife Headquarters complex, Austin, Travis
13 County, Texas, beginning at 3:11 p.m., to wit:
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15
APPEARANCES:
16 THE PARKS AND WILDLIFE COMMISSION:
CONSERVATION COMMITTEE:
17 Chair: Katharine Armstrong Idsal, San Antonio,
Texas
18 Ernest Angelo, Jr., Vice Chair, Midland,
Texas
19 John Avila, Jr., Fort Worth, Texas
Carol E. Dinkins, Committee Chair,
20 Houston, Texas (absent)
Joseph Fitzsimons, San Antonio, Texas
21 Alvin L. Henry, Houston, Texas
Philip Montgomery, III, Dallas, Texas
22 Donato D. Ramos, Laredo, Texas
Mark E. Watson, Jr., San Antonio, Texas
23 (absent)
24 THE PARKS AND WILDLIFE DEPARTMENT:
Andrew H. Sansom, Executive Director, and
25 other personnel of the Parks and Wildlife
Department.
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1 NOVEMBER 7, 2001
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3 CONSERVATION COMMITTEE MEETING
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5 ***AFTERNOON SESSION***
6 CHAIRMAN IDSAL: We are still in the
7 Conservation Committee. And Larry McKinney will
8 brief us on riverbeds, and then we'll go back to
9 Finance.
10 AGENDA ITEM NO. 2: BRIEFING - UPDATE
11 RIVERBED USE.
12 DR. McKINNEY: Madam Chairman, for
13 the record, I'm Larry McKinney, senior director
14 for aquatic resources. And joining me today is
15 Robert Sweeney, legal counsel for aquatic
16 resources, as well.
17 What we'd like to do, very briefly,
18 for you this afternoon, knowing the time
19 allotment, is to report back to you on some
20 charges that you gave us at our -- after our
21 briefing in August. You asked the staff to look
22 at several issues. And I'll ask Mr. Sweeney to
23 brief you on one of those issues, and that is
24 looking at other states and actions that they have
25 taken, statutes, and so forth.
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1 MR. SWEENEY: Let me quickly talk,
2 if I can -- Bob Sweeney, for the record -- about
3 three states that we looked at of this big group.
4 I'm going to talk about Montana, New Mexico, and
5 Louisiana; and how they can deal with the problem
6 of motorized vehicles in riverbeds.
7 Montana has, I would say, the most
8 comprehensive approach; and theirs is really a
9 recreational approach. They're really balancing
10 recreational uses in their riverbeds. They have a
11 statute that expressly recognizes the public
12 recreational right in the riverbeds and tries to
13 define it and balance it with all the public
14 rights of recreational use; be it hunting,
15 camping, or portaging.
16 It explicitly recognizes the private
17 property rights of the people who live alongside
18 the riverbed. It talks about liability issues.
19 It's really a river recreation law. And as part
20 of that river recreation law, what they do
21 explicitly is say that motorized vehicle use is
22 not one of the recognized public rights. It's
23 just outside the basket of recognized public
24 rights of river use.
25 So you've got a comprehensive
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1 statute that says what you can and can't do on
2 rivers in this state, and motorized vehicle use is
3 not in that basket. That's the Montana approach,
4 probably the most comprehensive approach.
5 Montana's a big state -- a big western state. A
6 lot of, I would say, tourism, fly fishing, that
7 sort of thing going on in the rivers. It's kind
8 of a destination thing.
9 They have a strong interest, as you
10 can see in their laws, in sort of protecting and
11 making everybody understand "This is what you can
12 expect when you go on a river in Montana." And
13 that's -- it's going being to be pretty much the
14 same anywhere you go in Montana.
15 They have classified rivers in
16 Class 1 and Class 2. Rights are a little bit
17 different here and there, but it's sort of a
18 comprehensive recreational balancing that they've
19 done there.
20 New Mexico comes at it more from a
21 resource perspective. They have a specific
22 authority, specific statutory authority in their
23 Game and Fish Commission, which has a more narrow
24 jurisdiction than this commission -- it's not a
25 parks commission, it's just game and fish, to
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1 regulate motorized vehicle use in state-owned
2 riverbeds.
3 So they have explicit authority --
4 it's just written out that they can do it, right
5 there under the law. And what they've done is
6 taken a pretty expansive view of that authority.
7 And basically, in their regulations, they've said
8 it's illegal to even ride in a motorized vehicle
9 that's going off-road if you are engaged -- if you
10 hold a license for a species that is in season at
11 that time. So you can't be there. You can't be
12 in that vehicle. You can't be driving the
13 vehicle.
14 So they have taken that game and
15 fish authority and interpreted it very broadly
16 over their -- what you would consider their
17 constituency, the hunters and fishermen.
18 Now, in addition to that, New
19 Mexico -- this is kind of a complementary thing --
20 has what they call a "habitat protection law."
21 It's the same thing they have in Arizona, more or
22 less. The language is very much alike. The Game
23 and Fish Commission can recommend to the land
24 commissioner that lands be closed to motorized
25 vehicle access, can be posted with no motorized
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1 vehicle access allowed. And there are public
2 hearings and a lot of public participation
3 involved. But at the end of the day, you can come
4 up with a law enforceable by any peace officer in
5 the state as a misdemeanor that closes areas of
6 state lands to anything but road -- to traffic
7 anywhere but on the roads. And that's sort of the
8 complementary aspect. When you're not dealing
9 with it in strictly the game and fish context, but
10 more of the habitat context.
11 Now, Louisiana has a third approach,
12 and that is -- Louisiana has a natural and scenic
13 rivers law. It never mentions motorized vehicles
14 specifically. And Louisiana, of course, is a
15 pretty wet state. So you might say they probably
16 don't have the same kind of issues of folks
17 driving up and down dry riverbeds that we might
18 have in more arid states.
19 But within the scope of their
20 natural and scenic rivers law, the Legislature --
21 after an administrative study, the Legislature can
22 designate a segment of a river as a natural and
23 scenic river, and then has the authority -- grants
24 to an administrative agency the authority to adopt
25 a management plan for that river segment.
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1 There are about 50 designated river
2 segments in Louisiana that are designated natural
3 and scenic rivers. So the management plan and the
4 rules and regulations that implement that
5 management plan can be adopted by the
6 administrative agency and they can control uses of
7 that river, including -- according to the
8 Louisiana law enforcement administrator that I
9 spoke to, if necessary, including control over
10 motorized vehicles.
11 It's not specifically mentioned, but
12 it's clearly within the broad scope of the
13 authority of that administrative agency to adopt
14 appropriate rules and regulations to control the
15 uses so that you protect the recreational values,
16 you protect the environmental values, you protect
17 the aesthetic values, whatever it is that you're
18 trying to protect by making that designation as a
19 natural and scenic river.
20 Obviously, all these states are
21 different. They do things different ways. And I
22 could -- I'd be happy to talk more about them when
23 you see fit. I'm available for questions.
24 DR. McKINNEY: And if the Commission
25 has any questions on that review, I'm certainly
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1 ready to answer them. I think a written report
2 has been prepared for your review as well, with
3 complete listing of the statutes.
4 COMMISSIONER FITZSIMONS: That
5 includes all the various statutes of the states?
6 MR. SWEENEY: Yes. We -- our
7 written report has about eight of the states that
8 are discussed in some detail. Some of the states
9 we contacted said, "We just don't have that
10 problem. We don't -- what are you talking about?"
11 So what we counted, we put stars on
12 those because that just reflects that we contacted
13 them. And I've got about eight states with the
14 rules and regs collected, and I can provide that.
15 And there are others, certainly, that we can
16 contact, too. So I'm happy to make that available
17 to anyone who would like that.
18 DR. McKINNEY: The second charge
19 that the Commission gave us in the August meeting
20 was to go out and meet with the stakeholders of
21 these various interests with the idea of possibly
22 putting together some type of task force later to
23 begin to look at these issues. And in this
24 interim period, I've done that.
25 This is the list of groups that we
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1 met with. Of course, landowners, you heard from
2 them quite extensively in August, and we talked
3 with them, of course. We met with the groups of
4 the 4x4 and off-road vehicle organizations. They
5 consider themselves separate, by the way.
6 Four-wheel drive vehicles and off-road, they
7 don't -- they kind of work together, but they
8 don't. And I learned that in this business.
9 We've visited with local residents.
10 Of course, we took this matter before our river
11 advisory committee and briefed them. We met with
12 state agencies, river authorities, and the
13 Legislature, as well. And the meetings were all
14 very cordial and informative.
15 I think all the groups that we
16 talked to, you know, wanted to try to work
17 together to address this issue. But, frankly,
18 each of the groups had very clear, you know, goals
19 in mind and not necessarily compatible.
20 The landowners, of course, are
21 concerned about the issues that they brought
22 before you, of the impacts on the rivers and the
23 trespass issues. The 4x4 groups, of course
24 they're very interested in wanting to have access
25 to carry out their activities, but they want to do
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1 it in a way that promotes conservation.
2 Local residents in the Nueces River
3 area, which is the ones we talked about, their
4 greatest concern is, you know, access at those
5 river crossings and their traditional use of those
6 rivers there as public beaches and those issues,
7 as well.
8 And, of course, we met with the
9 agencies and authorities. All of them want to
10 work together with us. But it's an -- it was an
11 interesting mix with a broad range of opinions.
12 There are two venues in which we
13 will have the opportunity to further address this
14 issue with the Legislature. We talked about this
15 one in the August meeting, and that is the interim
16 committee, this joint House/Senate Natural
17 Resources Committee that -- of which this issue is
18 a specific charge. The committee has begun to
19 meet. They have not set any schedule for hearings
20 on this matter yet. Don't know when that will be,
21 likely in the spring, I think at some point there.
22 But we met with the clerk and staff
23 of the committee, gave them the briefing we gave
24 you in August. They were appreciative of that and
25 had asked us to keep them informed and want to
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1 work with us through that process as they begin to
2 look at what the Legislature may do.
3 There is a slide that I've added
4 that's not in your printed material because we
5 just got this -- this information on Monday. And
6 this is the house committee on the State natural
7 resources, the committee to which we report. They
8 have listed out their interim charges and as you
9 can see, one of the charges that they are going to
10 look at does include this issue, as well.
11 The committee clerk, Paige -- Paige
12 is here? Paige is here today, as a matter of
13 fact, and listening. So we'll be obviously
14 working with that committee through the process,
15 to provide them with whatever support and
16 information that they may require of us, as well.
17 Another issue that Doctor Cooke
18 brought to you this morning, and we would roll
19 into this kind of review process, that --
20 something you-all have to look at as -- and I
21 think he covered it well this morning. But we
22 will look at the issue of the riverbed being
23 closed to particular hunting of big game. You'll
24 have to make an assessment on that. And we'll
25 look at that during this process, as well. And
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1 Jerry covered that with you this morning.
2 As far as looking at the options for
3 further consideration, after visiting with the
4 groups and looking at what other states have said,
5 I -- we certainly would seek your guidance in
6 where we should take this.
7 We are prepared, and I'm prepared to
8 provide Madam Chairman and others, with a list of
9 folks from the stakeholder groups that we looked
10 at that could be a part of a task force. And we
11 could bring this task force together to look at
12 various options, and a number of questions has
13 been raised in this issue. And we could use that
14 group as a sounding board to look at this further
15 down the line.
16 Of course, as we move toward
17 Legislature and the potential legislation, I think
18 this task force and the groups we have contacted
19 from the state agencies and others would be a --
20 an invaluable resource. And we can work with the
21 Legislature as they desire should they want to
22 draft legislation to make sure that we provide
23 them all the support that we can in this effort.
24 So that's really the two-part goal
25 that I would recommend that we pursue from the
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1 staff perspective, certainly until -- through
2 January, until we have something more to report to
3 you from what we might look at. And as we form
4 this task force and we have charges for them,
5 issues that you'd like to bring before them, we
6 can do that and have them look at it, and we can
7 reflect back to you their views on the different
8 perspectives.
9 So with that, our briefing is -- I
10 would conclude our briefing now and would
11 certainly answer any questions or take any
12 guidance that you-all might have.
13 CHAIRMAN IDSAL: Any questions? Any
14 further discussions?
15 VICE-CHAIR ANGELO: Sounds good and
16 thorough.
17 CHAIRMAN IDSAL: Thank you, Larry.
18 DR. McKINNEY: I guess, my -- do you
19 want us to move forward on this?
20 CHAIRMAN IDSAL: Please. Yes.
21 DR. McKINNEY: I want to make sure
22 we get that direction.
23 CHAIRMAN IDSAL: Please.
24 DR. McKINNEY: We will do that.
25 CHAIRMAN IDSAL: I believe that
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1 finishes up the Conservation Committee. And now
2 we will go back to the Finance Committee. We're
3 hopping around a lot today.
4 *-*-*-*-*
5 (MEETING ADJOURNED.)
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1 REPORTER'S CERTIFICATE
2 STATE OF TEXAS )
3 COUNTY OF TRAVIS )
4 I, MELODY RENEE DeYOUNG, a Certified
5 Court Reporter in and for the State of Texas, do
6 hereby certify that the above and foregoing 14
7 pages constitute a full, true and correct
8 transcript of the minutes of the Texas Parks &
9 Wildlife Commission on NOVEMBER 7, 2001, in the
10 commission hearing room of the Texas Parks &
11 Wildlife Headquarters Complex, Austin, Travis
12 County, Texas.
13 I FURTHER CERTIFY that a stenographic
14 record was made by me at the time of the public
15 meeting and said stenographic notes were
16 thereafter reduced to computerized transcription
17 under my supervision and control.
18 WITNESS MY HAND this the 9th day of
19 January, 2002.
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21
MELODY RENEE DeYOUNG, RPR, CSR NO. 3226
22 Expiration Date: 12-31-02
3101 Bee Caves Road
23 Centre II, Suite 220
Austin, Texas 78746
24 (512) 328-5557
25