U.S. Forest Service hid records, village foes say
A team of environmental groups opposing a nearly 30year-old plan to develop a village on Wolf Creek Pass says it has evidence that U.S. Forest Service officials tried to conceal documents related to the agency’s review of the controversial project.
Among nearly 60,000 pages of correspondence that a U.S. District Court judge in Denver ordered released, opponents of The Village at Wolf Creek found a note from a Forest Service district ranger urging staff to delete e-mails. Another e-mail told staff to correspond via the agency lawyer so transmissions could be excluded from public access through attorney-client privilege. A note from a Forest Service regional boss warned local staff that Texas billionaire Red McCombs could start calling in favors in Washington, D.C., if the environmental review of the 1,700-home village proposed in 1986 continued at a slow pace.
Forest Service spokesman Lawrence Lujan declined to discuss the documents, citing agency policy prohibiting comment on pending litigation.
The Forest Service in May approved a controversial land swap that gave McCombs a key link from his land to U.S. 160 over Wolf Creek Pass, and delivered 177 acres of important wetlands on the pass to the agency.
The swap marked the closest McCombs has ever gotten to his goal to build an 8,000-person village. The Forest Service rejected the plan in the late 1980s, but the village was inexplicably resurrected by officials in Washington. Environmentalists got a second environmental impact statement review overturned in 2006 and sued to overturn the third review last year, arguing the Forest Service failed to conduct a thorough review of the impact of the land swap.
That lawsuit also argues that the Forest Service review was plagued by “unlawful political interference and influence” by McCombs, 88.
As part of that lawsuit, the village opponents asked for all of the agency’s paperwork surrounding its multiyear environmental review.
In October, a Colorado U.S. District Court judge ruled that the Forest Service violated the Freedom of Information Act by withholding documents relating the to the environmental review and gave the agency 30 days to disclose more information.
A second FOIA lawsuit against the Forest Service is pending.
The overarching assumption of village opponents is that Rio Grande National Forest officials were prepared to reject the land swap when the Forest Service’s top officials ordered the trade as a favor to the politically connected McCombs.
Dan Olson, executive director of the San Juan Citizens Alliance, said the documents “confirmed our worst fears.”
“In a rational world, this should be enough to overturn the land swap given that the Forest Service’s commitments to transparency were not upheld as well as their promise to conduct a thorough and independent review,” said Olson, whose organization has led the 30-year fight against McComb’s proposal, dubbing it “The Pillage at Wolf Creek.”
An August 2012 note from Tom Malecek, the then-district ranger at Rio Grande National Forest, indicates the Forest Service was aware that opponents could request documents surrounding the environmental review of the land exchange.
“Remember, we are swimming with sharks and need to keep the e-mails from even the remote appearance of whatever, so make sure you burn this once read,” Malecek wrote.
In January 2013, Forest Service wildlife biologist Randy Ghormley wrote that correspondence addressing wildlife impacts in the proposed village area would be shared through the agency’s lawyer “so it will remain attorney-client privilege and not subject to FOIA.”
Jeff Roberts, the executive director of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition, said the Forest Service’s apparent attempts to work around publicaccess laws is reminiscent of the Poudre School District’s destruction of e-mails and records after parents of an autistic child sought documents related to their child.
While Roberts said he’s more familiar with the Colorado Open Records Act than federal openrecords laws, he said “instructing co-workers to ‘burn this email’ certainly sounds like an effort to circumvent and disrespect the FOIA process.”
Forest Service e-mails that date back to 2006, when environmental groups sued to overturn a previous federal review that approved the village plan, show McCombs regularly threatened to call in favors with politicians, according to Olson.
When the federal environmental study was delayed in 2014, the agency’s Rocky Mountain regional director, Jim Bedwell, e-mailed staff saying village proponents were calling Forest Service brass in Washington, D.C., and Colorado, warning them that McCombs was “frustrated” and could “begin making calls to his friends in Washington.”
Clint Jones, the developer heading McCombs village plans, said Tuesday that his boss, who was now paying for a third review, was indeed frustrated.
Jones said he and his team were e-mailing the Forest Service to try to understand when the process would conclude.
“We were not attempting to influence any decision,” Jones said. “I don’t know anyone who would go into a process being told it would take a year and, 3½ years later, not be frustrated. These are unfounded accusations that we influenced the decision.”