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Richard Drehobl Page 1
Interim Monument Manager
United States Department of the Interior
Bureau of Land Management
Medford District Office
3040 Biddle Road
Medford, OR 97504
August 8, 2000
Re: 1793(116) A6171(TH:jl) Letter Dated July 28th 2000
Dear Richard:
In response to your letter dated July 28, 2000 as referred to above, below find our reply.
It has been always apparent as is presented in the enclosed Medford Mail Tribune clippings (attachments 1 and 2) that you and Tom Jacobs and others in the Bureau of Land Management have systematically worked at taking private ranches to expand BLM's powers and advance your pay increases at the citizen's expense.
Your excuses that the Department of the Interior has presented you with this task and that you are just doing your job holds no foundation. President Clinton or Babbit know nothing of this area but for what false information you and your staff have devised and presented to them as proved here.
The enclosed Mail Tribune clippings document that you have purposefully, knowingly and openly deceived and are now deceiving the public for the advancement of your own private project.
Your recent actions to make a ruler line to enclose our personal ranch that was not even included in the earlier maps presented to us, except most extremely in map D as a possible acquisition, can only be taken as an attempt to provoke an adverse response by me - which is a crime on your part; this for the sole purpose of imposing acquisition by condemnation of us and other ranchers and private property owners you so easily enclosed by the stroke of your pen.
In your Medford Mail Tribune reply (see enclosures) presented here as part of our documented response, this fact: In response to our pointed statement that the Box O ranch was just one step in BLM's planning to take all the lands along the creek during the Box O Ranch acquisition you stated:
1.) BLM's Dave Jones: "Our objective is to obtain the Box O Ranch-that's all we're looking at."...
2.) ..."We have no desire to buy up all the land along Jenny Creek"
3.) ... "Even if we thought about that, we couldn't pull it off. All our land exchanges have to be in the public interest".
In the number one and two response you lied to the public. In a recent local citizens meeting of 40 or more local residences in and around the monument, your spokesman Tom Sensenig that was present said they had been working on this project for 15 years. You lied by saying you had no plans to expand when you did. Your acquisition list declares you are after land along Jenny Creek.
In the number three statement, our response is that the longest parade in the City of Ashland's history presented that the public at large and 95% of all the public most affected by the monument are against the monument. Including all of our county commissioners. Here again you lied and deceived the public by having no intention of listening to the public response then or now.
Jenny Creek Private Lands Coalition reply to BLM - August 8, 2000
Response to Monument - Re: 1793(116) A6171(TH:jl) Letter Dated July 28th 2000
Page 2
Further, In the local meeting at the Lincoln School house on Hwy 66, your spokesman Tom Sensenig stood up in front of 40 or more local residence in the monument area, and proclaimed very sternly to the accusations presented to him; one of which the citizens in the meeting stated that peoples private irrigation rights would be compromised, your spokesman's reply was that:
..... "the BLM has nothing to do with water rights, it is regulated by the State of Oregon and that the BLM does not involve itself with private water rights."
The very next day, two local residence ranchers (one of them involving our own ranch) received letters from the Bureau of Land Management's attorneys in Sacramento contesting our private water rights in the Klamath Falls Adjudication process. Again another documented lie meant to deceive the public.
Further yet, I was just recently approached by the Water Resources department in Salem that the Medford Bureau of Land Management Office had paid the required fee to obtain records of our ranches hydroelectric diversion point and presented to the resource department that the location presented was incorrect...when in fact it was. Again, more tampering with private water rights they have professed to have no interest in and further harassment.
The above facts present you and your local staff are incapable of being trusted. That you plan projects, purposely kept from the public's view and response, until you are sure you have a well engineered plan that will have higher government backing that can override adverse local public and citizen response. This is an obvious fact, as the monument dedication from Clinton occurred three whole days before the time for public response on the area study had ended; and that you only pacify the public by asking what their views are, then do what you want anyway. Hiding behind the phrase that you are "representing the public"; when in fact you are not, by the proofs and signatures presented here and the parade of local public citizens and county representatives.
Our local county commissioners can attest that in Washington, it was unknown that there was any opposition at all to the monument area being enacted. Since local citizens especially in the monument area - have been openly fighting against BLM's policies in the area for over 24 years. How could Washington have been kept in the dark to the fact of this opposition except that they were kept in the dark purposely and willfully by the local Bureau of land Management, by not mentioning this continuing opposition.
Even during the Box O Ranch acquisition, you invited all the local residences for a meeting with you at the Box O Ranch for the sole purpose of hearing their views and suggestions, then ignored them all. You tend to use public forums to simply pacify the public then do what you want. You and your staff cannot be trusted. This is a fact.
If there is no plan to take the private land within the Monument area as you present, then why include the private property as part of the monument in the map? If people want to sell to you they can, but don't surround them in your plans as "part" of the monument when they have no interest in it nor in selling out to you ever; and note 95% of the local affected residence is against the Monument dedication in any form and we intend to dissolve it.
Continued:
Jenny Creek Private Lands Coalition reply to BLM - August 8, 2000
Response to Monument - Re: 1793(116) A6171(TH:jl) Letter Dated July 28th 2000
Page 3
Where as it is the opinion of this body of local and most affected citizens and property owners:
1.) That the new boarders enclose more acres than the 290 that you present to be adding including a private 317 acre private ranch.
2.) That you purposely added the new acreage knowing full well that you have been at odds with the owners for many years, surrounding it completely to regulate all borders and harass them.
3.) That the local BLM continues to lie and push the borders far beyond that originally planned in the Pilot Rock Wilderness area which the public was deceived into thinking was only 5,867 acres, then expanded to 37,575, then expanded to 96,000 - of which 52,000 being public and 34,000 being private and again expanded just now to include hundreds more acres both public and private.
4.) That the Monument is against public view and that the new borders, as well as the old borders, that you have presented are unacceptable.
5.) That all aspects and reasoning's presented by BLM are falsely represented or exaggerated for the sole purpose of obtaining of the status of Monument and not for real need - for which there is none.
6.) That the enclosed clippings document the fact that you have purposefully, knowingly and openly deceived the public for the advancement of a local BLM employee private project - documented here in this letter as it is obvious that the monument idea did not originate from the White House as it must for such an executive order by law.
7.) That the Monument is against the will of these people and is not in their best interest
8.) That the "Antiquities Act" for which the President of the United States has derived his authority has been wrongly and illegally used.
9.) That all Private lands within the Monument area must be excluded from being part of the monument.
10.) That we present and demand that the Monument status be withdrawn, forgotten and no further efforts or monies be expended either publicly or in private by the Bureau of Land Management or other federal agencies.
Sincerely,
Richard Taylor
President
Jenny Creek Private Lands Coalition
And Below signed the citizens in agreement with this letter:
PO Box 637
Ashland, OR 97520
Web: http://www.pacificwestcom.com/jennycreek (for more info) Continued are signatures:
For a view of those signing this document CLICK HERE!
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