Greetings to you all,

I just wanted to send you an email describing the fragility of the Scenic Rivers program in Ohio. Ohio's Wild and Scenic Rivers Program has worked hard for over 41 years to protect the states highest quality rivers. Lands that we protect offer public fishing (seining) and canoeing/kayaking access to the best rivers in Ohio. Currently the Scenic Rivers program is housed in ODNR’s Division of Natural Areas and Preserves; it is the oldest Wild and Scenic Rivers program in the Nation and even came before the national program. This program has been funded mainly through general revenue funds for the past 41 years. The Scenic Rivers license plate (which I encourage you to consider) has funded riparian land protection, the Stream Quality Monitoring Program and other functions of Scenic Rivers, funds generated by the license plate sales are deposited into the Scenic Rivers Fund. The license plate fund has only been generating around $70,000.00 (this has fallen from its peak of about $180,000.00) for the past few years. To put the scenic rivers program into a more secure funding source (off of general revenue funds) ODNR Director Sean Logan has proposed and plans to transfer the Scenic Rivers Program into the Division of Watercraft. The Scenic Rivers Program will then be funded through canoe/kayak registrations as a base for the program. Watercraft will seek to find additional funding and market the Scenic Rivers license plate to increase the funds available for the program. The Scenic Rivers program has played an invaluable role in conservation, education and protection efforts to protect the quality of Ohio’s remaining High Quality Rivers. Please visit http://www.dnr.state...93/Default.aspx to review the goals and success of the Scenic Rivers Program. ODNR Director Logan was a member of the Little Beaver Creek Wild and Scenic River Advisory Council, he hopes that this transfer will protect the Scenic Rivers Program and ensure that it continues and thrives in Ohio.

The authority for the transfer has to take place in Ohio Revised Code, which means legislation has to be passed by the Ohio House and Senate and signed by the Governor. The Ohio Revised Code change, authorizing the transfer is attached to the Budget Bill, HB 1. You can view the language at (http://www.legislatu...House Committee).

When you go to this link download the PDF version of the Bill (link on the left side of the webpage). Downloading will take several minutes, I suggest that you start the download and let it completely download before you read. You can save the PDF version on your hard drive if you like for convenient reading. Once you download the PDF budget bill you can find the transfer language starting on page 480, line 14850.

The Scenic River law as proposed remains the same, no changes to the scenic rivers authority results from transferring from ODNR Div. Natural Areas and Preserves to the ODNR Div. of Watercraft. This is important because the main goals of the Scenic Rives program will remain the same. We will have to have a minor change, in that some of our efforts will need to include more public stream access and a few more canoeing programmatic tours of the state wild and scenic rivers. I think that this is positive, as we can conduct seining trips along with the canoe trips (like on the Kokosing with NANFA last year). HB 1 is currently in Committee and will be introduced into the House for further testimony and vote. Once it passes in the House it will then have to go through scrutiny in the Senate and be passed by the Senate and then signed by the Governor.

Watercraft does receive some new authority (besides the standard Scenic River Law). The main change would be a conservation fee of $5.00 for the registration of non-motorized boats (canoes & kayaks). This fee will be a user fee to fund the conservation efforts of the Scenic Rivers Program. Also, approximately 4000 acres held in fee or conservation easement are also proposed to be transferred to Watercraft. This will not only ensure riparian buffer protection but also continue to provide public access to Ohio’s waterways on lands that are owned by the Scenic River Program.

Please visit the following ODNR website and read about the proposed transfer, http://ohiodnr.com/w...64/Default.aspx . There is a power point presentation and a brochure describing the proposed transfer. While there, please take the web survey that is designed to decipher or pole the amount of support or opposition to the proposed transfer of the scenic rivers program to the Division of Watercraft. You can access the survey on the right side of the web page. You can also contact your State Representative and Senator to voice your support or opposition to the proposed transfer of the Scenic Rivers Program to the Division of Watercraft. If you send a letter send it both to your local Rep and Senator and the Speaker of the House and the Senate leadership. You can go to (http://www.legislature.state.oh.us/) to look up your Ohio Representative or Senator.

An extremely important fact to consider is if this transfer does not take place as proposed in HB 1, the current budget does not have any GRF in place to fund the Scenic Rivers Program within the Division of Natural Areas & Preserves starting July 1, 2009. This means that the Scenic Rivers Program will not have funding to continue in Ohio unless the transfer takes place. The Ohio Boating Association and the Lake Erie Marine Trade Association has adamantly opposed this transfer and have been lobbying to stop this transfer. Very little testimony via letters and phone calls have come in supporting the scenic rivers program transfer. This bill will soon go out to the House for a vote and then go to the Senate.

This law does put a 4% cap that is allowed to be spent on the scenic rivers program from boating funds (Waterway Safety Fund). This means that from the boating view point 4% of the money is going to be spent on 20% of the registered boaters in Ohio (canoes and kayaks). We will be able to seek funding from other sources that would not be subject to this cap, which we have done for the history of the program that will go toward land conservation and other projects. For all that the Scenic Rivers Program does in Ohio it is a fairly small program we have 7 full time staff (Scenic River Managers) and 5 part time staff (Stream Quality Monitors). Thus compared to the Division of Watercrafts $22,000,000.00 budget the Scenic Rivers Program is pennies.

I hope that this information is of interest to NANFA and its Ohio members. If you have any questions please feel free to contact me at your convenience.


Matthew Smith
Ohio Department of Natural Resources
Assistant Scenic River Manager
3441 North Ridge West
Ashtabula, Ohio 44004
Office: 440-992-5845
Fax: 440-992-2474
scenicrivers@suite224.net
www.dnr.state.oh.us/dnap

Scenic Rivers is a great program! I'll do what I can to spread the word.

I wanted to give you an update of the status of the proposed transfer of the Scenic Rivers program (described above).

On April 29th the Ohio House of Representatives passed HB 1 with the proposed transfer of the scenic rivers program attached.

On April 30th the Bill was introduced into the Ohio Senate and assigned to the Senate Finance and Financial Institutions Committee.

The committee is now taking written testimony. If you would like to express your opinion as to the transfer of the Scenic Rivers program please do so this week.

You can easily do so by submitting your testimony by faxing it to the Finance and Financial Institutions Committee Chair, Senator Carey Jr. at Fax: 614-752-7188.

It would also be helpful to express your opinion to both Senator Harris (Senate President) at Fax: 614-466-2776 and Senator Cafaro (Minority Leader) at Fax: 614-644-1981.