Update on Recreation at Waterdog
Summary
- We're getting close! The PROS commission will soon be making recommendations to the Belmont City Council for adoption, and now is the time to rally support for recreation at Waterdog.
- A draft Recreation Use Assessment was just released by the Belmont PROS commission. An officially-sanctioned, independent third-party environmental assessment found that Waterdog is in good condition, and that multi-use recreation has not had an “undue negative impact” on the open space.
- The Waterdog Open Space Stewards are happy to largely support the recommendations in this draft assessment, including the Recreation Emphasis Alternative and Habitat Protection Emphasis Alternative additions to the Base Plan.
- We strongly support formally recognizing existing trails not currently mapped, part of the Recreation Emphasis Alternative.
- We do, however, oppose three recommendations: to turn Ensatina Trail into a hiking-only trail; to turn Labor of Love into a biking-only trail; and to decommission redundant trail segments. We believe that all trails in Waterdog should remain multi-use, and that “redundant” trail segments allow for varied experiences in a small area.
- We support the recommended pilot policy to allow e-bikes on Waterdog's trails, as a way to further assess what kind of impact their use has on the open space.
Actions You Can Take to Help
- Please write to the Belmont City Council in support of multi-use recreation! This is perhaps the most crucial time, as the PROS commission and Belmont City Council will be making decisions based on these recommendations soon. See the end of this article for a draft you can use to craft your email.
- There will be an open house from 5-7 on Monday, June 13th at Hidden Canyon Park. Please attend and show your support in person! We would love for people who can balance the negativity of the loud minority opposing recreation in Waterdog with rational, positive input. Bring kids and their bikes! More details here.
The Longer Version
Waterdog is in Good Shape!
The City of Belmont has released the first public draft of its Recreation Use Assessment, and there's a lot of good news in it for proponents of keeping Waterdog open to the types of recreational uses it currently permits. We are happy to see that the recommendations are in line with our mission to keep multi-use recreation intact in Waterdog, and we support the draft recommendations, with three exceptions.
A major highlight of the assessment is that Belmont hired an independent professional consulting firm to conduct an environmental assessment of the park (and some nearby trails), and they found that "wildlife habitats in Waterdog Lake and San Juan Canyon are in good condition suggesting that the current trail usage and trail density are not having undue negative impacts". We knew this to be the case from our time in the open space, and it's fantastic to see it validated by biologists.
The Exceptions
With that in mind, we hope that the city will choose to remediate the parts of the park that are in need due to erosion, but otherwise leave the nature of recreation in the park intact. In particular, two recommendations we oppose would restrict the user groups who would be permitted to use two trails in the system, Ensatina Trail and Labor of Love. In the case of Ensatina, the draft recommendation is to turn it into a hiker-only trail. Just as with Lake Loop Trail, Ensatina was built by volunteers from the cycling community, but meant to be shared by all user groups. The basis for the recommendation was “the low tree branches and unique shady experience that may encourage slow travel through this area.” In our view, this is not a good reason to systematically exclude an entire user group, and break with decades of Belmont’s tradition of allowing all user groups to use and enjoy all the trails.
Similarly, the draft recommends turning Labor of Love into a biking-only trail. We strongly believe that these recommendations are trying to solve a problem that does not exist: multi-use recreation has been working well at Waterdog for more than thirty years, and we want to keep all trails open to all user groups. As a practical matter, the trail is mostly used by cyclists, but we don’t think it's fair to exclude hikers, runners, and dog walkers if they want to use it. Additionally, we feel that a single use designation for any trail will open all trails in the park to being individually litigated. Our community does not need unnecessary new battlegrounds further diverting focus from our goal of making the park a great experience for everyone. (In the case of Labor of Love, there is an additional recommendation to adopt the currently unofficial one-way designation. While we generally feel that trails in the open space are best left open to travel in both directions, we support this recommendation, which is in line with how the trail is already being used.)
The bottom line is we’re against creating special trail privileges for classes of users no matter who they are. Keeping the trails open for everyone provides all trail users with a sense of unity and community, and is the most fair, equitable, and inclusive way to manage the trails. A publication by the Bureau of Land Management, Guidelines for a Quality Trail Experience states:
- “Sharing helps build a trail community. Visitors are encouraged to cooperate in order to preserve and protect a common resource, and encountering other types of users on a trail helps to establish mutual respect and inspire courtesy.
- Shared-use trails take better advantage of available space and trail mileage. Quite simply, they provide more trail for everyone to enjoy.
We also oppose a third recommendation, which would “decommission redundant trails”. We don’t believe any trails at Waterdog are redundant. Trails are not about getting from one place to another, but are about creating varied experiences along the way. If anything, we believe the city should consider adding trails at Waterdog.
E-Bikes
There has been a lot of discussion about e-bikes in Waterdog during this process, and the assessment recommends a pilot policy allowing Class I (pedal-assisted) e-bikes on Waterdog's trails for "at least 1 year" to allow for further assessment. We support this direction to gather more data about this emerging user group within the park.
San Juan Canyon
The assessment also covers trails in San Juan Canyon, across Ralston Avenue from Waterdog. While our group is focused on Waterdog, we are happy to see the same kind of recommendations made for Waterdog apply there. We believe that an inclusive multi-use approach is appropriate in San Juan Canyon, as it is in Waterdog.
Conclusion
Overall, this Recreation Use Assessment supports the mission of the Waterdog Open Space Stewards—to keep Waterdog open to multi-use recreation—and we are happy to see that reason and science have been applied to help make the recommendations in the draft. We thank the PROS commission and the City Council for its patience and hard work in getting to this point. We are looking forward to refining this draft into a form that our membership can support for adoption by the Belmont City Council.
Draft Email
Send to: prcomm@belmont.gov, info@belmontprosplan.com
As a user of the Waterdog open space, I wanted to write to support multi-use recreation on the trails there. The trail system was built and is maintained by the community, and all trails there should continue to be available for hikers, bikers, and dog walkers to enjoy, as they always have been.
I support the Waterdog Open Space Stewards, and agree that the draft recommendations published recently are what the community is asking for, with the exceptions of any trail closures and the single-use designation of two trails in the open space. I feel that all the trails should be open for all user groups to enjoy. Thank you for using a scientific approach to policy making in Waterdog; please apply the same kind of data-based decision making to these two trails, and leave them open to all users.
I look forward to Belmont having a fully inclusive recreation plan for Waterdog that will keep it a great place for all users to enjoy for years to come.