June 2024

The ban on alcoholic drinks during the Independence Day holiday on beachfront parks on Payette Lake continues this year.Valley County and the City of McCall both have permanent alcohol bans in place for the holiday.

A lawsuit accusing the Payette National Forest of illegally maintaining four airstrips in the Frank Church – River of No Return Wilderness has been settled, according to United States District Court filings.The lawsuit, filed last June, says Payette officials and other Forest Service personnel illegally maintained four airstrips within the wilderness area in the far eastern reaches of Valley County about 20 miles northeast of Yellow Pine.The Simonds Airstrip, Vines Airstrip, Mile Hi Airstrip and Dewey Moore Airstrip, collectively known as the Big Creek 4, are the airstrips at issue in the lawsuit.The airstrips violate the federal Wilderness Act and the 1980 designation of more than 2.3 million acres in central Idaho as wilderness area, according to the lawsuit.The lawsuit asked a federal judge to stop the Payette from maintaining the four airstrips and allowing hobby pilot landings, among other things.The lawsuit was filed by the advocate groups Wilderness Watch, Great Old Broads for Wilderness, Friends of the Clearwater, and Friends of the Bitterroot.A settlement agreement signed by the parties earlier this month requires Payette Forest Supervisor Linda Jackson to issue a statement and public notice clarifying that the airstrips are open for emergency use only.The Payette also must begin monitoring the airstrips to ensure they are being used only for emergencies, under the settlement agreement.The agreement also establishes that any future improvement work on the airstrips will be subject to environmental review.General maintenance work, like removing downed trees or rocks from the airstrip, are exempt from environmental review.The Payette also must pay $20,000 to reimburse the plaintiffs’ legal fees, under the settlement.The four airstrips are not among 17 airstrips in the wilderness area that were allowed to continue pre-existing operations following the designation of the Frank in 1980.Instead, the four airstrips were considered “abandoned” and “not open for general public use” at the time of the designation, according to Forest Service records cited in the lawsuit.The Forest Service continued to allow emergency landings at the airstrips, but the lawsuit said that no emergency landings have ever been documented at the four airstrips.The lawsuit named Jackson as a defendant, along with Mary Farnsworth, the regional forester for the Intermountain Region of the Forest Service.A 2018 directive from Farnsworth told Payette officials to notify the public that the airstrips were not closed and to prepare maintenance plans for the airstrips.In 2022, the Payette complied with requests by the Idaho Transportation Department to cut down trees to improve the approach to the Dewey Moore airstrip.

Four utility boxes around downtown McCall will be wrapped with designs created by local artists after action taken last week by the McCall City Council.The vinyl wraps will depict community through the lens of McCall artists Adri Meckel, Jack Aichison, Jenni Ritch, and Randy Resimius.“This is similar to the projects that you’ve seen probably driving around Boise and other communities where they wrap their streetlight control boxes,” said McCall Economic Development Director Delta James, who manages the city’s public art program.Aspen forests, icons from around McCall, wildlife, and scenes from local landscapes will be featured on the utility boxes.