December 17, 2001
By Marianne Love
Staff Writer

AZUSA -- Emotions are expected to run high tonight, when off-road 
enthusiasts meet environmentalists in a battle over off-roading in the San 
Gabriel riverbeds in the hills above Azusa. 
The Azusa City Council is expected to decide whether to support Rincon OHV 
Route, the 150-acre off-road area adjacent to Highway 39, or to recommend 
a ban on off-roading. 
Each side will come armed with environmental reports supporting its case. 
The USDA Forest Service, scheduled to update its plan in December 2003, 
makes the final decision whether the off-roaders stay or go. 
The Forest Service took control of the off-highway area in 1988. Rangers 
patrol it for violators. 
Every Sunday, some 300 people migrate to the sanctioned playground about 
11 miles north of Azusa to watch from the mountain ridge or at ground 
level. 
Members of the Azusa Canyon Off-Road Association, a tight-knit group that 
spends each Sunday playing in the mud or dust depending on the time of 
year, call themselves environmentalists and say they respect the area and 
take care of it. 
"Nobody's talking about the improvements and monitoring that has been done 
over the past 20 years," Mike Bishop, president of the 200-member group, 
said on a recent Sunday from the cab of his white 1979 Ford F250. 
Bishop said the hobbyists were blamed for endangering the Santa Ana sucker 
fish, but it turns out bass found their way into the same area of the 
stream and feed on threatened larva and minnows. 
Water officials worry about rollovers resulting in contaminated drinking 
water supplies. 
But Bishop says his group's members have taken it upon themselves to carry 
necessary supplies in case of an accident, which rarely happens. 
"All cars have rollover valves with a ball-check that goes into place and 
won't allow gas to escape," Bishop said. "All of the drive-train 
components (underbellies) of the vehicles are sealed, keeping gas and oil 
from leaking into the water." 
But some environmentalists say the sport impacts the stream and its 
aquatic life, polluting it with gas and floating oils, tire bits and zinc 
from brake pads. 
Others worry if the group gets kicked out it will go unleashed and do real 
harm to the river and the drinking water. 
And one environmentalist wonders whether the group is really destroying 
nature. 
"The San Gabriel Mountains are the fastest eroding mountains in the world 
because of its composite granite," said Eileen Takata of the San Gabriel 
Mountains Regional Conservancy. "Environmentalists are saying the OHVs are 
destroying the environment, but I'm saying its already disturbed." 
Takata said because the ecosystem is disturbed, sediments back up behind 
the dam, raising the original levels of floodplains. The area is 
periodically dredged behind the dam to remove the sediment for increased 
water capacity. 
It's that sediment that creates the dust off-roaders are blamed for 
kicking up.

-- Marianne Love can be reached at (626) 962-8811, Ext. 2108, or by e-mail 
at marianne.love@sgvn.com.

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