P.O. Box 111, Duluth, MN 55801

Background Information

At its regular meeting in Ely, last Tuesday, December 22, the St. Louis County Board unanimously approved resolution No. 785 to "support the concept to use the North Shore State Trail for ATV use". This resolution was passed without any public involvement or announcement. In fact, MRR has learned today, that the DNR and Arrowhead ATV Club have been lobbying county commissioners for the past many months. MRR also learned today that the resolution was not even on last Tuesday’s agenda, but was brought up and passed at the same meeting. The presence of the DNR’s "Off-highway Vehicle Coordinator", Ron Potter, and Representative Dave Dill (ATV club trail administer turned legislator) at Tuesday’s meeting made it obvious that the vote, completely hidden from public view, was to scheduled to take place with a predetermined outcome.

The North Shore State Trail was created as a state hiking trail, on which ATVs are explicitly prohibited. This resolution is advisory to the DNR Commissioner, Gene Merriam, who is given the ultimate authority, with a stroke of a pen, to add ATV use to the state trail. In 2001, Lake County passed a similar resolution and the then DNR Commissioner Allen Garber signed an amendment to allow ATV use on portions of the state trail in the Finland State Forest. And this after major revelations that the local ATV/snowmobile club had done major damage to area wetlands. (MRR vigorously opposed this unilateral action by the DNR.) St. Louis County approval of ATV use on the North Shore State Trail must be rescinded to protect area wetlands, property owners, and communities along this state hiking trail from the unwanted impacts of ATVs.

Facts and potential outcomes should ATVs be allowed on the North Shore State Trail in St. Louis County:

• For many years DNR Trails and Waterways division staff in Two Harbors have said that conversion of the NSST to ATV use would be the "backbone of the off-highway vehicle trail system in Northeastern Minnesota". This is in direct contradiction to the well-crafted language of the resolution that assures that allowing ATVs on the NSST will concentrate use on this single treadway. Nothing could be further from the truth of what is planned by the DNR to follow.