MECOSTA COUNTY — The White Pine Valley Recreational Area may become available for use by Mecosta County youth groups once again, if approved as a licensed rustic campground.
The site was closed to camping in June after the parks commission requested that the Mecosta County Board of Commissioners remove the land from the park inventory due to safety concerns and lack of control over access to the site.
“We are asking that the board review the prior agreement and consider negation of the liability by removing those buildings and asking those groups to use one of our other facilities,” Mecosta County Parks Superintendent Jeff Abel said at the time.
The board referred the request to the building and grounds committee asking them to review the facilities and make a recommendation as to whether the site should be closed or not.
Residents, former scout masters and local government officials came out in support of maintaining the site for use by Mecosta County youth groups during the building and grounds committee meeting earlier this month.
During the meeting, Abel explained that the main concern with keeping the area open to camping was that it is not a licensed campground, and there are liability issues for the county, in addition to concerns about the safety.
The Mecosta County parks board approved a motion to allow Abel to pursue licensing and designation of the area as a rustic campground during its meeting this week.
“We did ask the commission to take it off our hands and they said no, so my feeling is that unless the county comes back and tell us they want to sell it or lease it, our obligation is to look at turning it into a rustic campground,” park board chairperson Steve Stratton said.
He added that Abel is exploring the process of turning the site into a licensed rustic campground and that things are moving forward on that.
Abel said he had been in conversations with the department of Energy, Great Lakes, and Environment to get clarification on whether, if by licensing it as a primitive group camping area, they would have to open it up to other camping groups.
“If we were to specify that it was for use by youth groups, that may fall under a different licensing organization,” he said, “but we are having conversations with EGLE in preparation to submit for licensing.
“That will require fixing up the vault toilet, and adding a water supply,” he continued. “We would need to designate specific sites for camping and designate the number of campers allowed on each site.”
He added that if they were to get the facility licensed as a primitive campground, there would need to be an agreement in place similar to the one used at other county campgrounds.
“The troop leaders would have to sign off on the liability and it would be up to them to get signed waivers from each individual troop member,” he said.
Jeff Hardesty, committee chairperson for Boy Scoot Troop 114, told the board that the committee has supported the use of the area by the scouts for the past 50 years hope to can continue to do so.
“We want to state our support for the continued use of the area,” Hardesty said. “Our goal is to make the area available to the youth of Mecosta County for the enjoyment of the outdoors, and whatever we need to do to support the park commission in doing that, we intend to do. We will work with the county on whatever guidelines are set forth.
“The committee voted unanimously that we would demolish the building,” he continued. “We put it there and we will remove it without any cost to the county or the township. We want to make sure that whatever youth groups are using it, we are doing it in a manner that is agreeable to the parks commission with all the proper agreements in place and we will marshal our resources to make sure that happens.”
Hardesty added they would like the board to clarify if the scouts would be able to continue using the site while waiting on the licensing process to be completed.
“We did, as a board, take action to prohibit any camping out there until the county could assess the status of the building and the scouts have asked us to rescind that,” Stratton said. “I am not advocating that we rescind it because I think we still have some issues with the rustic campsite and the regulations that we still have to deal with.”
Abel said they did not have any concerns with the scouts using the area for day camping activities but would still want to prohibit overnight camping.
He added that no new construction can take place on the toilet, the well or the pavilion until the proper permits have been acquired.
A motion to seek licensing as a rustic campground was approved with the understanding that the facility can be used as a day campsite, but no overnight camping would be allowed at this time.
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July 22, 2021 at 05:11PM
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White Pine Valley Recreation Area may again be available for camping - The Pioneer
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