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DuPont Forest funding advances


Help is on the way for DuPont State Forest, the 2,200-acre hiking and biking destination endangered by its popularity.


A month after Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler proposed new admission fees to fund personnel and capital improvements, legislators have stepped up to provide funding for rangers and other employees and complete bathrooms and make other badly needed improvements.
“Right now there’s about $3 million in the budget to handle some capital needs, specifically bathrooms and those sorts of things in the Hooker Falls area,” state Rep. Chuck McGrady said Tuesday, the day after the House rolled out its $22 billion budget. McGrady said in the interview that Troxler “sought nine new fulltime employees and I think we’re up to six or seven.”
Actually, the agriculture commissioner asked for 14 positions and a total appropriation of $5 million that also included capital improvements. The state forest, by far the most widely used in the N.C. Forest Service drew 683,000 visitors last year — seven times as many as 2002, the year it opened.
The chief forest ranger, Jason Guidry, told the Friends of DuPont Forest a month ago that the forest has millions of dollars in needs for such things as bathrooms and parking lots plus regular maintenance, more law enforcement and rangers to guide public.
DuPont has had trouble getting funding because it’s outside the state park system, which is scheduled to receive $100 million from the $2 billion bond issue North Carolina voters approved in March. Nor is it eligible to receive money from the state Parks and Recreation Trust Fund. McGrady said he expects to change that.
“I remember seeing it but I don’t remember reading it in the budget,” he said of the provision. “If not I’ll ask for an amendment to put it in the budget. It will mean they will be able to receive grants from PARTF just like a state park could or local government could.”
State Sen. Tom Apodaca, the powerful Rules Committee chair and Hendersonville Republican, said he supported the funding, too.
“We talked,” he said. “I don’t see any problem keeping it in the Senate budget.”

Brian Long, the Agriculture Department’s public affairs director, said Troxler applauded the House budget.

"The House’s proposed additional funding for DuPont State Recreational Forest is welcome news," he said. "We appreciate the support shown by Reps. McGrady and Whitmire and Sen. Apodaca so far in the budget process, and while we know that there is still a ways to go before the budget is completed, we have reason to be optimistic that it will contain funding to address DuPont’s needs."

Fees provoke fight among DuPont supporters


The fee structure, which legislators moved to block has caused friction between state Rep. Chris Whitmire and Troxler’s office. It also exposed a rift on the board of the Friends of DuPont Forest.
“What is the objective? Is the objective the fee structure or is the objective DuPont?” said Whitmire, who strongly opposed the admission fees and complained that the department “slow rolled” him when he asked for information. “I went to them last year when the bond was being done and I said, ‘You know what? DuPont’s getting left out. I need some advocacy from the department.’ And you can read between the lines but I didn’t get it. They had other fish to fry — big, big fish” including $179 million for agriculture research and buildings.
Dick Thompson, a former Friends of DuPont Forest president and supporter of the forest from the beginning, got into a feud with current FODF President Bev Parlier over emails he sent critical of Troxler and the Legislature for failing to fund forest improvements.
Parlier admonished Thompson for the emails, which she said were “upsetting” Guidry and Bill Yarborough, a special assistant to Troxler.
“You may be acting as a private citizen, but because you are a board member, you are undermining FODF’s relationship with the FS,” Parlier wrote to Thompson. “I see a conflict of interest here. The board has gone on record saying it supports the fee proposals and the Dept. of AG., and at the last board meeting I asked the board to be together in support of this. Otherwise, we are not effective. If you cannot support board decisions, I ask you to reconsider membership on the board. Please carefully consider, and get back to me asap.”
Unrepentant, Thompson got back to her.
“The evidence suggests that DSRF (DuPont State Recreational Forest) is too big, too popular nationally with ‘world class’ features for the Forest Service to manage it as a ‘Forest,’” he wrote in an email to Parlier also copied to others, including news reporters. “It is absurd for AG (the Agriculture Department) and our Legislators to be sit placidly inactive when Gorges State Park, sitting about 35 miles from Brevard can receive $8,900,000 for capital improvements (while DSRF gets $0) yet DSRF has almost 5 times the number of visitors.
“It is, sadly as you seem to be stating, apparently the role of FODF is to keep from upsetting the Forest Service by not ‘rocking the boat’ and thus not being serious in the role needed to have ‘someone’ lobby for the citizens of our two counties and Visitors from around the country and world.
“I maintain, and have personally demonstrated, that FODF should work cooperatively with the Forest Service and to have harmony. But this must not require that FODF continue to sit placidly and turn a blind eye to the failure of the Forest Service to aggressively work to acquire funding for desperately needed Capital Improvements.”

McGrady praises Troxler

McGrady weighed in to the fray, explaining the work that he, Whitmire and Apodaca had been doing behind the scenes to fund the forest.
“I’m sure Mr. Thompson will now claim all of this happened only because he’s been pushing,” McGrady wrote to Parlier. “That is bull----. In fact, anything that has happened good has only happened because the Ag Dept folks and legislators didn’t get mad over the uproar he’s caused when folks were diligently working. My hope is that he’ll cease and desist so that we can try to complete the hole-in-the-donut acquisition before he inadvertently ends up shooting at that too.”
In the end, it appears that DuPont is likely to get a large appropriation, more than the fees would have raised. In an interview, McGrady praised Troxler’s commitment to the forest.
“In the first 10 years of the forest at DENR, frankly we didn’t get much traction,” he said. “Over the last five years under Agriculture, Troxler at every point has done exactly what he said he was going to do. He was seeking more money than had ever been sought.
“It’s very unfair to Troxler and to the Forest service and even to the legislators to jump all over them just because Troxler put forward a funding proposal based on fees,” McGrady added. “DuPont is a hybrid; it doesn’t fit. It should have been a state park and back then they didn’t want it and then there’s hunting. It is what it is — a hybrid — and therefore it doesn’t have access to the same funding. Not many departments are getting employees and he’s getting a boatload of them, and they’re all for DuPont.”