Hare & Hound gets funds By ERIC GALVAN, Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 13, 2007 10:53 PM PDT
CUAUHTEMOC BELTRAN PHOTO
FROM LEFT: Laguna Mountain Environmental Inc. staff members Heather Thomson, Julie Roy, Pepe Aguilar, principal archaeologist Andrew R. Pigniolo, Sarah Farmer and Elizabeth Davidson conduct an archaeological survey near Coyote Wash north of Plaster City on Tuesday.
Paul Kirby calls the annual Hare & Hound race in Plaster City the biggest off-road event in Imperial County.
He figures the American Motorcycle Association’s race March 25 will pull as many as 400 racers and draw up to 20,000 spectators from around the country and Mexico, possibly generating up to $250,000 in local revenue, he said.
But there was a chance the race would not happen.
Enter the Imperial County Board of Supervisors.
For its part, the supervisors have come up with a total of $100,000 that would allow races to continue.
The supervisors Tuesday allocated $50,000 of its state off-highway vehicle funding to the AMA’s District 38 chapter for studies in Plaster City and the Superstition area in the west county.
“The whole race was in limbo,” said Kirby, a local promoter of District 38’s Roadrunner Off-Road Racing and an El Centro resident. “Without funding and without the county’s help, we felt that we weren’t going to have any races.”
Before the AMA’s season this year, local race officials were told by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management that races could not continue unless fees were paid to conduct archeological studies in the county’s west desert, covering Plaster City and the Superstition area.
Racers and promoters would have to pay up to $500 a mile to survey land where a course would lay, Kirby said.
“People have been racing out there without a hitch since 1967,” Kirby said. “And this wasn’t the case before.”
Kirby said he believes it was “several environmental groups that are contesting off-road racing” that brought up the law, a law that requires lands to be surveyed for artifacts before being used.
Tom Zale, BLM associate field manager, said the law has always been in place, but it was not enforced. At Tuesday’s supervisors’ meeting he said racers have essentially been breaking the law while racing.
Contracted archeologists were in the Plaster City area Tuesday afternoon surveying AMA’s 95-mile course for the Hare & Hound race. They’ve been there for nearly two weeks and could be out until three days before the race, Kirby said.
He said there is still the possibility that a permit is not issued for the race, though he said that is unlikely and he is confident the race will be held.
While the results of the survey will be kept on the books and be used for future events, Zale said he would encourage promoters to expand their courses and cover new land.
“We don’t want them racing the same course over and over,” Zale said. “We want to give courses time to recover.”
AMA will run 16 events in the Plaster City and Superstition areas in 2007 with up to 225 racers competing in each.
With the $100,000 in funding from the county — the first $50,000 of which was spent a couple weeks ago — and an additional $25,000 from BLM, Kirby said race promoters have enough funding to pay for 250 miles to be surveyed, including the 95 being done.
District 38, which governs AMA racing in Imperial, San Diego and Riverside counties, will increase racing fees from $40 to $50. The extra $10, which Kirby said could amount to $30,000 per year, will be used strictly to cover surveying costs.
County Supervisor Joe Maruca, who helped champion the effort along with Supervisor Wally Leimgruber, said while the county will gain revenue from the racing events, it was not the sole reason he fought to keep racing going.
“What I do have an interest in is those are public lands,” Maruca said. “Whether we make money or not, the people have the right to use the land reasonably, and we have to do all we can to fight to keep them open.”
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