CZ Trail not open – officially, at least

Residents continue to fret about CZ Trail, while local volunteers work to clean it up

By David Holley

The South County Spotlight, Jun 24, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (4 Reader comments)

David Holley / The South County Spotlight

HELPING HANDS — Jennifer Grenier of St. Helens volunteers at the Ford Foundation’s final clean-up day on the Crown Zellerbach Linear Trail. Complaints from residents living along the trail remain largely unresolved, though the Columbia County commissioners hope a possible grant will mitigate those concerns.

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Volunteers spent the better part of last weekend trimming shrubs, picking up trash and installing a new bench on the Crown Zellerbach Trail near Scappoose.

To some who live on Scappoose Vernonia Highway near the trail, the two clean-up events on June 19 and 20 implied the trail might soon officially be open. That isn’t a good thing in their eyes.

Alta Lynch, who lives about a mile up Scappoose Vernonia Highway, said none of the problems she has voiced about the trail – from littering to noisy teenagers to invasion of privacy – have yet been resolved by Columbia County. And as she remembers it, county officials said every nearby resident’s problem would be mitigated before the trail was opened.

With people using the CZ Trail on a daily basis, and with clean up events now taking place, it’s hard for many of the residents like Lynch to understand why their issues have not been resolved.

“They haven’t addressed the people’s concerns,” Lynch said.

County Commissioner Tony Hyde’s quick answer: because the CZ Trail hasn’t opened yet, officially at least. As for people using it day after day, Hyde said, there isn’t much that can be done about that.

“People have been using it since the beginning of time,” Hyde said. “The idea is to try to get it so that it’s usable in the manner that we expect it to be so that it’s safe and safe for the landowners along the way.”

And Hyde said he hopes that a $141,000 grant the county applied for through the Oregon State Parks Department will pay for items that will mitigate residents’ concerns. The money would pay for fencing, barriers and other items, Hyde said.

He is confident that the mitigation plan will be funded by the parks department grant – an advisory committee already selected it as the top choice. It will be reviewed again, and the county could find out whether they receive the grant money as early as July.

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