Judge rules for Friends in Chain of Lakes case

A federal judge has ruled in favor of environmental groups over permit levels for motorboats on lakes connected by water.U.S. District Court Judge Jack Tunheim ruled in favor of the Friends of the Boundary Waters writing that the Forest Service was not given authority by Congress to recalculate a cap on permits. The decision, once implemented, would drastically reduce the number of permits available on the Moose Lake chain. Bob LaTourell of LaTourell’s Resort was shocked at the ruling.“What in effect the judge’s ruling says is that there was no use by any of the dozens of the resorts or hundreds of property owners on these affected lakes when they came up with the original ruling,” said LaTourell.“I couldn’t believe he ruled that way because with that ruling it makes the use levels here inconsistent with the rest of the wilderness use levels based on what the use was in the 1970s,” said LaTourell.The ruling could see permit levels drop from nearly 6,900 permits available each year down to 2,376.This issue started when some of the same groups sued the Forest Service for allowing homeowners and resort guests on Moose and Farm lakes to use a permit exemption sticker to enter the BWCAW. In 1999, a judge ruled that lakes connected by water passage should not be considered as one continuous lake and that basically the stickers could no longer be issued. So property owners, even though they could take their boat into the other lakes without touching shore, now had to compete for permits. The Forest Service then went through a process to determine what that use would have been if those property owners and resort guests would have been included in the original studies on permit use before the 1978 BWCAW Act. The Forest Service has a cap on the number of permits that can be issued for motor use as specified by the 1978 BWCAW Act. After determining the estimated use, the Forest Service announced it would increase the number of permits available for those areas.In response, seven environmental groups filed suit.Plaintiffs included the Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness, the Sierra Club North Star Chapter, Superior Wilderness Action Network, American Lands Alliance, Minnesota Canoe Association, American Canoe Association, and Minnesotans for Responsible Recreation. The environmental groups are represented by Faegre & Benson LLP, a Minneapolis law firm.Where this case will go from here was unknown late Friday.Conservationists With Common Sense had joined with the U.S. Forest Service in the case and the two parties will have to discuss strategies following the decision.