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(Mail Tribune / Jim Craven) Troubled shores Editor's note: Terry Sowerbutts' name was misspelled in the original version of this story. The error has been corrected below. By BILL VARBLE Mail Tribune Terry Sowerbutts shakes his head at the junk he's picking up on the east shore of Howard Prairie Lake: beer cans, cigarette butts, shotgun shell casings, junk food wrappings, batteries, shards of dishes, broken toys, fishing line, a barbecue grill, a green shag rug. "We found a couch here once," he says. From this spot east of Doe Island the lake stretches blue and sparkling south to Buck Island and the dam beyond, and northward toward where Hyatt-Prairie Road intersects with Dead Indian Memorial Road. Across from this lovely, littered point, sailboats bob at buoys in the marina, and the cries of gulls drift on the wind. Sowerbutts, who works at this resort just an hour from Medford, goes out on his own time to pick up the trash at unauthorized camping spots on the east side of the lake. He's joined this day by pal Bob Ryan, who lives nearby. The men pass a small tree that has been felled and lashed between two big trees now girdled with rope. They stop short at a toilet paper garden, which they're not equipped to deal with. Nearby is a pile of dead fish somebody caught and didn't want or bother to throw back — blank-eyed crappies, bluegills and smallmouth bass rotting in the dirt. Howard Prairie has been the site of unauthorized camping for years, but sources say recent years have seen a dramatic worsening of problems. Dusty, makeshift roads snake through the woods down to the lake's edge, where drunken parties, fires, off-road vehicles and gunfire roar late into the summer nights. And not much is being done. The Bureau of Reclamation, which owns much of the land, and Jackson County, which administers most of it, point to each other as having the power to provide remedies, but both have budget problems. The Bureau of Land Management, which administers much of the area, also has suffered budget cuts and is stretched micro-thin for enforcement. A spokesman for the Jackson County Sheriff's Department, which has had its own budget crunch, says he's not aware of the problem. Hoxey Creek flows into the middle of the lake's east side. On the north bank of the big inlet, Britney Carver, 15, of Klamath Falls, is camping in a lovely spot, not a campground, with her mom, Michele Fox, and their 1-year-old dachshund, Dash. "We've been coming here to camp since I was a baby," Britney says. She says they drive west from Klamath Falls in their SUV until they turn on a road that goes through the trees and winds down to the lake. That dirt road doesn't appear on maps. Neither do the other old logging roads and trails taking off from the Keno Access Road between the dam road and Dead Indian Memorial Road. Britney and her mother say they sometimes come here and camp with as many as 10 people in a group. "We're one of the families that found this place," Fox says. "We always thought it was part of Howard Prairie." Fox and Carver have set up a port-a-potty. They say they haul the waste out. They have a fire ring filled with wood they say they found lying around, dead and down. They say the area desperately needs some help. "There's trash all over," Britney says. "Jack Daniels bottles, beer cans, toilet paper." She shows her visitors a fire ring into which somebody has thrown an aluminum chair among other detritus. "We should have brought some trash bags," Fox says, looking around. Jim Johnston's family has owned and operated the resort since the lake was created in 1962. He says scofflaw campers and the problems they bring have been troublesome for three decades, but the mess and the complaints have mushroomed in recent years. "We've talked to BLM and the sheriff's office for years," he says. "They can't do anything in the middle of the night. "(Jackson County) Marine Patrol has gone over in the morning, and all they have is innocent people standing around. "If it weren't for Jackson County cleaning it up, it'd be an even worse mess." Randy Hutton, parks program manager for Jackson County Parks, says county workers occasionally pick up garbage at the bogus campsites, although it's not their responsibility. "We go in there once or twice a year and do a sweep to help the public and the concessionaire," he says. "If it accumulates, people feel they can just add to it." Johnston's son, Chris, who manages the resort marina, says campers move onto the east side of the lake every early summer like migrant birds. Camps can be seen from the resort. "Every year there's an RV and two or three straight-wall tents," he says. "They just take it over, snow and mud and all. They stay for weeks." Jim Johnston's biggest concerns are volleys of late-night gunfire and bonfires in the dry woods. "The shooters go to Hoxey Cove," he says. "The shooting after dark has gotten so bad the sailors that camp there have had to pull out and leave in the middle of the night. "It's just stupid, drunk shooting." He called in fires two or three times last summer. The nearest fire department is in Lincoln, more than 10 miles away. "They should close the roads," Johnston says. "Put up 'no camping' signs. You just hope nobody gets killed." Lt. Pat Rowland of the Jackson County Sheriff's Department, which has two contract deputies working BLM land, says he's not aware of a problem at the lake. "I haven't heard this," he says. "That's not something we would look for unless it comes to our attention. Nobody's reporting it. If they did we would not turn our heads." The sheriff's office also has a marine patrol unit that sometimes patrols Howard Prairie, but those officers focus on issues on the water, not what's going on ashore, Rowland says. He says if anybody feels endangered from gunfire or wants to report a fire, they should call 9-1-1. "We'll follow up on it," he says. "Or pass it on to BLM." BLM Ranger Chris Owens is one of two officers patrolling nearly a million acres of range and forestlands around Southern Oregon. "I'm aware of the problems," he says of Howard Prairie. "Shooting, parties, fires, all of the above. It's the truth. "It's such a large area, we don't have the staffing to be up there all the time." Owens used to patrol the area more intensely when he was the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument ranger, which at least put him in the neighborhood occasionally. But that position was eliminated. And there are similar problems elsewhere. "There are many areas we get those exact issues," he says. "Our response time is not good." While it is legal to camp on BLM land on the Medford district, campers on the east side of the lake have probably trespassed to get there, crossing land owned mostly by private timber companies. John Krauss is the owner of Indian Hill, a Merlin-based logging company that owns land on the east side of the lake. "We have a continual problem," he says. "But it's pretty hard to control. We'd have to be out there every day. We only go over once or twice a year." For law enforcement to act, the private land has to be posted and closed. Some signs banning campfires have been posted along the Keno Access Road. "But those come down pretty fast," Owens says. Shooting on BLM land in the middle of the night is not illegal, he says, although shooters might be guilty of reckless endangerment. He's made people extinguish campfires and issued warnings and citations for cutting trees, for littering and for resource damage with off-road vehicles, but the next day people are back. He's walked late at night into camps where men are drinking and firing guns. "You're going to have at least two officers for a report like that, and it's going to be difficult," he says. "You try to be aware of your surroundings, and you tense up a little bit." He doesn't see things getting better. "We're going through big-time budget cuts right now," he says. "If we had a dozen rangers, I think we could get a grasp on things." He knows that's not going to happen. "And," he says, "it's such a beautiful area." Hutton says it would be helpful for the Bureau of Reclamation to put together a resource management plan, a detailed master plan for the area. "We have them for Emigrant and Agate lakes," Hutton says. But Bureau of Reclamation spokesman Jeff Reavis says the county has the power now to take action. "They are absolutely authorized to put up signs and stop it," he says. "We've encouraged the county to prevent abuses." He acknowledged that the bureau also has the power to act. "We have the authority to disallow off-road use," he says. "We have the right to close the area. People can't assume they have a right to access those lands. We are aware of it. "We can make the decision to put up barriers." Why haven't they done so? "We'd rather go through the public outreach process," Reavis says. He says the bureau had planned to start work on a management plan two years ago, but it was a victim of budget cuts. "It's back on the books for '08 or '09," he says. "It will take two years and require lots of public input, so we're looking a couple of years beyond that." Reach reporter Bill Varble at 776-4478 or e-mail [email protected] . Advertisement s Mail Tribune Home | Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life | Opinion AP News | Archives | Site Map | Community | Classified Copyright © 1997-2006 Mail Tribune, Inc. All rights reserved. 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