Now that the Recreation Area Management Plan (RAMP) for the Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation Area (ISDRA) has been approved by the US Fish & Wildlife Service, the El Centro BLM office is in the process of finalizing and implementing a Business Plan to address the requirements of the RAMP. The operation of a world-class multi-million dollar recreation area is "Big Business" and the business plan addresses the same concerns as any other Big Business.

A comprehensive study has been done by a qualified contractor to determine the costs associated with operating the ISDRA as a business. Overhead and direct costs to provide the necessary services have been estimated using past operating experience. Some of the requirements of the RAMP are difficult to quantify, in terms of cost, because they are new to the BLM. For example, new camping sites and visitor service facilities could be built. It has been a long time since such facilities have been added at the ISDRA so cost estimates are hard to develop. New environmental monitoring requirements within the adaptive management area are also hard to estimate until more experience in this area has been acquired. Nevertheless, the contractor used all information available to determine the future costs to run the ISDRA Business as accurately as possible with the information available.

The next question addressed by the contractor was: Where will the money to operate the Business come from?

Traditionally, funding to operate the ISDRA has come from three sources: 1) Appropriated funding from the Federal Government, 2) Grants from the State Off-Highway Motor Vehicle Recreation (OHMVR) Commission, and 3) more recently, user camping fees.

Unfortunately, with the 9/11 disaster, and the war in Iraq, the Federal Government bank account has been seriously drained over the past year or two. Funding for recreation in the ISDRA does not happen to be a top-priority item.

Then, with the current composition of the OHMVR Commission, funds that have traditionally been granted to the El Centro BLM office to support the operation and maintenance of the ISDRA have been virtually eliminated. It has always been considered appropriate that the State OHMVR "Green Sticker" fund help support areas like the ISDRA since so many Californians recreate there. The current Chairman of the Commission has made it clear that, unless the closures in the dunes resulting from the lawsuit were made permanent, he would see to it that the grants to the ISDRA were terminated. Since he has the enthusiastic support of three of the other six Commission members, he is succeeding with his threat. Over one million dollars of funding voted down by the Commission for this year's operation and maintenance has to be made up somehow!

So the Business Managers of the ISDRA are faced with a dilemma! How can they fund the improvements proposed in the RAMP and the necessary services at the ISDRA when Federal funding is very scarce and the OHMVR Commission is denying operation and maintenance grants to the ISDRA? Unless someone can talk Bill Gates, or Ford Motor Company, or Hewlett Packard into shifting some of the money they give to support environmental preservation to help with the operation of the ISDRA, the only other source of funding available is the user fee program!

Once this "Necessary Evil" is understood and accepted as inevitable, lacking any other options, a method of implementing a necessary sufficient fee program is needed.

Many options were analyzed by the contractor to attempt to determine the most acceptable method of recovering the costs necessary to keep open and operate the ISDRA without future help from the OHMVR Commission grants. None of the options are a perfect solution for every dunes enthusiast! Daily fees, weekly fees, holiday fees, and season passes are all part of the mix. Unfortunately, the BLM had not planned on the loss of support from the "Green Sticker" fund, and a need to increase the user fee program, so not a lot of data is available on actual usage, vehicle counts, numbers of visitors per vehicle, etc. This information is necessary to determine what fee must be charged to individual camping units to generate enough revenue to supplement the necessary funding. So the contractor, with input from the ISDRA Technical Review Team (TRT), used the best data available to come up with a fee program that is necessary but justified by the best analysis possible. Is it perfect? Definitely not! It is clearly defined and trackable so that the results can be monitored and modified for future years and adjustments can be made. As with any business plan, the ISDRA Business Plan needs to be flexible to accommodate future needs and future understanding of the actual operation of the business. If excess funds are generated, the fee can be reduced in future years. Likewise, if a shortage still exists, in order to continue operation, the fees may have to be increased.

From the individual user standpoint, two important guarantees have been offered by the BLM:

• The ISDRA TRT will continue to advise the BLM on the expenditure of the user fees. TRT members will be continually updated on operational needs and costs associated. This will be a step in the direction of making sure that fees are spent on efforts that users desire as much as feasible.
• The BLM has assured the TRT that the funds collected at the ISDRA will ALL be expended within the ISDRA and will not go into some general fund bucket with a hole in the bottom.

As with any complicated plans, it is clear that one can pick apart particular areas of the plan as undesirable, unacceptable, or even incorrect. However, unless the over-all plan is considered and optional approaches are offered, it is not appropriate to pick at particular pieces. Business Plans, just like new house plans, are always a compromise. Maybe you would like a window on that side of the house but, if that's where the sun shines in all afternoon, it may not be a good idea. All business plans make similar compromises. The important thing is that the plan is not a block of concrete. If certain assumptions and implementation techniques turn out to be less than optimum, they can always be changed. They can always come back and put a window in that side of the house.

Finally, this discussion would not be complete without addressing the subject of "compliance". Compliance is a figure that describes the number of visitors to the ISDRA that actually pay the fees. Current estimates by the BLM of compliance ranges from 26 to 40%. Compliance figures for the southern dunes are much higher than compliance in the Glamis/northern dunes area. By simply improving the compliance figure, much of the funding shortfall can be made up. No dunes enthusiast actually likes paying fees. All sorts of valid reasons can be cited as to why it is not fair. But, the bottom line is that, when one camping unit avoids paying a fee, all of that unit's neighbors who are paying a fee will have to make up for that unit's shortfall! Simply stated, if the costs to run the ISDRA Business are not recovered, the area cannot continue to operate - just like Disneyland, or your favorite ski resort.

Just for the record, the use fees at the ISDRA for the coming year will be $25 per week or $90 for a season pass.