{"id":70151,"date":"2016-09-30T23:18:36","date_gmt":"2016-10-01T05:18:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/village-at-wolf-creek-lawsuit-inches-forward\/"},"modified":"2016-10-01T05:18:36","modified_gmt":"2016-10-01T05:18:36","slug":"village-at-wolf-creek-lawsuit-inches-forward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/village-at-wolf-creek-lawsuit-inches-forward\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Village at Wolf Creek\u2019 lawsuit inches forward"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"A
A coalition of conservation groups filed an opening brief against a proposed land swap near the base of Wolf Creek Ski Area, in which B.J. \u201cRed\u201d McCombs would trade a portion of his land that includes road access, seen here leading from the ski area in the lower left to the center of the picture. In return, he would gain access to his development and land from a stretch of U.S. Highway 160 in the center of the picture.<\/span>Durango Herald file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

A coalition of conservation groups on Thursday submitted an opening brief as part of a lawsuit that aims to stop a land exchange on Wolf Creek Pass that would allow a village with the capacity for 8,000 people in a remote part of Southwest Colorado.<\/p>\n

In a Friday news release, the coalition \u2013 which includes Rocky Mountain Wild, San Juan Citizens Alliance and San Luis Ecosystem Council \u2013 said the U.S. Forest Service unlawfully limited the scope of an environmental analysis and failed to serve the public interest.<\/p>\n

\u201cDespite promises to carry out a lawful and transparent analysis of the landowner\u2019s plans, the Forest Service produced an analysis of development concepts based on many of the same violations,\u201d Travis Stills, attorney with Energy & Conservation Law, said in a prepared statement.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit stems from a 2015 decision by the U.S. Forest Service\u2019s Rio Grande district that would swap 205 acres of public land for 177 acres of private land within the boundaries of the Rio Grande National Forest. The lawsuit was filed in June 2015.<\/p>\n

The deal would give Texas billionaire and developer B.J. \u201cRed\u201d McCombs road access his project \u2013 the Village at Wolf Creek, an Aspen-sized village at the base of Wolf Creek Ski Area \u2013 has lacked since the 1980s.<\/p>\n

Conservation groups opposed to the land exchange further argued that the process to approve the deal was biased, evidenced by 100,000 pages of documents received under the Freedom of Information Act, which they say show collusion between the Forest Service and McCombs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Forest Service erected road blocks at every juncture, forcing us to file suit to get information that should have been readily available to the public,\u201d Matt Sandler, attorney for Rocky Mountain Wild, said in a prepared statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven though the Forest Service has refused to disclose records kept by the contractors who prepared the environmental analysis, we are confident our brief demonstrates to the judge that this was a fatally flawed process,\u201d Sandler said.<\/p>\n

Representatives for the Forest Service and developers of the Village at Wolf Creek have maintained that there was no undue influence in the process of the environmental analysis.<\/p>\n

The defendants have 60 days to file a response to the U.S. District Court of Colorado, followed by another 60-day period for the plaintiffs to file a response.<\/p>\n

According to the news release, all documents and arguments are expected to be in the hands of Senior Judge Richard P. Matsch by Feb. 2, 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Opponents of development file opening brief<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":70152,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[13,549,372],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-70151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-united-states-forest-service","tag-wolf-creek-ski-area"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70151\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70151"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=70151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}