Gov't Shutdown River Maybe Closed?

[jdmidwest]

The biggest load of crap will be that congress and the almighty president will continue to receive a pay check. Like THEY are essential...

They are "essentially" the cause of the fiasco.

[Outside Bend]

This could get ugly. Kinda feel sorry for the flak that skeleton crew is going to face when they tell someone they can't put on.

Precisely. The potential shutdown isn't the fault Park Service, it's the fault of our legislators. If you're upset you won't be able to access the river this weekend, you should be contacting our elected representitives who created the situation, not the folks who had no say in it.

Without getting too political, the bulk of our federal (and state) resource agency employees (Park Service, Forest Service, Fish & Wildlife Service, USGS etc), Put a lot of time and sweat equity, for little pay and public support, to provide the best possible experience for the greatest number of users while maintaining the integrity of the areas they manage. Trust me, most of these folks would rather be working than not- but nonessential employees are prohibited from doing so while the government is shut down.

If you're going to be mad about this, at least be mad at the right people.

[Buzz]

They are "essentially" the cause of the fiasco.

Thier inability to work together is what really ticks me off. It's all a big pissing match. Until they start working together to accomplish what "We The People" want them to accomplish and quit trying to make the other side the bad guys we will never see anything positive come out of this or any other administration.

[steve l]

OK, but how do you close a river? It's not like you lock the doors to a bldg.

[Al Agnew]

Glad to see that many are putting the blame for this near disaster where it belongs. The Park Service employees, right up to the superintendent, would have not been to blame if the shutdown had occurred. They would just be doing what they were told to do according to the law.

In "non-traditional parks" like the Buffalo National River and Ozark National Scenic Riverways, there should be different rules than there are on a park that you can simply close by shutting the gates and locking the doors. The Park Service no more owns the water on the Current than the private landowners own the water on the other Ozark streams. If you can legally get on the river, you should be able to float and fish it. I can understand closing campgrounds, which have to be maintained and policed with fees collected. But there should be no reason to close un-gated accesses.

But you can also probably blame our litigious society as well. On a typical Ozark river with a myriad of landowners, it's not too easy to sue somebody if you do something stupid and get yourself hurt. But on these federally owned rivers, if the government is shut down and only a skeleton crew is left to patrol the river and perhaps not enough people available to rescue somebody in trouble or get them off the river if a flash flood is imminent, I could easily see some doofus suing the Feds for their own stupidity.

Just something to think about.

[steve l]

OK our lawyer friends - wouldn't sovereign immunity apply here?