11/26/2014
Fremont Weir parking lot remains closed Davis Enterprise
Wednesday, November 26, 2014
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Fremont Weir parking lot remains
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By Elizabeth Case
From page A1 | November 26, 2014 |
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The Fremont Weir Wildlife Area parking lot in far northern Yolo County
remains closed for the hunting season, after land owners on Grey’s Bend
discovered the lot built by the state Department of Water Resources in
the 1970s is on their private property.
The mixup seems to have happened during an exchange between public
and private owners in 1978: the two parcels along the river, one of which
houses the parking lot, for land within the floodway. Documents
obtained from DWR confirm that an easement was written in to the
agreement to allow DWR personnel to access the levee for repair and
maintenance.
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John Dunnigan, senior staff counsel for the department, said there is no
record of a similar agreement to allow public visitors to park on the plot.
To make matters more confusing, it remains unclear whether the parking
lot was built before or after the property exchange.
The weir provides 1,400 acres of wetlands along the Yolo Bypass and just
south of the Yolo­Sutter county line and is often used as hunting
grounds for waterfowl, pheasants, morning dove, cottontail and
jackrabbits. Access remains open via County Road 16, where visitors can
park along the levee. When the drainage ditch that runs on the inside of
the levee is flowing, visitors have to walk about a mile to enter the
wetlands.
“This is a county resource that county residents use,” said Andrew Fulks,
who chairs Yolo’s Parks and Wildlife Advisory Committee. “The (Board of
Supervisors) needs to look at alternatives.”
The Department of Fish and Wildlife first realized there was a problem
when visitors complained in late 2013 that a man refused to allow them
to park. Fish and Wildlife runs the Fremont Weir Wildlife Area for DWR,
which owns the land and maintains the levees.
Representatives from Fish and Wildlife had been in conversation with
owners Mary O. Edson and her relative John Edson, director of the Deer
Creek Irrigation District, about possibly selling the land or setting up a
public easement that would allow people to park in the lot. However,
those talks have ceased.
“There has been no further communication with the landowner,” said
Joshua Bush, a wildlife biologist with Fish and Wildlife. “He said he
would contact us if he was interested in selling/granting an easement. …
There is no legal easement through the west side and no prescriptive
easement because the 116A is not on Sutter County’s roster of maintained
roads.”
Fulks said he does not blame the property owners for wanting to protect
their land. Rather, he hopes Sutter and Yolo County supervisors can
encourage cooperation between the Edsons and the state departments.
But, he said, “(the Edsons) can’t think the public is just going to walk
away.”
County lines also obfuscate the issue.
The Edson’s property lies within Sutter County, on a tail­shaped piece of
land that juts into Yolo County. The borders were defined in the 1800s,
when the Sacramento River carved out Grey’s Bend, an oxbow, and
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11/26/2014
Fremont Weir parking lot remains closed Davis Enterprise
county lines followed the path of the river. The bend has since been cut
off from the main waterway. A similar situation occurs just east of the
weir, except here, Yolo sticks into Sutter.
So while the main users of the Fremont Weir are Yolo County residents,
and Road 116, which leads to the parking lot, is a Yolo County road, the
landowners and land in question are in Sutter County. The roughly 800
feet of road that runs from the Sutter County line to the parking lot has
not been maintained by county staff.
Documents from the Department of Fish and Wildlife show that the land
was owned by the Wallace L. and Mary O. Edson Family Revocable Trust
until earlier this year, when the property was transferred in full to Mary
Edson in March. The Enterprise made numerous requests, but neither
Mary Edson nor John Edson, who was previously in contact with Fish
and Wildlife, could be reached for comment.
— Reach Elizabeth Case at [email protected] or 530­747­8052.
Follow her on Twitter at @elizabeth_case
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