About

On August 15, 2019, California State Parks and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced the unveiling of an Auburn State Recreation Area Draft Management Plan at an “open house” style public meeting held in the El Dorado County town of Cool. The Draft Management Plan claims that over 1,000,000 people visit this 30,000-acre river canyon per year. This is a plan to expand the area’s capacity by up to 400,000 additional visitors in an area with few access points and heavy peak season congestion. There are plans to build campsites along several remote and dangerous sections of river as well as behind the town of Cool. No plans were outlined to mitigate for the additional visitors, the increased fire danger nor the increased traffic congestion on a windy, two lane highway through a rugged canyon.

El Dorado County residents knowledgeable about the Draft Plan were outraged that the agencies had not sought community input from El Dorado County residents during the Plan’s development. We allege that:

• river access points are already at capacity,
• the extreme fire danger was not addressed in the Plan,
• drownings and rescues are increasing every year and
• traffic on an important section of highway is already a severe problem.

We organized to form the Divide Action Coalition to organize and focus community input. We morphed into a non-profit organization called the American River Community Coalition (ARCC) in January 2020 to continue asking the agencies to consider the residents’ concerns regarding the public lands that surround us.