FORKS — Proposed changes at Lake Ozette were hot buttons at an open house on Olympic National Park’s draft general management plan mapping the park’s future.
Everything from limiting motor boat use to expanding the park’s boundary east of the lake were discussed by community members and park staff.
About 20 residents of the West End attended Monday’s open house staffed by 16 National Park Service employees at the state Department of Natural Resources in Forks.
Seasonal West End resident Roger Hyppa traveled from Seattle for Monday’s open house to discuss his concerns about the park’s proposed boundary expansion.
For Hyppa, 68, the boundary expansion included in three of the park’s four management alternatives is about more than property lines.
It’s about saving a family legacy dating back four generations, he said.
Homestead at lake
Hyppa’s great-grandparents, Verne and Tonette Pederson, homesteaded 160 acres of land on the southeast bank of the lake near Tivoli Island in the 1890s.
The land was split among relatives and family friends in 1898 when the health of Hyppa’s great-grandmother started to fail, he said.
Today, only three of the original 160 acres still belong to Hyppa’s family, with the remainder belonging mostly to the park.
Hyppa was the only relative with land at Lake Ozette who didn’t sell in the park’s 1976 buyout of private property along the east bank, he said.
“It’s going to be a continued struggle to keep the land,” Hyppa said.
He wants to hold onto it for his great-grandchildren, he said.
Preferred alternative
Of the three management alternatives calling for a boundary expansion, the park’s preferred alternative in the draft master plan calls for annexing the least amount of land from the Ozette watershed — 12,000 acres.
The primary purpose of obtaining the land is to reduce sediment run-off into Lake Ozette, said Rick Wagner, the National Park Service’s realty manager for its Pacific West regional office.
The many rivers and creeks feeding into Lake Ozette are carrying a significant amount of sediment and interrupting sockeye salmon spawning, Wagner said.
Much of the 12,000 acres the park wants to acquire in the Ozette watershed is owned by logging companies and the state Department of Natural Resources, he said.
Park spokeswoman Barb Maynes said the land would be acquired only from willing sellers.