OROVILLE — For years, the Craig Access Road that runs between the northeastern and southeastern branches of Lake Oroville has provided a headache for the Butte County Board of Supervisors.
The Department of Water Resources-owned road was built around the same time the Oroville Dam was being constructed in the early ’60s to provide public access to the lake. DWR had originally planned to build a large campground at the end of the road to support almost a thousand individual campsites.
At some point, plans provided to Butte County by DWR stopped showing the campsite and it never came to fruition.
Flash forward to 2019. There are around 214 assessed parcels of land that need the road in order to be accessed.
“You have everything from simple, one-room shacks to mansions out there,” said Butte County Public Works Director Dennis Schmidt.
Despite the signs of life in the area, the road itself is in disrepair.
Access
Of the owned parcels of property, only a handful have deeded access to the road. That means the property owners holding DWR-granted deeds are able to use the road as they please.
The gravel road hasn’t been properly maintained, so driving it can be tricky for the average vehicle.
To complicate the situation even further, there is a bridge on the road that can’t support the weight of emergency vehicles such as fire engines.
“This bridge has been one of the challenges from the get-go because bridges are really expensive,” Schmidt said.
Butte County’s Chief Administrative Officer Sheri McCraken said the roadway becomes a tough subject because the jurisdiction to fix it doesn’t particularly fall anywhere unless the county takes it on, which is a long process in itself.
A long road ahead
McCraken said there is a way to potentially solve the problem, but it requires a series of “if/then” scenarios and significant planning by both the county and DWR.
DWR is surveying the roadway to collect data and give a proposal to the county, at which point the two entities must agree on a road standard and come up with a 30 percent plan.
From there, Butte County would calculate an annual maintenance cost and individual parcel fees to cover both the annual and long-term repairs. This would show up on the parcel owners’ tax bills.
Representatives from both DWR and the county would then have to meet with property owners to check on whether or not there is any interest in paying for special maintenance costs. If there is no interest, DWR keeps the road and the whole scenario reverts back to square one.
If there is interest by the property owners, the democratic process takes over and they vote. A majority vote means the road maintenance and fees goes before the Butte County Board of Supervisors. The board will then vote on whether or not to take on the road.
Should the board agree, DWR will do a road design, and the county will then have to approve said design. DWR does the work, the county inspects and approves the work and finally, the road goes into the county’s inventory and the proper maintenance will be part of the Butte County’s regular business.
On the back burner
Both DWR and Butte County have been having conversations about the road for years.
While McCraken said the conversations have proven to be productive, the issue has been pushed aside a couple of times now thanks to local disasters.
The first time it was put on hold, DWR was neck-deep in the Oroville Spillway Crisis in 2017.
In December 2017, the Board of Supervisors approved an ordinance that limited building in the area until the road situation could be worked out and residence could have adequate access. That limitation was extended in January 2018.
Following that, any more progress was halted on the county’s end in 2018 when the Camp Fire torched much of the east side of Butte County.
On Nov. 19, Craig Access Road found its way once again in the public eye when an informative presentation was given to the Board of Supervisors getting the board up to date on the issue.
McCraken said, should the process of getting the county to take on the road go smoothly, it could still take up to three years or so.
Other property
Private property owners aren’t the only ones with a stake in this.
The state and DWR still own large portions of land on the road and near the lake. On an even larger scale, the federal government also owns property that requires the road for access.
Two tribal cemeteries also have portions of land closer to the lake.
