RDU cites trails and trespassing as reasons for new fence near Umstead State Park
An earlier version of this story misstated the height of the planned fence. It has been corrected.
The fence that Raleigh-Durham International Airport wants to build near Umstead State Park is needed to keep off-road cyclists from building and using trails through its property, the airport’s chief operating officer said Thursday.
RDU eventually plans to build 18 miles of fencing around its entire perimeter, but will start this winter with wooded areas off Reedy Creek Road near the park, said Bill Sandifer. Cyclists and hikers have used that land for years, blazing a network of trails through the woods and building bridges, jumps and obstacles for bikes to navigate.
Those trails and structures have degraded streams on the property and pose a legal liability for the airport, Sandifer told members of the Raleigh-Durham Airport Authority on Thursday. Sandifer said state officials have told the airport that the trails violate environmental rules designed to protect streams in the Neuse River basin.
“Trespassing is continuing. Trespassing activity is creating significant environmental damage that we’re now responsible for correcting,” he told board members. “That trespassing has caused artificial conditions on the property that place the authority at a pretty high level of risk of exposure to potential legal liability. Frankly, I’m surprised we haven’t been sued.”
RDU will meet with state parks officials Jan. 9 to discuss how to deal with a portion of Umstead park’s Reedy Creek multi-use trail that is on airport property. Sandifer says the airport doesn’t intend to cut off access to the trail or the park, and that options include moving the trail or leasing land to the parks department so it can remain where it is.
The fenced-off property will include 105 acres that the airport has leased to Wake Stone Corp. for a quarry. Opponents of the quarry have been pressing the airport to make that land and hundreds of other acres along Reedy Creek Road available to the public for recreation.
“We don’t sanction trespassing,” said Natalie Lew, a cyclist involved with a coalition that calls itself RDU Forest. “But we do know it’s being used. It’s being used because there’s demand for it. So how do we act as good neighbors with the airport to get the area sanctioned for usage for everybody, not just bikers?”
Lew also questioned RDU’s concerns about the environmental impacts of the bike trails when it has leased 105 acres of the land for an open-pit mine.
Fence will be patrolled
In late 2017, the airport authority agreed to lease 151 acres off Reedy Creek Road to Wake County for use by hikers and cyclists. Wake County has not come back to the airport to work out a lease, Sandifer said.
Sandifer said the chain-link fence will be eight feet tall, topped with three strings of barbed wire, and will run down the center of a 30-foot clearing the airport would cut through the woods to provide continued access. Because previous efforts to discourage trespassing, with signs and by dismantling home-made bridges and jumps, have failed, the airport will have to patrol the fence, he said.
“We fully expect that the fence will be cut, the fence will be knocked down,” he said. “Trespassing will continue, and we’re going to have to manage that.”
Sandifer also said the clearing for the fence would be set back 10 feet from the airport’s property line, creating a bit of a buffer with the park. Any further back, he said, and someone would probably create a bike trail along the fence on the airport’s property.
“There has been a consistent effort on the part of trespassers to construct trails on RDU property to avoid Umstead State Park. And you know why?” he said. “Because the park rangers are very, very active in enforcing the activity that occurs in Umstead State Park. ... Single-track off-road mountain bike trails are not allowed in the state park.”
After the meeting with the state, Sandifer said he expects to ask the airport authority to approve a $2.4 million contract to build about eight miles of fencing on the east side of the airport. If the authority agrees, construction would begin soon after, except in places where RDU may need environmental permits.
This story was originally published December 19, 2019 at 3:25 PM with the headline "RDU cites trails and trespassing as reasons for new fence near Umstead State Park."
