The following day Naomi tried to make contact with either Robert or Hawker at the main meadow CLAM unit to discuss the matter. Both refused to meet with her because she didn't have any technical knowledge of communications uses. She returned approximately an hour later with Chuck Howard, who is the communications person on the Incident Management Team. Hawker was at CALM and did talk with them however was uncooperative in providing the requested information. He insisted that it was an FCC matter and not a special uses matter because they had an FCC license. It was explained to him that if the communications equipment would have stayed in a mobile state, i.e. in/on the van as it was last year, that would be true, however once an improvement was erected on National Forest System lands, it became a permit issue. He said he did not acknowledge the permit and therefore did not consider it a permit issue. Hawker was asked for the power output of the repeater and the height of the tower so that we could make a determination as to whether or not their communications equipment would interfere with other existing local or government communications. He refused to provide the power output only stating that it ranged somewhere within 5 to 50 watts and refused to provide the height of the tower.
Previous approval of communications uses is especially important because your frequencies could interfere with existing local or government use, therefore your frequencies and power output must be pre-approved if they are going to be placed on an improvement erected on National Forest System lands. Again, if the equipment would have remained in a mobile state, any interference caused by the equipment being on site would have remained an FCC issue; however that is not the case in this instance.
In this case we were willing to work with you to approve the tower after the fact because we were able to determine with the information we had that the use would not interfere with any known existing uses and felt our working relationship to date overall has been very good and I did not want to see one action ruin that, however as I stated in my letter yesterday that was a cover to the permit amendment that approved the tower after the fact, the Forest Service had the authority to confiscate it. I recommend that at future gatherings you work with the Forest Service ahead of time in order to avoid the possibility of confiscation of unapproved improvements.
I would also like to bring to your attention that various other permit violations have occurred and have been documented in the form of incident reports by the permit administration team. To date, these include 66 reports of dogs off leash or otherwise confined, 21 reports of camping too close to a stream, 2 reports of cutting green vegetation, 1 report of resource damage due to installation of stone steps on a trail leading to a camp, 1 report of cutting a standing dead tree, 1 report of abandon property, 3 reports of camping within 50 feet of an open road, 1 report of a kitchen being placed within 150 feet of an open road, 1 report of parking in a posted no parking area, 1 report of washing dishes in a stream, 1 report of dumping gray water in a stream, 1 report of a latrine too close to a stream, 1 report of parking on an open road where the vehicle's wheels were not completely off the road, and one report of camping outside the permit area boundary. These violations do not include the numerous incident reports, warnings and citations issued by law enforcement.
Notice of Noncompliance	^      Page 2 of 3