Judge orders survey to locate
road through Yuba Goldfields

MARYSVILLE (12/17/02 (YSN) -- A judge has ordered a survey to map out a possible route for a controversial public access road through the Yuba Goldfields to the Yuba River.

Yuba County Superior Court Judge David Wasilenko Monday picked Von Geldern Engineering of Marysville to perform the survey and ordered Yuba County to pay for it.

Western Aggregates Inc. -- a surface mining firm with extensive operations in the goldfields -- said it disagreed with the road's proposed location and objected to Wasilenko's further decision that it may be required to reimburse the county for the cost of the survey.

The road would replace an eight-mile stretch of a gold rush era thoroughfare stage coaches and supply wagons once followed from Marysville eastward through small mining towns to Nevada City.

Residents of a ghost town landlocked inside properties controlled by Western Aggregates have campaigned for more than a decade to get the road reopened. Western Aggregates has maintained the road was abandoned and it erected locked gates to bar entry,

The county board of supervisors initially determined in 1996 that the road was public, but reversed itself in 1997. The residents, a labor union, along with recreation and environmental groups joined in a successful suit to force the road's opening.

In the years the road was closed, mining operations obliterated sections of the original road. The appeals court ruled a replacement route must be mapped out and constructed, hence the new survey.

Wasilenko ordered the engineering firm and the parties to return to court Jan. 27 to hear a progress report on the survey.