Concerned equestrians are speaking up against the draft of the new Folsom Lake State Recreation Area General Plan, hoping to bring to attention to the needs of horseback riders in the area.

With the extended public comment period that ends April 8, the equestrian community has been given more time to review the draft and bring suggestions up to The California State Parks and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

Some revisions have been made since the original plan was created in 1979, but city planners have been working on drafting the new plan since 2002. The recreation area includes Folsom Lake and Lake Natoma, and contains camp grounds and several trails for biking, hiking and horseback riding.

"What is in danger of happening, had the equestrians not spoken up, is that some of our existing facilities and trails that were shown in the 1979 plan would never have been completed and are in danger of being omitted and overlooked," said Deborah Murphy, equestrian and daily park user.

While the city inadvertently left out some of the equestrian staging areas and existing facilities in the general plan, it is not something hard to fix, said Jim Micheaels, park and recreation specialist.

One major concern for equestrians is safety on the trails, Murphy said.

With steep drops and long winding paths on certain trails, both equestrians and mountain bikers alike enjoy the trails.

However, horses have a traveling speed of 2-5 mph while mountain bikers sometimes go up to 30 mph. Horses can easily get spooked and forced off the trails, said Donna Williams, a Loomis resident who often rides the Sacramento Recreation Area trails.

“About 90 percent of equestrian riders are women,” Williams said. “We go out there for pleasure and it just puts our world back into perspective. To go out there and have to worry about our safety makes life difficult.”

Williams said she hopes to see more “mixed-use corridors,” which would offer parallel trails with each designated for single use, instead of the “mixed day” use the city proposed, which would provide alternating schedules for bikers and equestrians on same trails.

While the proposal may be a good solution in theory, it would be nearly impossible to enforce with the current state of the park budget, Williams said.

“It's like opening up I-80 with no CHP enforcement,” Williams said. “There are some really great, hard-working and respectable mountain bikers out there, but you have to have some control over people who are going to break rules.”

Micheaels said while there are no more stakeholder meetings for the general plan, the city welcomes community input until the extended deadline.

While the general plan will not be making changes to specific trails or uses, it will be creating a framework for the trail plan that will make specific changes once the general plan has been finalized, he said.

Comments must be received or postmarked by April 8, 2008 and sent to: Jim Micheaels, California Parks, Gold Fields District, 7806 Folsom Auburn Road, Folsom, CA 95630.