MINERAL – A large meadow, a small but cherished lake and historic facilities at Drakesbad Guest Ranch are slated for changes under a comprehensive plan proposed by Lassen Volcanic National Park officials.

Drakesbad Meadow, a 90- acre peat fen in the southern part of the park, would be restored to its naturally wet condition if the plan favored by Lassen Park Superintendent Darlene M. Koontz is adopted.

She and her crews also would remove a 1932 dam that created Dream Lake and allow that area to revert to a wetland complex.

At Drakesbad Guest Ranch, volleyball courts, generators and propane tanks would be moved into a new service center outside the Drakesbad Historic District.

All of the proposed changes are designed to protect and preserve the area's unique natural resources as well as the historical integrity of the visitor facilities built before Lassen Park was established in 1916, Koontz said.

They are included in one of the three alternatives proposed in a draft environmental study released in August. The agency also analyzed the effects of taking no action and a proposal that would reduce the meadow restoration and, instead of removing the Dream Lake dam, would reconstruct it.

Not everyone embraces the alternative favored by Koontz and other Lassen officials. Charley Watson, a geological consultant based in Chester, said too little scientific study has gone into the Warner Valley Comprehensive Site Plan.

"There is no fen," Watson said, challenging the credentials of the scientists who identified it and conducted the studies that are the basis for Lassen Park's proposed restoration of Drakesbad Meadow. "I hope to send them packing – back to the drawing board."

Controversy over how to manage the Drakesbad area has been bubbling for nearly a decade. A southern gateway to the Lassen Park backcountry, the region includes a boiling lake, hot springs and the park's largest peat fen, said Louise Johnson, Lassen's chief of natural and cultural resources. Northbound hikers on the Pacific Crest Trail enter the park through Warner Valley en route to Oregon, Washington and Canada.

Lassen Park officials began conducting public meetings in 2002 to discuss management options for Dream Lake, a pond about 150 yards across at its widest point. Visitors have been fishing and enjoying the quiet beauty of Dream Lake since it was created by owners of Drakesbad Guest Ranch, a resort that predates the park itself.

In 2000, a federal Bureau of Reclamation study found the Dream Lake dam was in poor condition. The safety evaluation recommended either strengthening or removing the dam, which impounds waters flowing from a handful of small springs.

The prospect of losing Dream Lake by breaching the dam drew strong opposition from longtime visitors, who cited the lake as the attraction that drew them to Lassen Park year after year.

Their campaign to save the lake has been diluted by time. In 2004, Lassen Park officials expanded their management plan to include the entire Drakesbad area, and then put it on hold altogether. Revived under the current management proposal, the preferred alternative puts Lassen Park on record in favor of removing the dam and restoring the natural riparian habitat.

Watson, whose family has been visiting the Drakesbad area since 1926, said Dream Lake will "take care of itself," gradually filling in on its own. He is more concerned about the proposal to fill in ditches that drain Drakesbad Meadow.

That is part of the plan to restore the peat fen, which depends on water sheeting across the ground surface, said Johnson, Lassen's resource manager.

Watson said only two of the handful of ditches are man-made. The others are natural channels, he said.

And he criticized other aspects of the management plan, including relocating guest ranch buildings, parking and trails.

"I applaud Darlene Koontz for starting this process, and I plan to work with her to get it right," Watson said.

Once park officials have completed public circulation of their management alternatives, they will issue a final environmental impact study and management decision. The final decision will be made by the regional director of the U.S. Department of Interior.