HAUSER — A Coos County Parks Department crew was busy in the bright sunshine Thursday, laying the foundation for a bathroom and shower facility at Riley Ranch County Park. Around them, the grass planted last year had sprouted. Riley Ranch was starting to look like a real campground.

But the park’s most enticing feature, a 1-mile gravel trail giving ATV access to the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area through Forest Service land, remained covered by tall grass Thursday, signaling Coos County’s quest to have a point of dunes NRA access all its own is far from complete. There is good news for the county parks department, though: May 1 the Forest Service upheld a decision to allow the trail.

The ongoing construction at Riley Ranch shows that county personnel still are confident the access trail will happen. Just not when they’d hoped. Again.

“It will become a designated trail and we will have a dedicated easement,” said Coos County Parks Director Larry Robison, standing in the overgrown access trail.

But the process is far from over.

The county purchased Riley Ranch in 2002, intending to turn it into an ATV hub with dunes access. But the project has been riddled with setbacks. Coos County needs to obtain easements to put the trail through National Forest lands and build a bridge over the railroad, now owned by the International Port of Coos Bay.

The Forest Service was forced to take a second look at the plan when environmental groups took issue with the project in January. The access trail’s main detractor, The Center for Biological Diversity, based in Tuscon, Ariz., flooded the Forest Service with letters during a public comment period early this year. Among the major concerns were: The Forest Service failed to designate motorized trails within an allotted three-year period when the dunes NRA management plan was passed in 1994; a section of the land the trail would pass through is designated MA 10C, which is closed to motorized use; and that the trail violates the Forest Service’s 2001 Roadless Rule.

Local groups are involved as well. A representative of Umpqua Watersheds, Inc., said the Forest Service hasn’t done enough to keep ATV users on designated trails. She went on to say that needs to be fixed before more access is allowed, because the proposed trail passes through areas of rare and endangered vegetation.

 “Having a designated trail before they address the bigger issue will exacerbate the real problem,” said Francis Eatherington, conservation coordinator for Umpqua Watersheds, Inc. “There needs to be public education on what areas are open for riding and what areas are closed for riding. The forest service’s proposal really doesn’t fix that problem.”

The Forest Service now believes it has resolved those issues, removing a requirement that motorized vehicle trails be designated within three years of the plan’s creation and planning a public comment process to designate trails in those areas this summer.

“I think we’ve done a thorough analysis and I think we’ve got a defensible decision,” said Pam Gardner, Forest Service district ranger for the Central Coast. “We recognize that those routes need to be identified. But we also recognize that there’s a lot of public interest in where these routes are.”

As of right now, the Forest Service has given Riley Ranch’s access trail a green light. But an appeal period for the decision is currently open through June 15. And the Center for Biological Diversity and its allies won’t take the decision lying down.

“It’s probably likely at this stage that we will submit a formal appeal,” said John Busey, staff attorney for The Center for Biological Diversity. “It becomes a semantic issue, with the Forest Service calling it a trail in order to put it through a roadless area. … By any layman’s perspective it would be considered a road.”

The Forest Service decision can only be appealed by parties who commented during the original public comments session in January. If that happens, the plan will be remanded to an appeals committee in Portland, which would have 45 days to pass judgment. It could be avoided with an informal meeting with the appellants to reach a consensus, but that’s not likely.

“Sometimes that works. Rarely it does,” said Forest Service Forest Planner Frank Davis.

As the plan makes its way through the cumbersome public process, Coos County Parks Department personnel are moving forward with the park under the assumption the trail will exist. The park now has 53 sites with full water and electrical hookups — when completed the park will have 95 — and the indoor bathroom facility will have men’s and women’s bathrooms and four showers.

Robison said the park was perhaps half-full over Memorial Day weekend, mainly due to overflow from people who couldn’t get into Horsfall or Spinreel campgrounds. They took advantage of a free ATV shuttle service from Riley Ranch to dunes access areas.

“It worked good,” Robison said. “Everybody liked it and was appreciative of the service.”

Of course, the county would like the shuttle service to only be temporary.

If nobody appeals the Forest Service’s decision, construction could start as soon as July, Robison said. An appeal would push the decision into August or September, however.

Once the appeals committee makes its call, the Forest Service process would be over. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the issue would be resolved.

“If the appellant still doesn’t like the decision, the next step would be litigation,” Davis said.