[env-trinity] SacBee 6-19-2011: Troubled Waters of Battle Creek

Mon Jun 20 12:56:33 PDT 2011

  Troubled waters of Battle Creek

      mweiser at sacbee.com

        Published Sunday, Jun. 19, 2011

MANTON -- Here at Battle Creek, an icy stream that tumbles off Mount 
Lassen, state and federal agencies are spending $128 million to bring 
endangered salmon back to 48 miles of water blocked by dams for nearly a 
century.

At the same time, another arm of state government is allowing clear-cut 
logging on thousands of acres just upstream, which some scientists say 
could jeopardize the costly restoration project.

The Battle Creek Salmon and Steelhead Restoration Project is considered 
the largest of its kind in the nation. It involves removing five dams 
owned by Pacific Gas and Electric Co., and modifying four others so 
steelhead and winter- and spring-run salmon can pass.

Battle Creek may be the last shot at survival for the species, all of 
which are endangered.

Scientists say the logging, if not managed carefully, could handicap the 
expensive restoration. The danger: Erosion from clear-cut forest tracts 
could smother spawning habitat before salmon have a chance to use it.

The apparent conflict in government missions, critics say, points to 
flaws in the state's management of logging on private land.

"There should be enforcement to protect (Battle Creek) water quality," 
said Pat Higgins, a fisheries biologist who has consulted on the 
restoration. "Instead, they're allowing unlimited (tree) cutting, and 
it's still going on."

The trees are cut by Sierra Pacific Industries, a privately held company 
based in nearby Anderson and the state's largest property owner.

The company is in the early stages of a strategy to boost lumber 
production. It includes logging in other watersheds important to salmon, 
such as the American River, where federal officials face a 2020 deadline 
to restore salmon above Folsom Dam.

The logging at Battle Creek complies with state law and is overseen by 
the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, also known as 
Cal Fire. Sierra Pacific says its operations are tightly regulated.

"There is a whole lot of inherent protection in the rules," said Ed 
Murphy, the company's manager of resource information systems.

Sierra Pacific uses a technique called "even-age management," the 
California regulatory term for clear-cutting. The goal is to convert a 
large percentage of its acreage, essentially, to pine plantations.

Sierra Pacific has submitted 16 logging plans over the past 12 years for 
almost 20,000 acres in the Battle Creek watershed.

In a typical even-age logging plan, all vegetation is removed from 
multiple 20-acre parcels, leaving a checkerboard pattern of bare ground 
that may span 1,000 acres or more. One or two oaks and standing dead 
trees are usually left as "habitat diversity."

Then each parcel is replanted with pine seedlings. Herbicides are 
sprayed to eliminate competing vegetation before planting.

Marily Woodhouse has lived in Manton for 22 years. She is co-founder of 
the Battle Creek Alliance, which has filed suit against several Sierra 
Pacific logging plans.

"We're not telling them not to log their land," she said. "We're saying, 
don't clear-cut and don't use a ton of herbicides."

      Cloudy scrutiny

Clear-cutting, as opposed to selective logging, leaves little vegetation 
behind to trap erosion. And the state does not require logging companies 
to monitor water quality.

The primary agency charged with making sure logging doesn't ruin fish 
habitat is the state Department of Fish and Game, which works in concert 
with Cal Fire. But Fish and Game has been strained by budget cuts.

Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last year cut $1.5 million from Fish 
and Game's logging review program. A similar cut remains in Gov. Jerry 
Brown's proposed budget for the new fiscal year.

Eight jobs were cut from the Fish and Game staff that monitored logging 
in the north state, said Curt Babcock, the department's regional habitat 
conservation program manager. Now, only half the logging projects in the 
area get a field inspection before approval.

Fish and Game still scrutinizes logging roads, often the source of most 
erosion. But it gives little attention to wildlife and aquatic habitat 
threats, Babcock said, and it doesn't monitor logging rules for 
protecting streams.

"Overall, I'd say there is definitely a potential for the timber 
harvests there to affect salmon," Babcock said of Battle Creek. "We're 
spread pretty thin."

With the state role reduced, Woodhouse's group decided to conduct its 
own water monitoring tests. It began taking samples 18 months ago.

Each week, Woodhouse loads testing gear into her Chevy S-10 pickup and 
ventures on unpaved county roads to assess the forks and tributaries of 
Battle Creek.

The results, she said, show an increase in the water's cloudiness, 
suggesting erosion has increased. "You used to be able to look at the 
water and it was clear," she said. "Now it's a gray or green color, or 
it has a soapy appearance."

Erosion is a threat to spawning habitat everywhere, but it is an 
especially urgent concern at Battle Creek, given the expensive effort to 
bring back salmon and steelhead.

"It's unlikely we can recover those species in the Central Valley if we 
don't get viable populations in Battle Creek," said Brian Ellrott, 
regional salmon and steelhead recovery coordinator at the National 
Marine Fisheries Service. "It is critically important."

      Cold conclusions

After a decade of study and buy-in from PG&E, the restoration began in 
2009 and is expected to be finished in 2015. It is overseen by the U.S. 
Bureau of Reclamation, which was required by the 1992 Central Valley 
Project Improvement Act to double naturally spawning salmon populations 
in the region.

The cost, estimated at $43 million in 2004, has swelled to $128 million. 
That includes $47 million in federal funds, including $9 million from 
the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, and $58 million from various 
state sources.

The money mostly pays contractors to remove five dams and build new fish 
ladders on four others. PG&E is giving up $20 million in hydropower to 
provide more flow for salmon.

"We're opening up streams that have not been accessible to salmon for 90 
years," said Paul Moreno, a spokesman for PG&E.

Battle Creek is special because its waters start atop 10,000-foot Mount 
Lassen, then trickle through underground passages. The meltwater emerges 
in seeps and springs, keeping the creek cold.

Salmon require cold water to survive and breed. This is especially true 
of the endangered spring-run chinook, which has the unique habit of 
migrating upstream from the ocean in spring, then waiting until fall to 
spawn.

But erosion has already compromised the creek's suitability for 
spawning, according to a 2004 watershed assessment. It called the 
spawning habitat "moderately favorable" overall, the equivalent of a "C" 
grade.

Nearly half the 50 individual stream sites surveyed had too much 
sediment to be good spawning habitat, earning "D" grades; and 60 percent 
of pools in the creek got "F" grades because they are too shallow to 
support spring-run salmon through the summer.

The report suggested 1997 storms likely caused erosion that led to those 
poor grades. But it did not rule out other problems, including those 
linked to logging.

The research by Terraqua Inc. was commissioned by the Battle Creek 
Watershed Conservancy, using federal funds. The conservancy is a local 
nonprofit that works closely with government agencies on the restoration 
project. Another study for the project by Kier Associates blamed the 
erosion largely on logging.

"There was definitely a profound change in habitat in Battle Creek, and 
it's consistent with extensive upland disturbance," said Higgins, who 
prepared the report.

The Kier report, however, was excluded from the final study. When the 
firm published the analysis itself in 2009, it said the work was 
excluded "at the request of a major private timberland owner" on the 
conservancy board.

That timberland owner is Sierra Pacific Industries.

      Complex science

Sierra Pacific's Murphy denied his company suppressed the report. He 
said the whole conservancy board decided to exclude it, noting Higgins' 
methods were more appropriate to coastal forests.

It is a complicated science, one that Cal Fire has been repeatedly 
criticized for handling poorly.

The State Board of Forestry, a politically appointed panel, sets the 
rules that Cal Fire enforces to regulate logging on private land. 
Studies as far back as 1994 have urged the board to overhaul its rules 
on cumulative analysis, yet it has not done so.

A University of California panel in 2001 said cumulative analysis is so 
vital that it should be stripped from Cal Fire and given to a new agency 
with special training.

The panel called many of the state's erosion-related logging rules 
"demonstrably inadequate."

"The State has apparently never explicitly acknowledged the need to 
protect the runoff regulating functions of forests," the panel wrote.

The Board of Forestry's executive officer, George Gentry, said the board 
will likely begin reviewing the cumulative effects rules in 2012.

"People can say, 'Well, you need to do it better'," Gentry said. "We 
should do it better. But show me how. There's no easy answer to that. 
It's a very complex science."

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/Call The Bee's Matt Weiser, (916) 321-1264. Follow him on Twitter 
@matt_weiser./

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