[env-trinity] Redding.com opinion-Tom Stokely: Trinity restoration has lost its way

[Tom Stokely]

http://www.redding.com/news/2014/feb/08/tom-stokely-trinity-restoration-has-lost-its-way/ 

Tom Stokely: Trinity restoration has lost its way
Staff Reports
Saturday, February 8, 2014
Sometimes the best of intentions go awry. That’s understandable. But when things fall apart, rational people don’t forge ahead with the game plan that got them into trouble. They stop, reconsider, and devise a new strategy. Unfortunately, our government agencies don’t always conform to rational processes — and that’s why a tragedy is unfolding on the Trinity River.

The Trinity River Restoration Program (TRRP) is an inter-agency and tribal partnership dedicated to improving salmon and steelhead runs on the Trinity River. When former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and the Hoopa Valley Tribe approved the Trinity Record of Decision (ROD) for an ambitious river channel rehabilitation and increased flow program 13 years ago, fisheries advocates were heartened. After all, habitat restoration is second only to increased flows in importance to the fish.

But the “rehabilitation” projects are not creating new habitat for juvenile fish as expected. To date, the work has consisted of bulldozing vegetation and berms along the banks of the main stem river. This is supposed to create juvenile salmon habitat — niches where young fish can rest, feed and hide from predators. More accurately it is a riparian clear-cut, the kind of devastation you would’ve seen in the 1960s and 1970s, before logging rules tightened.

This isn’t just the opinion of fishing guides, environmental groups and locals. It’s the conclusion of an embargoed draft report by the TRRP’s own science advisory board. It found that the accomplishments of channel rehabilitation have been insignificant and that the program has veered dramatically from the tenets of the 2000 Trinity Record of Decision (ROD).

While the upside of all the excavation has been minimal — if that — there have been profound negative impacts, including the destruction of adult steelhead holding habitat, increased river turbidity, the spread of noxious weeds, reduction of public access, heavy truck traffic, noise, and damage to an agricultural water system.

Further, the higher flows authorized by the program have undermined the foundations on the Bucktail Bridge on Browns Mountain Road. A new bridge is sorely needed, but the TRRP has directed Trinity County to look elsewhere for funding, even though it covered replacement of four other Trinity River bridges and a large culvert at Bucktail.

The 2000 Trinity River ROD called for a hiatus in these projects to determine their efficacy, but the work proceeds full bore. Tens of millions of public dollars already have been spent, and the money keeps flowing. Clearly, we should halt all channel rehabilitation projects on the Trinity immediately and evaluate the progress to date. It is likely that any objective analysis will find the benefits are not commensurate with the investment.

That doesn’t mean we should forgo habitat restoration on the Trinity River — but our efforts should go where they will do the most good. The main stem may or may not be suitable for ambitious restoration work, but it’s obvious that clear-cutting riparian vegetation has been an unproductive approach so far.

A rigorous evaluation of efforts to date will provide some guidance on what is possible with the main stem. We do know, however, that stabilizing the Trinity’s watersheds and tributaries will yield real benefits to salmon, steelhead and people, and that’s where our efforts should be focused.

There’s also a larger issue at play here: the inexorable progression of government programs once they’re initiated, whether they’re achieving their goals or not. The channel rehabilitation projects are a runaway train. Their failure is obvious, so blatant that the TRRP’s own science advisory board felt compelled to comment. And yet, they haven’t been stopped.

But stop them we must. Our salmon and steelhead are too precious to squander on unproductive initiatives. And the same can be said about public dollars. The TRRP has a fiduciary responsibility to the American public. It’s time the partnership’s members acknowledge this, and divert funding for channel rehabilitation into productive and proven programs to restore the Trinity River’s fisheries.
Tom Stokely is water policy analyst for the California Water Impact Network and a former Trinity County planner. He lives in Mount Shasta.
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