science environment

Clean Water Act's Next Role Could Play Out On NW Logging Roads

By Amelia Templeton (OPB)
Aug. 15, 2012 11 a.m.
CWA series logo 500px w description
THANKS TO OUR SPONSOR:

MOLALLA, Ore. -- Mark Schmidt remembers fishing as a kid for steelhead on the Molalla River.

He also remembers how rain could ruin a day on the river.

“If we could so much as hear the raindrops on the shingles in the night, we were aware that we would not be fishing in the morning,” Schmidt recalls.

That rain sent dirt pouring from logging operations into the river. It made the water look like orange, wet cement. It often made the river unfishable for Schmidt – and downright unhealthy for the salmon and steelhead themselves.

That was in the 1960s. Today, the federal Clean Water Act and state forest practices laws require landowners and loggers to follow standards, called Best Management Practices, to protect the quality of myriad streams and rivers that flow through forests.

But some clean water advocates are calling for tighter regulation of one type of logging-caused pollution: muddy runoff from forest roads.

The U.S. Supreme Court will rule in the coming year on the question of exactly how the Clean Water Act applies to the hundreds of thousands of miles of logging and forest roads.


CWA series logo 500px

Our Coverage:


Forest roads are a major source of fine sediment pollution, says Dave Powers, Environmental Protection Agency’s Forest and Rangeland Manager in the Northwest.

“Roads can frequently contribute up to 90 percent of the sediment going into streams, particularly if they’re not properly designed, located and operated,” Powers says.

Roads alter the natural plumbing of a forest. Their hard, flat surfaces collect and channel rainwater. During storms that fast-moving water can carry fine sediment into streams. Plugged culverts and unstable road fill can trigger landslides.

Powers says erosion and other processes naturally move sediment into streams -- often a mix of gravel, boulders, and smaller material. However, roads can deliver unhealthy and unnatural amounts of mud and fine sediment, causing problems for salmon and trout.

It can prevent spawning from taking place, it can smother eggs. They need cool water, clean water, and they need oxygen in it. And sediment isn't conducive to any of those things.

Sediment from forest roads has contributed to flooding problems on the Skokomish River in Washington, impaired habitat for trout in the Idaho panhandle, and might be contributing to muddy drinking water in coastal Oregon communities (DEQ report available here).

Mount Hood National Forest road map. Each of the Northwest's 24

national forests contains thousands of miles of logging roads.

Credit: USFS

Keeping roads and streams separated solves the problem, Powers says. Most roads collect stormwater in ditches; if those ditches empty into streams, they muddy the water.

The fix: drain muddy storm water onto the forest floor instead. The forest floor acts like a sponge, slowing the water down and letting the sediment filter out.

Recent monitoring in Washington shows that roughly one in 10 logging roads in the state drain runoff into a stream.

Oregon doesn’t have recent data on forest roads, but a 2002 report to the Department of Forestry shows that at least one in four forest roads in the state drain into a stream.

Oregon, Washington, and Idaho each have lengthy state forest practice rules. They detail where and how new forest roads should be built. They call for cross drains and ditches that empty on the forest floor — to protect streams from sediment.

But there are lots of logging roads in the Northwest that were built before those standards were in place. Upgrades can get expensive, Powers says.


Ecotrope

OPB's Cassandra Profita is busy this summer blogging about water in the Northwest. Keep up with her and all her findings at Ecotrope's Clean Water: The Next Act.


The U.S. Forest Service, for example, manages about 91,000 miles of roads in Washington and Oregon. It estimates a cost of $1.1 billion to bring them up to standard to protect water quality.

Washington state is requiring large private forest landowners to inventory all their roads and to bring them up to code by 2021. In contrast, Oregon has a voluntary program that encourages landowners to upgrade older forest roads.

Mark Riskedahl, an attorney with the Northwest Environmental Defense Center, says that for decades, an EPA rule has given logging roads an exemption from the permitting process that regulates most types of water pollution, including stormwater runoff that flows through pipes into streams.

“Scrapyards, gravel mines, airports, municipalities have to get these permits for discharges from road networks in cities large and small,” Riskedahl says.

THANKS TO OUR SPONSOR:

In 2006, the NEDC filed a lawsuit to force the EPA to require permits for logging roads.

Why should, you know, Wall Street timber investment firms and huge timber companies get special treatment under the Clean Water Act? If they're generating pollution, they should be held accountable just as everybody else is.

The NEDC won the case before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, but the U.S. Supreme Court is hearing an appeal.

Congress and even the EPA oppose the idea of permits for logging road sediment.


Road Maintenance Cuts Mean More Sediment

forest road/bridge

Sixty years of heavy traffic by logging trucks, along with trips by forest managers and recreation-seekers have taken a toll on roads that run through Northwest forests.

Tens of thousands of miles of those roads are crumbling, sending sediment and other pollutants into rivers and streams. Fish don't like that...continue reading...


Timber industry representatives say a permitting program would create unnecessary paperwork and bureaucracy and won’t do more to protect water quality than Best Management Practices, or BMPs, required by the states.

On the Molalla River, at least, there is evidence that the BMPs are doing their job, keeping the water clean.

Jeff Mehlschau is an engineer for Weyerhaeuser’s Clackamas Tree farm in the Molalla basin.

On a tour of the property, he points out dozens of new culverts, cross drains, reconstructed bridges, and a place where the North Fork Molalla road runs into a cascading stream.

cross drain

A cross drain captures stormwater runoff

from a logging road and sends it back out

onto the forest floor.

“We do have a live stream behind us. And right up here is our cross drain, ” he says.

The cross drain should force muddy runoff to make a right-hand turn before it hits the creek.

“And we get it off onto the forest floor and let it infiltrate.”


Weyerhaeuser's Roads, By the Numbers

  • 20,000 miles of road
  • 54,000 stream crossings
  • 175,000 cross drains
  • $7 to $12 million spent annually on upgrades

Mehlschau says his roads are all up to code and not polluting streams with muddy runoff.

Weyerhaeuser has been criticized in other parts of the Northwest, notably the Chehalis basin, for logging practices that contribute to erosion and sediment delivery.

In Molalla, the company's neighbors say it has been effective in protecting water quality.

molalla_sm

The north fork Molalla river flows through Weyerhaeuser land. Local water advocates say past logging practices scoured the riverbed, but today the water is cool and clear.

Mark Schmidt, who used to fish the Molalla as a kid, now helps run the Molalla River Alliance, a conservation group. He credits Weyerhaeuser with upgrading its roads, making it easier for fish to pass through culverts and keeping sediment out of the river. And he thinks Oregon's Forest Practices Act has been effective here.

He says the Molalla occasionally gets murky for a day or two. Otherwise, the water is clear.

“We don’t have anywhere near the turbidity in the river that we did in the 1960s," he says. "I mean, there’s just no comparison.”

Sediment And Turbidity In The Northwest: An Interactive Map.

View Sediment Pollution In the Northwest in a larger map

CWA series logo 700px

There’s more to come in our series, “Clean Water: The Next Act:”

  • In the rural Northwest, ranching and farming practices are impairing our rivers and streams. One of the biggest causes of impairment: high water temperatures that are unhealthy for fish.

  • Waterways increasingly contain potentially dangerous residues of the lotions, potions and pills that keep us well and clean and smelling nice – a threat the Clean Water Act was never intended to stem.

  • Development-related pollution in the form of rainwater runoff poses an increasing threat to water quality.

  • Sewage treatment remains a major source of water pollution, with increasing numbers of governments struggling financially and beset by aging wastewaster treatment facilities.


Related Links


THANKS TO OUR SPONSOR:
THANKS TO OUR SPONSOR: