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<h1 id="story_headline">Troubled waters of Battle Creek</h1>
<h3 id="story_creditline"><a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:mweiser@sacbee.com">mweiser@sacbee.com</a> </h3>
<h4 class="date">Published Sunday, Jun. 19, 2011</h4>
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<p> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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. </p>
<p> Battle Creek may be the last shot at survival for the species,
all of which are endangered.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>The apparent conflict in government missions, critics say,
points to flaws in the state's management of logging on private
land.</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>The trees are cut by Sierra Pacific Industries, a privately
held company based in nearby Anderson and the state's largest
property owner. </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"There is a whole lot of inherent protection in the rules,"
said Ed Murphy, the company's manager of resource information
systems.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Sierra Pacific has submitted 16 logging plans over the past 12
years for almost 20,000 acres in the Battle Creek watershed. </p>
<p>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."</p>
<p>Then each parcel is replanted with pine seedlings. Herbicides
are sprayed to eliminate competing vegetation before planting.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<h3>Cloudy scrutiny</h3>
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.
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>With the state role reduced, Woodhouse's group decided to
conduct its own water monitoring tests. It began taking samples
18 months ago.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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."</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<h3>Cold conclusions</h3>
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.
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"We're opening up streams that have not been accessible to
salmon for 90 years," said Paul Moreno, a spokesman for
PG&E. </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>That timberland owner is Sierra Pacific Industries.</p>
<h3>Complex science</h3>
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.
<p>It is a complicated science, one that Cal Fire has been
repeatedly criticized for handling poorly.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>The panel called many of the state's erosion-related logging
rules "demonstrably inadequate." </p>
<p>"The State has apparently never explicitly acknowledged the
need to protect the runoff regulating functions of forests," the
panel wrote.</p>
<p>The Board of Forestry's executive officer, George Gentry, said
the board will likely begin reviewing the cumulative effects
rules in 2012.</p>
<p>"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." </p>
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<p class="storybug"><i>Call The Bee's Matt Weiser, (916) 321-1264.
Follow him on Twitter @matt_weiser.</i></p>
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