[Water_news] 3. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS: WATERSHEDS - 5/29/08

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment

 

May 29, 2008

 

3. Watersheds –

 

 

History Repeating Itself in the South Yuba Canyon?
Published on May 28, 2008 - 9:02:39 AM

Yubanet – 5/28/08

By: Jason Rainey, Executive Director, SYRCL - Don Rivenes, Acting Executive Director, Forest Issues Group - GB Tucker, Chair, Sierra Nevada Group of the Sierra Club

 

NEVADA CITY, Calif. May 28, 2008 -- The history of "resource use" in the Yuba watershed is rife with conflicts, yet when our community is functioning at its best - through rigorous public debate leading to civil discourse about the kind of future we want to leave for future generations, enduring solutions can often be realized.

In the 1980s and 1990s, proposed dams by a number of agencies and power companies would have drown much of our beloved South Yuba canyon in a series of narrow and deep reservoirs. SYRCL mobilized this community for the successful passage of state Wild & Scenic protection for 39 miles of the South Yuba River, which went into law in 2001 and effectively ended the threat of new dams, ushering in an era of coordinated management of the public lands within the South Yuba corridor. Just one year later, a new threat arose in the canyon - a proposed clearcut of hundreds of acres of canyon lands in the Wild & Scenic corridor by Sierra Pacific Industries.

SPI is the largest private landowner in California, and the owner of much of the private "checkerboard" of forest parcels in the Yuba watershed that the federal government originally gave away as a feature of bringing the Central Pacific Railroad over the Sierra crest. Undaunted by the size and power of this timber company, a group of local activists assembled as the "Yuba Nation" and adopted direct action tactics to bring this proposed logging plan into public view. In the end, SYRCL and the Trust for Public Land brokered a deal that halted the logging plan and transferred over 700 acres of SPI land into the South Yuba River State Parks system.

SPI is at it again - this time the proposed logging plan is adjacent to Malakoff Diggins State Park, 570 acres that sweeps down into the South Yuba canyon and overlaps with the popular Humbug Creek and Missouri Bar trails. Local groups such as the Forest Issues Group and the Sierra Nevada Group of the Sierra Club have filed comments critical of SPI's "Timber Harvest Plan," which prescribes clear cut logging and "special treatments" adjacent to the Park boundary and a number of streams and creeks that feed the South Yuba River. In total, nearly two-thirds of this acreage would be heavily logged. The California Department of Forestry, the agency responsible for approving logging plans on private lands, sent the proposed "Buck Timber Harvest Plan" back to SPI for revisions. This has provided another opportunity for the public to comment on this logging plan, and anyone interested in protecting water quality, forest health and recreational opportunities along the South Yuba River should sound in.

SYRCL is joining with the local forest protection groups that have been actively following this plan, and we all encourage our members to weigh in as private citizens. Humbug Creek is already listed as an "impaired waterbody" through the Clean Water Act due to mercury contamination and sedimentation (the combination of pollutants that turns our Yuba into a serpentine green sheen during some storm and run off events) - the SPI plan would log trees close to this creek, as well as expose soils on 140 acres of land through antiquated clear cut practices and other equivalent "treatments." SPI also acknowledges that the parcel is home to populations of Foothill Yellow-legged frogs, a California Species of Concern.

Is there not a better public value for this land that is bordered by State Parks, the Tahoe National Forest and the Bureau of Land Management - all agencies that are signatories to the South Yuba River Comprehensive Management Plan, which articulates goals of protecting watershed lands, enhancing public recreational opportunities, and protecting water quality? According to the logging plan, SPI rejects the notion that this parcel would have any value to the public.

As with many conflicts regarding the rights and responsibilities of private property owners, and the values and services of natural resources held by the public "commons," a mutually agreeable solution likely exists. However, the first step toward a sustainable and balanced solution requires the public to articulate those values and services.

To learn about the natural resources and ecological services that groups such as SYRCL, Forest Issues Group and the Sierra Club are committed to defending-and to learn how you can take action-visit yubariver.org for more background and for sample letters.

Formal comments are due by Friday, May 30th, and can be sent to the California Department of Forestry, 6105 Airport Road Redding, CA 96002, referencing THP # 2-07-092-NEV(3) #

http://yubanet.com/regional/History-Repeating-Itself-in-the-South-Yuba-Canyon.php