Drops
Of
Water
Issue 10 July 1997
The first people to find errors in spelling or word structure receive a free map of the Chehalis watershed. Send us an e-mail note telling us about the error.
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Welcome
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Issue 10 July 1997 |
This newsletter appears monthly in 45,000 households throughout the watershed. Printing is done by The Chronicle, and distribution is by the Chronicle, the Olympia Daily Olympian, the Tenino Independent, the Rochester Sun News and the Aberdeen Daily World. This is an early edition available only to WWW users. Please send us your feedback.
The first people to find errors in spelling or word structure receive a free map of the Chehalis watershed. Send us an e-mail note telling us about the error. |
Stories of interest in this issue:
TASK FORCE ANNOUNCES GRANT AWARD
EVEN MORE PROJECTS COMPLETED
Nonpoint Source Pollution: The Nation's Largest Water Quality Problem
Ocosta Students Monitoring
Driving Toward Salmon Recovery
What is Shade the Chehalis and how can I be part of it?
Youth Corner
The Watershed Approach to Stream Restoration
This is an early electronic copy of Drops of Water. Drops of Water is distributed monthly to newspaper receiving households throughout the basin. It goes to print mid-June and will be distributed during the following week. Watch for it in the Tenino Independent, the Rochester Sun News, The Olympian, The Chronicle and the The Daily World.
The newspaper insert is funded with a grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. This electronic edition is sponsored by the CRC.
Letters to the Editor, contributed articles and contributing partnerships are encouraged.
Comments via email to The Chehalis River Council
Back to CRC Home Page
The Chehalis Basin Fisheries Task Force is pleased to report that the regional salmon recovery organization, "For the Sake of the Salmon" has just announced that the Task Force is one of 33 local watershed groups in California, Oregon and Washington to be awarded some of more than $1,000,000.00 in federal funding through the Environmental Protection Agency.
This money will support watershed coordinators, enabling local watershed groups, like the Task Force, to expand their efforts to conserve salmon habitat and clean water. This means that more landowners will become involved in saving salmon; more stream banks will be restored; and more communities will form their own watershed restoration groups.
"Local watershed groups are a testament to the fact that there can be agreement on salmon management," said Bill Bradbury, Executive Director of For the Sake of the Salmon. "These groups bring together landowners, timber companies, environmentalists, and scientists, who combine forces to help salmon," he said.
"The funding will help us take the message to more people that saving our salmon is possible," said a spokesman from the Washington Trout/Tolt Fish Habitat Restoration Group, one of the groups receiving funding.
"We look forward to working within the Snoqualmie Basin to show our neighbors how we can together use science as our 'Northern Star' to guide us through some of the complex problems that we face in our local creeks and streams. Well-planned habitat preservation and restoration can have direct and quantifiable results," he continued.
This grant will enable the Chehalis Basin Fisheries Task Force and other grant recipients to co-sponsor workshops for landowners help more communities set up their own programs for conserving salmon, teach school children about salmon, and conduct a variety of other activities to conserve salmon.
"The Chehalis Basin Fisheries Task Force is pleased to be included as a recipient of this grant, " said a spokesman from the Task Force, "and believes that this grant will enable us to continue our successful attempts to restore salmon habitat in the Chehalis River Basin."
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The Chehalis Basin Fisheries Task Force (Task Force) has a long tradition of writing annual reports on the projects completed that year. This is the third in a series of such reports for 1996. This article covers five different projects. In all our projects, sound conservation practices and streambank bioengineering techniques were used to address the US Fish and Wildlife Service-identified degradation caused by livestock access to streams, stream canopy reduction, excessive sediment deposition in streams, and streamside/bank vegetation loss problems. Where necessary, riparian corridors were fenced in to limit livestock access and were replanted with conifers and other native trees and plants in order to diversify the current red alder-dominated canopy.
In the Sterns Creek Project, several construction phases were completed in 1996, these including fencing off some 4,000 feet of stream bank, with average setbacks of more than 25 feet on both stream banks; planting more than one hundred western hemlock, sitka spruce, lodgepole pine, Douglas fir, and western red cedars along the bank. We also installed 'hardened cattle accesses' to the creek and watering ponds by using 50 cubic yards of spawning size gravels. Three spawning weirs were installed that will release 60 cubic yards of spawning size gravels into the system. We created an off-channel rearing wetland/pond habitat, approximately one acre in size, which is fed by spring water that is concentrated and piped into the pond area. We installed a waterline to a pasture that had no previous access to water.
This project had several problems created by work originally done several years before, which needed correcting. These problems included electric fencing which was not holding a charge. Another problem was the discovery that several watering ponds were unusable due to water quality problems. Both of these problems were corrected and the fences and watering ponds now work as designed.
The Lincoln Creek Project was designed to protect and improve salmonid habitat on portions of both the North and South Forks of Lincoln Creek. We successfully fenced in more than 4,200 feet of streambanks, with average setbacks of 25 feet on the South Fork; and stabilized more than 900 linear feet of eroding streambanks on the North Fork.
More than 4,000 willow, red-osier dogwood, Douglas fir, western red cedar, western hemlock, sitka spruce, and lodgepole pine, of various sizes, were planted along both forks along with 32 vegetation plots for increasing the diversity in the currently reed canary grass-dominated riparian zone. We also installed a hardened cattle access on the South Fork, along with 75 feet of rootwad revetment on the severely eroded banks of the Creek.
The Beatty Creek Project was designed by the Students of Evergreen State College to protect and improve salmonid spawning habitat by using sound conservation practices and stream bank bioengineering. Portions of the riparian corridor were fenced in to eliminate livestock access to valuable spawning habitat on the Creek. A channel was constructed to direct flows through a large patch of reed canary grass that had hampered adult and juvenile passage. Large woody debris was strategically placed to increase bank stability and improve spawning habitat parameters. The riparian zone was then planted with conifers, other native trees, and shrubs to provide cover, control temperatures, and to diversify the canopy.
The main construction phase included fencing 960 feet of streambanks, along 1,400 feet of the creek, with an average setback of 25 feet beside the fence line and more than 75 feet on the remaining property; stabilizing 300 linear feet of streambanks; planting ninety 4-6 foot tall Douglas firs and western red cedars; planting 30 various species of riparian trees and shrubs; and installing 200 willow and red osier dogwood stakes; placing eight instream log structures to channel the creek and create inter-gravel flows; and recreate 60 feet of creek channel.
The project was carried out by college students of the Ecosystem Restoration Class at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, for educational purposes. Other funding was obtainded from a Jobs for the Environment grant to provide the labor to remove reed canary grass and to dig the new channel.
Fencing was installed using a woven high tensile livestock fencing system with is powered by a solar charging unit. The fence posts were placed every 15 feet and wire was installed by the students, with no problems with fence construction to date. The bioengineering of the nonexistent stream banks was also designed and constructed by the students. During the 1994-95 winter season, at least three high water events have tested the integrity of these structures, with no failures, and all still remain functional to this date.
The planting phases were completed in late November of 1996. Various tree species were planted this year to augment the original revegetation application in the Spring of 1995. The willow and dogwood stakes were planted primarily to stabilize the newly developed channel. That was also when larger Douglas firs and western red cedars were planted outside the immediate riparian zone, to provide future woody debris recruitment and diversity that is vital for salmonid habitat parameters. The plants came from a variety of sources that included donation from the Washington State Department of Transportation, native transplants off the Department of Natural Resources Lands, and from a local native plant nursery.
Plant and channel maintenance was also performed this fall. The reed canary grass had started to re-invade portions of the channel that were not bio-engineered. Blackberry brambles had also clogged the upper portion of the creek. A crew of trained forest workers, from Northwest Uplands Restorations, out of Elma, Washington, came out and mowed down the canary grass and removed forty feet of the brambles. They planted taller Douglas firs in this area to facilitate shading out the blackberries in the future.
This project offers the community an excellent example of just how agricultural uses and salmonid habitat can coexist. The project enhances and restores the only degraded portion of the habitat on Beatty Creek. Due to improving the cover and rearing habitat on this stretch of this creek, heavy predation by heron and kingfishers should decrease, enabling fish populations to increase in the Black River tributaries of the Chehalis River.
The Allen Creek Project has been a very successful partnership between the landowners on Allen Creek and the Task Force so far. Almost 3/4 of a mile of the creek, crossing three different properties, has been protected by fencing livestock out of the stream. another 1/4 mile of fencing has been proposed and will be installed sometime in 1997.
The construction phases that have been completed to date include: fencing of 7,011 feet of streambank, along 4,106 feed of the creek, with average setbacks of 10 feet; placing and anchoring 10 LWD structures that includes 4 rootwads and 5 logs for cover, and one log and gravel weir for a spawning pad, placing 20 cubic yards of gravel behind the weir; planting thirty 4-6 foot tall Douglas firs and western red cedars; under planting 100 western hemlock, sitka spruce, and lodgepole pine, 1,000 willow and red-osier dogwood stakes; construction of two 20' x 40' livestock access areas; and installation of one nose pump for livestock watering.
Construction was completed by private contractors and utilized funds obtained from a Jobs for the Environment grant to provide the labor to anchor the habitat improvement structures, revegetate the riparian corridors, and to install one of the fences.
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Why is there still water that's too dirty for swimming, fishing or drinking? Why are native species of plants and animals disappearing from many rivers, lakes, and coastal waters?
The United States has made tremendous advances in the past 25 years to clean up the aquatic environment by controlling pollution from industries and sewage treatment plants. Unfortunately, we did not do enough to control pollution from diffuse, or nonpoint, sources. Today, nonpoint source (NPS) pollution remains the Nation's largest source of water quality problems. It's the main reason that approximately 40 percent of our surveyed rivers, lakes, and estuaries are not clean enough to meet basic uses such as fishing or swimming.
NPS pollution occurs when rainfall, snowmelt, or irrigation runs over land or through the ground, picks up pollutants, and deposits them into rivers, lakes, and coastal waters or introduces them into ground water. Imagine the path taken by a drop of rain from the time it hits the ground to when it reaches a river, ground water, or the ocean. Any pollutant it picks up on its journey can become part of the NPS problem. NPS pollution also includes adverse changes to the vegetation, shape, and flow of streams and other aquatic systems.
NPS pollution is widespread because it can occur any time activities disturb the land or water. Agriculture, forestry, grazing, septic systems, recreational boating, urban runoff, construction, physical changes to stream channels, and habitat degradation are potential sources of NPS pollution. Careless or uninformed household management also contributes to NPS pollution problems.
The latest National Water Quality Inventory indicates that agriculture is the leading contributor to water quality impairments, degrading 60 percent of the impaired river miles and half of the impaired lake acreage surveyed by states, territories, and tribes. Runoff from urban areas is the largest source of water quality impairments to surveyed estuaries (areas near the coast where seawater mixes with freshwater).
The most common NPS pollutants are sediment and nutrients. These wash into water bodies from agricultural land, small and medium-sized animal feeding operations, construction sites, and other areas of disturbance. Other common NPS pollutants include pesticides, pathogens (bacteria and viruses), salts, oil, grease, toxic chemicals, and heavy metals. Beach closures, destroyed habitat, unsafe drinking water, fish kills, and many other severe environmental and human health problems result from NPS pollutants. The pollutants also ruin the beauty of healthy, clean water habitats. Each year the United States spends millions of dollars to restore and protect the areas damaged by NPS pollutants.
Progress
During the last 10 years, our country has made significant headway in addressing NPS pollution. At the federal level, recent NPS control programs include the Nonpoint Source Management Program established by the 1987 Clean Water Act Amendments, and the Coastal Nonpoint Pollution Program established by the 1990 Coastal Zone Act Reauthorization Amendments. Other recent federal programs, as well as state, territorial, tribal and local programs also tackle NPS problems.
In addition, public and private groups have developed and used pollution prevention and pollution reduction initiatives and NPS pollution controls, known as management measures, to clean up our water efficiently. Water quality monitoring and environmental education activities supported by government agencies, tribes, industry, volunteer groups, and schools have provided information about NPS pollution and have helped to determine the effectiveness of management techniques.
Also, use of the watershed approach has helped communities address water quality problems caused by NPS pollution. The watershed approach looks at not only a water body but also the entire area that drains into it. This allows communities to focus resources on a watersheds most serious environmental problems--which, in many instances, are caused by NPS pollution.
Just as important, more citizens are practicing water conservation and participating in stream walks, beach cleanups, and other environmental activities sponsored by community-based organizations. By helping out in such efforts, citizens address the Nation's largest water quality problem, and ensure that even more of our rivers, lakes, and coastal waters become safe for swimming, fishing, drinking, and aquatic life.
Editors note: This is the first in a series of fact sheets devoted to nonpoint sources of pollution. This material is reprinted from the Environmental Protection Agency.
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The main goal for the water sampling is to not only educate students about the water quality around us, but to try to evaluate the streams in terms of conditions known to support salmon spawning.
Ocosta's Marine Biology class was also invited to attend the Project GREEN conference this year, that was held at the Grays Harbor College. The one day seminar offered many helpful tips and ideas for students to expand and learn upon.
The test kits and the equipment that is used was supplied by Weyerhaeuser, Chehalis River Green and grants through the Thurston County Conservation District, as well as the Ocosta Foundation. Special thanks for technical and other assistance from Kent Benn and Randy Cox of Weyerhaeuser Cosmopolis, Claire Denise of Thurston County Conservation District, Tim Sharp of Grays Harbor College and Brady Engvall of Brady's Oysters.
By Shannon Graham
Editors note: Shannon Graham, is a 17 year old Junior at Ocosta Jr./Sr. High School in Westport. The daughter of Arvid and Tammi Graham of Ocosta. Shannon enjoys being in the outdoors, especially trout fishing and riding motorbikes. After high school, she plans to further her education, and study to become a Registered Nurse/ Midwife.
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The family car may not look much like salmon habitat, but there is an intimate connection between the way we use our automobiles and the safety of the rivers as a highway for fish.
Oil is a major environmental pollutant. One quart of motor oil is enough to contaminate 250,000 gallons of water, yet Americans annually dump a third of a billion gallons of used motor oil into the environment. What's more, 21 million pounds of antifreeze, extremely toxic to fish and other organisms, are allowed to pollute our lands and waters each year. Additionally, millions of pounds of lead and other heavy metals, oil, and rubber deposited on the roads gets washed down storm drains and into our streams. Given that toxins in the water can affect the reproductive health, growth and survival of fish, the link between the road and the river is all too strong. (And this says nothing about the impact of drilling for oil, or the effects of oil spills).
Roads can also have a direct impact on salmon. Road-building and maintenance can result in the filling or alteration of wetlands and other flood-plain areas that provide important salmon habitat. Road building and maintenance can result in the removal of streamside vegetation that provides necessary shade and nutrients for fish. Herbicides used to kill roadside weeds can also harm fish if they get into nearby waterways. Both road construction and off-road-vehicle use can destroy soil cover and add to erosion. Excess sediment in the creeks can clog the gravel beds where salmon spawn, impeding the flow of oxygenated water that eggs need to survive.
The best way to keep oil and fuel residues out of the environment is to reduce vehicle use in the first place. The next best step is to use vehicles with maximum efficiency. Help the salmon by taking the following route to cleaner rivers:
Walk or bicycle when possible and avoid unnecessary car trips by consolidating errands.
Use mass transit where available or carpool as often as possible.
Drive the most fuel-efficient vehicle that meets your needs, and keep the engine tuned and the tires adequately inflated.
Recycle used motor oil; never dump it down a storm drain or onto the land. Wipe up motor oil drips wherever they occur. Be sure to recycle antifreeze, too; many auto shops will accept it.
Wash you car on the lawn, using non-toxic low phosphate cleansers. A lawn benefits from the extra nutrients; a stream does not.. Use a shut-off nozzle on the hose, so as not to waste water.
For more information on what you can do at home to help salmon recovery efforts in the Pacific Northwest, please contact your local watershed restoration group, soil and water conservation district, or Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission, 45 SE 82nd Dr., Suite 100, Gladstone, OR 97027-2522.
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Margaret Rader, CRC
Picture in your mind the Chehalis River or one of the rivers or creeks flowing into it. What do you see? Do you picture a cool, clear-flowing stream with bushes and trees reflected in the water? Or is your first image that of muddy water eating away at a steep bank, or the sun beating down on a creek where the pasture comes right up to the water's edge? Now think about the stream or creek closest to your home. If you live on the water, you can play an important part in Shade the Chehalis. The same is true if you have a neighbor who lives by a stream in the Chehalis Basin or if you know of a property owner who would welcome a tree planting project.
The idea is simple. If each person who lives near the water plants some trees and shrubs, the Chehalis Basin will be shadier and water quality will improve. Whether you plant one tree or organize a group to undertake a sophisticated restoration project, you can be part of Shade the Chehalis.
Why bother? In the summer when flows are low, high water temperature and a lack of dissolved oxygen can kill fish. Streambanks without a buffer of vegetation easily erode and can't serve to filter out pollution. These are documented problems through the Chehalis Basin. For example, Washington's Ecology Department, in its "Needs Assessment for the Western Olympic Watershed" (1996), included the following recommendation for the Chehalis River, Black River, Scatter Creek, Salzer Creek, Dillenbaugh Creek, Skookumchuck River, Newaukum River, and the South Fork of the Chehalis River: "Correct temperature problems through riparian restoration canopy planting project - 'Shade the Chehalis'. "Temperature" is also identified as a problem for many other Chehalis Basin waters currently on the list of waters that do not meet federal Clean Water Act standards (the Section 303 (D) list).
What do I do? The first step is to call the Chehalis River Council to say that you are interested: (360) 273-6137. Maybe you have already decided you want to be part of Shade the Chehalis, or you just may be exploring the possibility. If no one is there, leave a message with your name and address on the answering machine. (You can also write to the Chehalis River Council at P.O. Box 586, Oakville, WA 98568.) The Chehalis River Council will send you a free booklet, "Shade the Chehalis: A Tree Planting Guide for the Chehalis River Basin," and additional information. Actual planting can occur either in the fall of 1997 or the spring of 1998.
To kick off Shade the Chehalis, the Chehalis River Council will sponsor a tree planting and picnic on October 4, 1997, somewhere in the Basin, location and time to be announced. Everyone is invited to this event.
Sometime in the spring of 1998, we will publish a map of the Basin showing where trees were planted as part of this project. Everyone who registers their project and lets us know when it is completed will also receive a special gift to commemorate their participation For more information, call (360) 273-6137.
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A watershed, or basin (also called a catchment area, or drainage area), is the total area of land that drains into a particular stream. That can turn out to be A LOT of land. The whole Chehalis watershed covers 2,660 square miles. That equals a swath of land a mile wide that would stretch from Aberdeen, Washington to Atlanta, Georgia. It's an area equal to 2,059,904 football fields. It's bigger than two of our States; Delaware and Rhode Island. It's as big as Delaware and Rhode Island combined if you subtract a mere 232,200 football fields.
Every part of this huge area is touched by the water that flows into the Chehalis River system. The water touches every road, field, parking lot, tree, roof, hill, and everything else. So you can see that the land throughout the basin has an influence on the Chehalis River and all of its streams. Changes on the landscape can result in changes to the river. Over the years, enough of these changes have occurred to negatively impact the fish, wildlife and people in the watershed.
So, what must the Chehalis Fisheries Restoration Program do to help restore salmon runs?
We must consider entire watersheds.
If we look at a stream that no longer has a healthy salmon population, we usually see some obvious problems with the habitat. One such problem is often a lack of large logs that form pools, provide cover for fish and give a surface on which aquatic insects live and feed. Another common problem is too much fine sediment that kills salmon eggs buried in the gravel. What we really must do first is ask WHY there are no big logs, and WHY there is too much fine sediment. These problems are really just symptoms of larger scale problems. When we figure out the WHY, we can treat the real causes, and not just the symptoms we see in front of us.
Why might there be no logs in the stream? Maybe the stream runs through a town and the trees have been replaced by lawns. Maybe past logging practices have removed too many of the trees that would have fallen into the stream. Maybe people have "cleaned" the stream of natural debris in a well meaning attempt to help salmon swim upstream (a practice we now know only makes things worse).
Why might there be too much fine sediment? Maybe there's not enough streamside vegetation to hold the soils of the streambanks together. Maybe there are too many miles of dirt roads in the basin over which water flows, transporting sediment to the stream. Maybe livestock are trampling the streambanks.
As you can see, we need to consider not only things in the stream, but things next to the stream and even far away from the stream. To truly restore a stream we need the cooperation of many landowners so we can treat all of the significant impacts throughout that particular watershed. Obviously, watershed-scale fishery restoration is quite complex. One needs to consider not only aquatic biology, but geology, hydrology, forestry, agriculture, engineering, sociology, and so on.
Admittedly, many of our projects have been spread widely around the Chehalis watershed. We have, however, been able to take a more comprehensive approach in the Deep Creek and Lincoln Creek watersheds. Along with the Chehalis Tribe, the Chehalis Basin Fisheries Task Force, the Conservation Districts, state and county agencies, and local landowners we are helping to complete a wide variety of projects on these two creeks. We have excluded livestock from streambanks, placed large wood in the streams, replanted native trees and other vegetation, closed and vegetated dirt roads in the headwaters, removed culverts for improved fish passage and are monitoring water quality improvements.
Our general approach has been to do "seed" projects in various areas and build upon them with support from neighboring landowners. This has resulted in enthusiastic neighbors, but a budget that is spread too thin to do everything required for full watershed restoration in every subbasin. Individual projects have good local effects, but cannot address all of the impacts in each subbasin throughout the Chehalis watershed. It's good work and it helps, but widely-spaced, small projects are not solving the basin-wide problems that need to be fixed to help bring back the salmon.
What are we going to do about it? We need to make some fundamental changes in our approach. We need to commit our efforts to fewer areas at a time, and treat problems on a larger scale. We will probably end up selecting two Chehalis subbasins for top-to-bottom watershed restoration. Our selections will be based on habitat condition, number of existing restoration projects, land use practices, salmon stock status, and availability of existing information, among other things.
We have begun efforts to determine the most practical and important subbasins in which to work first. With thorough planning, and the cooperation of landowners and the other programs doing stream restoration on the Chehalis, we will put together comprehensive watershed restoration strategies, and work on restoring salmon runs subbasin by subbasin.
For more information please call Mike Kelly of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Chehalis Fisheries Restoration Program at 360-753-9560.
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THE WATERSHED APPROACH TO STREAM RESTORATION
Youth Corner
A Blue Thumb is to water what a green thumb is to plants. Both
are about making something better. When you act in ways that have a positive
effect on drinking water, you are using your Blue Thumb.
Drinking water counts on you to use your Blue Thumb at home,
at school and everywhere in between. Complete the puzzle to discover what
really counts when it comes to conserving and protecting our resources.
Across
2. Use this to show you care for water (2 words).
7. Always run your tap until the water is ________ before drinking it.
9. Save leftover hobby supplies, like this, and dispose of them at a special
collection center.
11.Water that turns to vapor and rises to the sky.
12. Use this to wash your bike rather than let the hose run.
13. Put a nozzle on this to save water.
14. All living things ________ water.16. Motor ______ should be taken to a service
station for recycling.
18. Most people get their water from a public water utility; but some people
use ______ wells.
19. Some cleaners, like furniture polish, are _______ to water.
20. Water occurs in ________ states: solid, liquid and gas
21. You can fill this with water and put it in your refrigerator to keep
water cold.
Down
1. Best time of the day to water the lawn or flowers.
3. Don't water this when you expect it to rain.4. Turn this off while you brush your teeth.
5. Room in your house that uses the most water.
6. Place where water is cleaned and treated for drinking (2 words).
8. Consume a beverage, like water.
10. Inspect all pipes and toilets for these
12. Aquifers are ________ ground.
15. At 32 degrees Fahrenheit or 0 degrees Celsius, water does this.
17. 80% of the Earth's surface is covered with this.
