[White-water] Fish-for-Boaters project: Comment period on Metolius River wood project extended

[Gordon Taylor]

Greetings:

I just talked to the Forest Service about their Metolius 
wood-for-fish-habitat project.  The comment period is being extended for 30 
days.

I was told by the Forest Service that they think it would take 200 years for 
wood in the river to come back to the amount of wood that was in the river 
100 years ago, and that they plan to introduce salmon and the fish need the 
habitat of old.

I told the Forest Service that a woman boater was killed in Washington when 
she came out her boat and washed into the root ball of a tree installed to 
create fish habitat.  Thus, the tradeoff is fish for boaters.  I asked how 
many fish would it take to replace the value of the boaters that will be 
killed on the logs they plan to install.

Call or write the Forest Service with your views on installing logs in the 
Metolius.

Gordon


[Melissa Bearns] Hi all,
The address in the USFS letter has a typo so the one I first sent out is
incorrect and will bounce back to you.
The correct address to send comments to is
Comments-pacificnorthwest-deschutes-sisters at fs.fed.us

The number for the Sisters Ranger District is 541-549-7700.
The contacts there are Michael Riehle and Michael Keown.

They've only received 7 comments total on this issue. That means the boating
community has an incredibly huge opportunity here to have an impact on this
project. So please, please comment.

Saying something about the potential damage to the riparian zones, riverbank
and riverbed from their proposed methods to get the wood into the river is
also a strong argument, in addition to boater safety.

Syotr,
Melissa

_______________________________________________



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Melissa Bearns" <melissa at melissabearns.com>
To: <white-water at maillist.peak.org>
Sent: Monday, October 01, 2007 12:58 PM
Subject: [White-water] Comment period on Metolius River wood project 
endsTuesday!


|
| Hi everyone,
| The public comment period for the Metolius River Wood restoration project
| ends tomorrow (Oct 2) at 5 p.m.
|
| If you comment to the Forest Service now, in any way, shape or form, you 
can
| have a voice in the future process. All you have to do is send a short 
email
| to the following email address:
| comments-pacific-northwest-deschutes-sisters at fs.fed.us
| The phone number for the Sisters Ranger District is: 541/549-7700.
|
| It might be as simple as writing something like, "I am a
| kayaker/canoer/rafter etc and I am concerned about the proposed project to
| introduce logs into the Metolius River. I am concerned that it may affect
| boating safety and would like additional time to research the issue and
| comment."
|
| U.S. Senator Walden is willing to work with kayakers as is Senator Wyden.
| Ore. Sen. Ben Westlund is also interested in this issue. By commenting 
now,
| you could really make a difference in how this project gets planned, but 
we
| need a strong voice from the kayaking community.
|
| The environmental assessment is about 140 pages long, but I'll summarize 
it
| as succinctly as I can.
|
| The objective of all of the plans is to restore natural habitat for fish.
|
| They plan to use the following methods to introduce the wood into the 
river:
| hand crews, an excavator on the river bank, an excavator in the river bed
| and helicopter.  "Anchoring wood will rely on natural placement that will 
be
| secured by digging a slot into the river bank and placing the log and
| covering it with soil (keyed into the stream bank), retaining the root 
wads
| on the logs and placing entire whole trees along the river edge."
|
| There are 3 proposed plans.
|
| 1. No action
|
| 2. add large wood to near historic levles at 206 sites over 11 miles of
| river from Riverside Campground to Jefferson Creek.
|
| This proposal includes adding 930 logs at 206 different sites into the
| river, 582 of which are proposed for the area below Wizard Falls, which is
| the put in for the run. This proposal also includes "an occasional full
| spanning log that will block boat passage". And they anticipate that "some
| wood will be cut illegally by boaters."
|
| IN addition, some of the work in option 2 is slated for the section that 
is
| designated Wild and Scenic.
|
| 3. Add large wood at 173 sites above Bridge 99 and let floods distribute 
it
| below the bridge.
|
| Bridge 99 is the bridge at Wizard Falls where people put in to run the
| section near Camp Sherman. So when they're talking about putting wood 
below
| this bridge, they're talking about putting it on the most commonly run
| section of the river.
|
| For those of you who haven't run this section of the Metolius, it's 
narrow,
| cold and fast with very few eddies. A riverwide log could be extremely
| dangerous if it wasn't able to be seen from upstream because of the
| difficulty in eddying out in some parts of the run.
|
| It's one of the most beautiful runs in Oregon too. Commenting is easy. 
Just
| don't be silent because if river users have a strong voice, we can shape
| this project so that it's good for fish but also safe for boaters.
|
| Syotr,
| Melissa
|
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