The Bitterroot River - protecting the river, fish habitat and homes - Part Three: public comments

Floaters on the BItterroot River enjoying their Sunday.
Photo by Merle Ann Loman

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Rip-rap series index

• Introduction and index

• Part One: basic information about permitting
  

• Part Two: public comment and questions

You are reading Part Three - public comment


• Part Four: some things you can do
  

• See slideshow of related photos

It is spring in Montana and many people are getting outside to enjoy the sun and warmer weather.  A popular place to be is the Bitterroot is the river. When are fishing, floating, canoeing, or on a family outing on the river, one will see a variety of stream bank stabilization projects. You might even see a bulldozer working on the bank or in the river.

There are laws that written to protect our rivers and regulatory bodies that administer them. Their purpose is to protect the public interest of clean water, ecosystem health and fish and wildlife, not to accommodate land owners in getting what they want at the least cost and at the expense of damage to public resources.

Here are some questions and statements from the public:

 “As owner of a group that does legit stream restoration and stabilization, there is some very offensive and needless stuff going-on on the stretch below Tucker.”

From a Bitterroot floater: “We bagged out of floating the Tucker stretch anymore after loaders, excavators and earth movers were crossing the river between floaters on Saturday!
The disturbed area looks choked with siltation and sterile now... nice work!
Keep us posted of any follow-up or enforcement of laws that should protect the river.
Will anyone have to answer to this?”

Another Bitterroot floater: "..the destruction below Tucker. So much for that fish habitat. First big surge of water will send all that work down the river. Didn't know you could legally do this kind of thing in the middle of the river?"

From a fly fishing outfitter and guide: His Bitterroot Wish List:

• Opportunity for Comment: For projects that have a large impact on the watershed there should be an opportunity for public review and comment. Recognizing that the Conservation District is composed of dedicated volunteers, the potential insight available from the comments of staff scientists, watershed groups, interested public, etc might offer innovative solutions to the complex challenge of protecting the river and adjacent property. Maybe there could be a threshold (linear feet, etc.) that triggers a short comment period within the regulated review procedure. It currently appears that Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP) is the single voice specifically representing the river in the process. Absent of a formal comment period, it is incumbent on us to stay informed and continue to offer input on critical projects.
• Criteria for Approval of Channel Work: The Bitterroot is project by project losing its natural character and while many projects have justifiable goals, some seem to favor the preferences some landowners for a less dynamic river. Approval for projects to divert water from one channel to another or to keep the river from migrating, prevent it from acting as a natural system and do irreparable damage to the health of the river. These projects should be reviewed with a higher level of scrutiny because of the inherent degradation of the natural resource they cause. It would be a useful exercise to put together specific criteria for approval of projects that alter the Bitterroot. It might be a good opportunity for some of our local watershed advocacy groups to put heads together and at least offer input as to what we generally hope for in decisions from the CD.
• Best Management Practices:  Having experienced the aftermath of several recent bank and channel projects in the Bitterroot, it is safe to say that there are significant short term impacts to both the fishery and aquatic macroinvertabrate life adjacent to and downstream from the in-stream work.Minimizing disturbance of the riverbed and avoiding sedimentation are important goals. Timing is another important factor to consider when approving project work. Certainly, avoiding increasing stress to the fishery during warm water periods is important. Again, seeking input from our local conservation organizations to collect Best Management Practices (BMPs) as a standard requirement for work in the river would be a good start.
• Get River Advocates Elected: The best approach to influence decision making in the CD is to get people in it that favor river conservation. We need to find good candidates and support them.
• Notification: River users generally find out that there is work going on in the river channel when they float into it. It would be a great service to river users if there was public notification of project work in the river and on adjacent tributaries that affect water quality in the river. The FWP notification system might be a good avenue. Posting a sign at upstream fishing access sites would be easy as well. Even e-mail notification of permitted project schedule and activities to a list of interested parties (a sign up could be posted on the CD website) would be as simple solution. This should be written into the permits. Ditch operators should be held to the same standard when maintaining diversions. An added benefit to public notification is that increased awareness of legal activities makes it easier to report the illegal ones.
• Alternatives: It seems like it would be simple to require permit applications to include a cost benefit analysis of alternatives. In some cases the long term costs of installing and maintaining stabilization might exceed the cost of moving a structure to a safer location on a property.

From one of the Sunday float group members: "There are two very important regulatory entities involved here: the conservation district (BCD) with the 310 law, and the Army Corps of Engineers (COE), which regulates these types of projects and discharges to rivers under Section 404 the Clean Water Act. The 310 law and the Clean Water Act are NOT supposed to be implemented in a way that primarily accommodates development at the expense of resources such as water and fish. Both laws, by design, are first and foremost supposed to be implemented to prevent undue damage to natural resources. And that means conditioning permits, finding alternatives to proposals and sometimes denying permits. The environment should get the presumption, not the landowner.”
His view on the four installations is:

• Installation #1 – at least its scale and experimental nature, wasn’t fully justified as being necessary to protect the house. But the landowner got the benefit of the doubt, not the river.
• Installation #2 – this landowner had some real concerns. Whether the scale of disturbance was necessary, is a question. Some of the techniques employed may or may not work. It is still possible this house could fall in the river after the soil on that slope gets supersaturated from a 100-year rainstorm. Would this be the fault of his consultant? He doesn’t believe certain activities were unnecessary on both projects but was the enormous amount of disturbance to the side channels and gravel bars, and the stripping of large woody debris from within the active channel necessary?
• Installation #3 – The completed project on the bank of the flood plain area sure seemed dubious in need. No structures were threatened, yet the floodplain function and the hydraulic characteristics of the river have been modified significantly.
• Installation #4 – The last rip-rap project above Bell Crossing was questionable in both need and scale, and frankly, it is probably illegal. Combined with adjacent project downstream, it will have a significant effect on the river in that reach.

  See the next article for "what you, as the public, can do."

Merle’s SmugMug photo site – More river and rip-rap in their original format/resolution. Incudes photos of four rip-rap installations and portions of the middle Bitterroot River.

See all of Merle's Outdoor Recreation Articles

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