The McKenzie Valley's Weekly Newspaper
May 29, 2002
Volume 24, Issue 41
Corps says McKenzie River to clear in five days
Close to 300 people packed the George Millican Memorial Hall last week to hear official explanations and complain about the impacts of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Willamette River Temperature Control Project at Cougar Reservoir.
WALTERVILLE: Unforeseen impacts continue to ripple out from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' water temperature control project for Cougar Dam. At a meeting last Wednesday night, the resulting muddying of the McKenzie River was blamed for possible business failures and the potential basis for a class action lawsuit.
Project manager George Miller admitted several things had gone awry, saying similar work had been attempted at only a handful of other dams around the country. "The Corps has impacted the turbidity," he admitted. "We missed on several fronts and I think we owe you an apology."
The local upgrade, Miller said, focused on an 12 mile stretch of river down to Vida, including 4.5 miles along the South Fork McKenzie. Those areas had earlier been identified as critical habitat for fish under the Endangered Species Act.
Agreeing with that assessment was Oregon Dept. of Fish & Wildlife biologist Jeff Ziller. Modifications to the dam would allow the release of either warmer or colder water when needed. Ziller said people can now see how releases mix with the McKenzie by observing the way the brown plume stays to one side after coming out of the South Fork.
Improved water temperatures would cause salmon to "use that south half of the river you see now," Ziller said. "When fish have spawned in there in late September and early October, their eggs have basically cooked. Fish that emerged earlier than February or March came out when food wasn't available."
A number of different factors combined to make turbidity problems worse. Among them was timing.
Originally, the reservoir was scheduled to begin draining in early January and be completed by the end of April. In preparation for the drawdown, a contractor went to work clearing out an old diversion tunnel deep beneath the dam. In the process, crews dug out too much rock and the tunnel had to be back filled with concrete.
The drawdown actually began April 1. By then, Miller said, "We couldn't drop the reservoir faster than the contractor could make the slope stable - adding drains and bolts."
At first few people were aware anything was out of the ordinary. A Spring rainstorm changed all that. On April 20 monitoring instruments in the South Fork reinforced what people were seeing. The water was really dirty - peaking at 330 ntu's. (Nephelometric turbidity units measure the degree of scattering that occurs as light passes through water.) That reading was more than ten times the peak level the Corps had anticipated. Since then anglers have raised an outcry, saying the continuation of muddy flows has ruined recreation.
"We did not have a good understanding of what 5, 10 or 12 ntu's meant to fishing," Miller said. The drawdown, he added, had also led to mortalities in the reservoir when fish were trapped in isolated pools. In addition, a number of hatchery cutthroat trout have died as well.
At the meeting, the Corps offered two courses of action. The first was a plan to stop the drawdown on Saturday, May 25. The second proposal involved storing water behind Blue River Dam.
Stopping the releases would leave the water level in Cougar Reservoir at 1,400 feet above sea level. Keeping the residual pool 25 feet higher than originally planned "increases the risk of flooding and impacts the evacuation for guys working down in the hole," Miller said. "It's not a safety risk but a financial risk," which he felt might mean the overall project could "drag out for another year."
Miller predicted "After Saturday, plus five days, we should see a noticeable clearing of the river."
In the event of another storm, clear water kept behind Blue River Dam could be released to dilute muddy flows from Cougar.
Addressing economic impacts, Miller said the Corps doesn't have the authority to compensate businesses. It may help offset impacts to public facilities like the fish hatcheries or the Eugene Water & Electric Board. "Individual compensation would need specific federal remedial legislation," he said. "Our agency would participate in providing technical support for pre-decision assessments."
A consideration of money issues caused Camp Creek resident John Arnold to question the project's overall cost/benefit ratio. "Maybe you should bag the whole thing," he suggested.
The project was justified on an environmental, rather than an economic analysis, Miller said. The Corps, he added, has already invested half of the projects $41 million construction budget. "It would not be wise to abandon it," Miller said. "The benefits are real. Temperature control is a limiting factor in the river."
Offering an ecological assessment was Corps fisheries biologist Chuck Willis. Rather than sediment, the material making the water muddy is actually clay particles around .01 millimeters in diameter, he said. Such material, Willis felt, would not impact spawning by clogging up spaces between chunks of gravel. Instead, it "would stay in suspension all the way out to the ocean.
The good news is that these turbidity levels are not likely to be harmful to fish," Willis added. "It's not harmful until you have levels from 760 to 1,000 ntu's for up to a week."
Eagles and osprey were concerns of Walter Reed, who felt they'd disappeared from the area because the birds couldn't locate fish in the river.
Mark Wade, another biologist working with the Corps, said his observations had been different. He reported seeing the ospreys diving into Cougar Lake, in "water more turbid than the river."
Taking a hard line on the issues was Charles Tanenbaum. "When an entity makes an impact in the real world it is subject to class action and damage suits," he warned. "In a sense you're saying you didn't know what would happen but the results are clear."
John Sullivan echoed those feelings, saying if the Corps "had been a private contractor their equipment would have been confiscated."
For a local business, the economic impacts have been "enormous and very scary," according to Jerry Swartz, owner of the Swartz Brothers grocery store in Walterville. He was concerned about being able to remain open. "We've had a 38 percent increase from EWEB, a 30 percent increase in insurance costs. Now sales are down 8 percent."
Taking a big hit as well was Walterville Feed and Tackle. Owner Carol Brooks reported her store typically sells about 200 fishing licenses by this time of year. To date she's sold 8. That sort of limited activity has frozen her other sales of other fishing supplies, T-shirts and novelties.
Miller said plans are to start the '03 drawdown of the reservoir in late January or early February, which is expected to lessen the impacts. Future work on the temperature control outlets would require the reservoir to be drained in 2004 as well.
EWEB to upgrade 1924 hydro generator
CAMP CREEK: Crews from VA Tech will be taking a close look at the Walterville power plant's genertors, shown in this March, 1924, photo. The work is part of an extensive project to increase effeciency, as well as add fish protection enhancements to EWEB's oldest plant.
Free Fishing Day
There'll be plenty of tackle on hand next week for the hundreds of kids expected at the Leaburg Hatchery's Free Fishing Day.
LEABURG: On Saturday, June 8, the Leaburg Hatchery will host its third Annual Free Fishing Day celebration from 9 am to 2 pm.
Fishing at the hatchery is restricted to kids, with different options according to age and interest. The hatchery crew and volunteers are especially interested in helping kids who have never fished before, although all children are welcome.
Children five years old and younger can fish in a portable pool for the 500 ten inch rainbows stocking it. They'll be provided with little cane poles and bobbers.
Older kids will have two choices. Children ages one through 13 years old can fish for one to two pound trout in the lower show pond, with a limit two fish each.
Children of any age can take part in fly-fishing classes at the upper show pond given by the McKenzie Fly Fishers. There they can catch and release one fish.
Further up the Valley, the Willamette National Forest is joining in too. Kid's from Big Brothers & Big Sisters in the Eugene/Springfield area will get to fish from a boat with the Emerald Chapter of the Northwest Steelheaders at Carmen Reservoir. The Steelheaders also provide a breakfast for the kids.
The event will run from 10 am to 2 pm. For more information, call Ramon Rivera at 822-7208, or e-mail to: rrivera@fs.fed.us
Because June 8 is also a free day for sites requiring the Northwest Forest Pass, visitors will not need the pass to use trailheads, boat launches, picnic areas, or other sites that normally require a pass.
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