“We need to keep the lake fish away from the river fish.”

This outdated idea was the reason the Roaring River dam was completed in 1976 by the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA) to limit “rough fish” from moving upstream from a large reservoir in the Roaring River watershed. Biologists do not propose rough fish barriers anymore, and biologists at the TWRA like Mark Thurman are working now to remove these structures that block rivers.

The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency with support from the Tennessee Aquatic Connectivity Team identified this dam removal as an excellent opportunity to restore the Roaring River, a Tennessee state scenic river, because the dam was in disrepair, blocked passage for aquatic species, and was a public safety hazard for those who love to recreate in and along this beautiful river. The dam was removed in August 2017 and to date is the largest river restoration dam removal in Tennessee.

Like most dam removals, there were challenges to overcome in the process. A surprising challenge was handling the significant public interest in the project. Community members were concerned about what the river would look like after the dam was removed, so TWRA met this need for information with press releases and public notices. The removal drummed up excitement in nearby communities and locals even brought lawn chairs to watch the show. The project managers met with local press and talked about the benefits and goals of the project which helped the community embrace a river that better supports safe recreation and allows aquatic communities to thrive now that the Roaring River dam is gone.

The removal of this outdated structure connects 250 miles of main stem and tributary river miles up and downstream of this project. This popular paddling stretch no longer requires a portage and fish and other aquatic species have improved passage. Species such as white bass, redhorse, and the Eastern hellbender are expected to benefit by reconnecting populations above and below the dam.

American Rivers congratulates all the partners that made this project a success including the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, The Nature Conservancy, Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Tennessee Technical University, Southeast Aquatic Resources Partnership, and others who participate in the Tennessee Aquatic Connectivity Team. Thanks to your hard work the Roaring River flows freely for the benefit of people and nature.

Want to read about another project like this one? Check out the Citico Creek dam removal project blog here.

Late last year, the U.S. Senate appropriations committee proposed a legislative “rider” that would have required the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to “immediately” initiate construction of the environmentally devastating Yazoo Pumps. A huge outpouring of opposition prevented the legislative “rider” from becoming law, but it was only pulled from the bill at the very last minute. The very real risk of future attempts to resurrect this project catapulted Mississippi’s Big Sunflower River to the top of the list of America’s Most Endangered Rivers® of 2018.

The $300 million Yazoo Pumps would drain and damage 200,000 acres of ecologically rich waterfowl habitat in the Mississippi Delta so large landowners can increase agricultural production on marginal lands that have always flooded. This project is so damaging it was vetoed by the George W. Bush Administration in 2008 under the authority of the Clean Water Act. That veto was intended to permanently stop the project.

A Project from Another Era

The Yazoo Pumps are a hold-over from another era. Originally authorized by Congress in 1941, the Yazoo Pumps would be one of the world’s largest hydraulic pumping plants. The Pumps would be located in one of the most sparsely populated regions in the state of Mississippi. When turned on, the Pumps would move up to six million gallons of water per minute from one side of an Army Corps-built flood control structure to the other side of that structure.

These massive pumps will not protect communities from floods. Instead, they will drain wetlands so that a small number of large landowners can intensify agricultural production on lands that regularly flood.

Astonishing Damage

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and an independent hydrologic review found that the project would drain and damage up to 200,000 acres of ecologically significant wetlands—an area larger than all five boroughs of New York City. The Army Corps acknowledged that 67,000 acres of wetlands would be harmed, but the agency admitted that it did not evaluate the full range of wetland impacts.

The wetlands that would be drained provide some of the richest stopover habitat in the country for migratory birds, including waterfowl that live out much of their lives far beyond the borders of Mississippi. More than 450 species of fish and wildlife, including 257 species of birds—and 20 percent of the nation’s duck populations—rely on the wetlands that would be drained by the Yazoo Pumps.

The wetlands that would be drained also support vast numbers of other wildlife, including the Louisiana black bear—the inspiration for the “Teddy Bear”.

During a 1902 hunting trip in the Yazoo Pumps project area, President Teddy Roosevelt refused to shoot a black bear that had been captured and tied to a tree. The story of a President who refused to carry out such an ignoble act was memorialized in political cartoons that ran in papers across the country.  Those cartoons in turn lead to the creation of a stuffed bear named Teddy.

While the Teddy Bear thrived, the Louisiana black bears did not. They were wiped out along with millions of acres of bottomland hardwood wetlands that supported them. However, protection of the Yazoo Pumps area wetlands gave the Louisiana black bear vital habitat that it needed to recover and thrive. In 2015, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that the federally-threatened Louisiana black bear had met its recovery goals and no longer needed the protections of the Endangered Species Act.

The EPA Veto

The environmental harm that would be caused by the Yazoo Pumps led the George W. Bush Administration to veto the project under the rarely used Clean Water Act Section 404(c) veto authority.

This authority lets the EPA put a stop to projects that will cause an, “unacceptable adverse effect on municipal water supplies, shellfish beds and fishery areas (including spawning and breeding areas), wildlife, or recreational areas.” EPA has always reserved the veto for only the most environmentally egregious actions. The Yazoo Pumps definitely meets that standard.

The 200,000 acres of wetland impacts that would be caused by the Yazoo Pumps are 25 times the combined wetland impacts of all previously vetoed projects. Even the “smaller” level of 67,000 acres of impacts acknowledged by the Army Corps are 8.6 times the combined wetland impacts of all previously vetoed projects.

After fully vetting the project’s environmental impacts and carefully considering tens of thousands of public comments, EPA put a stop to the Yazoo Pumps in 2008 by issuing the 12^th Clean Water Act veto in the history of the Clean Water Act. EPA based its veto on the Army Corps’ assessment of 67,000 acres of harm.

EPA determined that the Yazoo Pumps would cause “unacceptable damage” to, “some of the richest wetland and aquatic resources in the nation,” including a highly productive floodplain fishery, substantial tracts of highly productive bottomland hardwood forests, and important migratory bird foraging grounds.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service concurred with these findings, and highlighted its concerns that the project would drain wetlands that provide critical wildlife habitat in the Panther Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, the Yazoo National Wildlife Refuge, and the Delta National Forest.

The public overwhelmingly agreed with the decision to veto the Yazoo Pumps. Of the 48,000 comments submitted by members of the public, 99.9 percent supported the veto, including 90 percent of the comments from Mississippians and more than 540 independent scientists.

Mississippi’s largest newspaper, the Clarion Ledger, wrote five editorials opposing the Yazoo Pumps. The New York Times wrote six editorials lampooning it.

A Multi-Million Dollar Handout to a Few

The unacceptable harm from this project cannot be balanced against any meaningful benefit. Only a small number of large farms, averaging 1,000 acres each, would be able to benefit from the ability to intensify agricultural production. Given the project’s enormous price tag, this translates into a multi-million dollar handout to these landowners, many of whom already receive substantial farm subsidy payments. Not surprisingly, an independent economic analysis demonstrates that the Yazoo Pumps will, at best, return only pennies on the dollar.

Congress Should Respect the Veto Process and Listen to the Public

While there are many complex environmental decisions facing the nation, whether or not to construct the Yazoo Pumps is not one of them. As acknowledged by Senator John McCain in 2004, the Yazoo Pumps are, “one of the worst projects ever conceived by Congress.”

Congress should respect the robust and comprehensive process that led to the Clean Water Act veto, and the overwhelming public support for that veto, and reject all efforts to resurrect the Yazoo Pumps.

This guest blog by Melissa Samet, Senior Water Resources Counsel, National Wildlife Federation, is a part of our America’s Most Endangered Rivers® series on the BIG SUNFLOWER RIVER.

Last summer, the Chetco Bar fire in Southwest Oregon burned over 170,000 acres of our U.S. National Forest in Southwest Oregon, close to the town of Brookings and the California border in the Wild and Scenic Chetco River watershed. There is now a push to log and remove burned trees from the watershed. How we decide to act in the Chetco could set a precedent nationally – impacting our clean drinking water supplies, salmon and steelhead habitat, and recreation opportunities for generations to come.

Fire has always been a natural part of the landscape in the forests across our region, but we are now in a new era of “megafires.” On our National Forests, a century of forest fire suppression, the push to grow high densities of trees in large plantation-like mono-cultures, and especially, changing climatic conditions have led to drier and hotter weather patterns and created more combustible conditions. The larger and hotter forest fires that result can have significant impacts on forest health, rivers, water quality, and local communities.

The science on the effects of logging on the fragile post-fire landscape clearly shows dramatic increases in the amount and duration of harmful sediment in streams and rivers compared to watersheds that are left alone to recover. Some simple rules can help reduce harm to water quality and salmon habitat.  This includes staying away from streamside areas and staying off of steep slopes prone to soil erosion and landslides that once triggered can dump too much sediment into streams over an extended period of years. It is vitally important to avoid creating new roads and decommission any temporary roads that are often the largest contributor to harmful amounts of stream sediment.

So, what will happen in the Chetco? This watershed is home to abundant salmon and steelhead runs, supplies drinking water to 14,000 residents in Brookings, and supports outstanding upland and instream recreation. There’s a lot at stake.

The U.S. Forest Service is now considering alternatives and taking public comment on a draft proposal to cut trees burned by the fire that could generate more than 70 million board feet of timber – double what the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest sold all of last year.

To their credit, thus far the Forest Service is considering staying out of high-value areas and using sensible management practices in their proposed action. Unfortunately, some extreme voices are calling for controversial and unsustainable levels of clearcutting that would sacrifice clean water and other public values.  As in the past, this approach would likely only lead to more conflict and litigation, and if implemented, affect extensive damage to soils, water, and fish and wildlife habitat.

As we craft responses to the Chetco Bar fire and future wildfires that will inevitably occur in the region, we must do our utmost to protect the most valuable natural resources that come from our forests: the clean water, rivers and wild salmon that we all want to preserve for generations to come.

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Over the past decade, there has been a growing movement across the United States to remove dams that no longer serve their intended purposes. While history might indicate otherwise—the U.S. led the world in dam building over the last century—agencies, tribes, individuals, and a myriad of other river stakeholders are realizing that of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ catalogued 90,000 dams blocking rivers and streams, many are considered ‘deadbeat dams.’ These dams that were once at the epicenter of a community’s livelihood are now old, unsafe, or simply outdated. More importantly, these dams also have a negative impact on the local environment and economy, by depleting fisheries, degrading river ecosystems, and otherwise altering recreational industry and the jobs it supports.

The entire removal process, from the initial concept or idea to the actual implementation, can take decades. For instance, in Washington State, the physical removal of the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams on the Olympic Peninsula’s Elwha River took less than three years to complete in 2014, but the actual planning process began in 1992, after Congress passed the Elwha River Ecosystem and Fisheries Restoration Act authorizing the removal of the dam in order to restore the altered ecosystem.

But what prompted Congress to take action?

The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, who for centuries lived off the salmon that ran up the river every spring, summer and fall, had been opponents of the dams since they were first constructed in early 1900s. And there were many organizations, including American Rivers, who were advocating for their removal during the 1980s.

But long before dam removal was on the radar of Congress or any conservation organizations, Dick Goin, a Port Angeles, Washington pulp mill worker and master fisherman, began fishing the Elwha in 1937. Dick’s family lived primarily on Elwha salmon, and he felt the salmon saved his family, and that he owed a debt both to the fish and the river. He began a decades-long personal fight to remove the two dams and  allow wild salmon access to the Elwha, as a wild river.

This understated story of Goin’s persistence for removal of the dams was captured by in the film The Memory of Fish, produced by Jennifer Galvin. Last fall, American Rivers, along with Galvin, toured the film across the Pacific Northwest, with the goal of inspiring communities near rivers at risk to engage in political action and citizen science.

“Touring The Memory of Fish with American Rivers was an incredible experience,” said Galvin from her home in New York. “At the beginning of each screening I’d look out into the audience knowing that some people came because they had something to say about dams; some were there because they had something to say about ‘environmentalism’ in the Trump era; some were there because they love fishing; and some were there because they knew Dick Goin.”

“What always moved me the most was that the movie moved them, helped people feel something for a river and for fish,” she said. “It’s not easy to see your audience cry, but it does open a new door of dialogue and understanding, especially across heated political divides. Showing an environmental documentary that is a deeply emotional story helps people understand what American Rivers is working so hard to do. The hope is that the tour moved people beyond being simply aware of river issues, like dam removal, to actually doing something about it.”

The film is now available for download, purchase, and streaming on Amazon Video, iTunes, Google Play and on DVD. Additionally, the film is available for any organization or person to host a screening, as a springboard for discussion, inspiration, and action. Galvin hopes Goin’s legacy will leave a similar impact on audiences as it left on Galvin.

“I wake up every morning these days thinking that the world needs more lifelong citizen scientists like Dick Goin,” said Galvin. “The stakes are getting higher for us when it comes to healthy rivers, and an active citizenry requires repetitive, focused, persistent work. This kind of work isn’t sexy and usually goes unseen. This was the genius of Dick Goin’s fight to free the Elwha – he was persistent, he was observant, and he was never afraid to use his voice. I know that one story like The Memory of Fish can change the story for many other rivers. Dick Goin’s legacy lives on through this film, but it’s up to us to make it count – for the Elwha River and so many other rivers at risk.”

For more information on purchasing, streaming, or hosting a screening of The Memory of Fish, visit: thememoryoffish.com.

While running outside, one of the most exciting aspects is what you’ll see. The scenery of the outdoors doesn’t compare with the sight of a tv or mirror wall a treadmill provides indoors. Not to mention different seasons and weather conditions provide something new for runners to observe. The autumn months offer trails and roads paved with fall foliage, winter brings around ice and snow as the temperatures drop, and during the spring and summer, the trails and paths jolt to life again as plants bloom and people take advantage of warmer weather.

But there is one part of running outside that remains consistent throughout all seasons – litter. Whether running through a park, in a neighborhood, a busy street, or even a secluded trail, litter is always within view. I’ve attempted to do my part when running on the Capital Crescent or Rock Creek Park trails in D.C. but running shorts don’t always have the most plentiful of pocket space.

This is where plogging comes in.

Plogging is a fitness craze that first began in Sweden and is gaining popularity in the U.S. The word plogging comes from jogging and “plocka upp,” the Swedish word for ‘pick-up’. The activity involves individuals or groups of joggers with trash bags picking up pieces of garbage as they run, and since plogging involves running as well as squats, it can potentially provide a more intense workout.

The plogging trend is spreading across the U.S. thanks to its health and environmental benefits. Already, social media channels are full of photos of plogging hauls with the hashtag #plogging and river organizations are hosting plogging cleanup events.

With the weather getting warmer, life is returning to trails, sidewalks, and parks. With all those people outside there is bound to be more trash, but also more people to help pick it up. If you want to register or volunteer at clean-ups to try out plogging, National River Cleanup can help to make it easier and even supply groups with trash bags for their plog.

So, get out there and plog away!

Did you know rivers and streams provide more than two-thirds of our drinking water supply? This means that the water that you drink, cook and shower with, and use to clean your clothes and dishes, might come from a river.

Let’s celebrate the source of our drinking water and learn what we can do at home and in our community to help keep it clean.

Where does your drinking water come from?

The Environmental Protection Agency’s Drinking Water Mapping Application to Protect Source Waters is a great place to start. There, you can learn where your local water utility is getting your drinking water from. For example:

• If you live in Seattle, your water comes from the Cedar and Tolt rivers, where surrounding forests help protect water quality.
• If you live in New York, your water comes from the Delaware River basin.
• The 3.2 million residents of Minnesota’s Twin Cities get their water from the Mississippi River.
• Most of metro Atlanta’s 4.1 million residents get their water from the Chattahoochee and Flint rivers.
• The lifeline of the Colorado River sustains more than 36 million people across seven states, from Denver to Los Angeles.
• Three fourths of the drinking water for the Washington, DC metro region comes from the Potomac.

How can you help your drinking water source?

Get your hands dirty!

Find a local river cleanup through our National River Cleanup map. Not seeing one near you? Create your own cleanup with help from the organizers handbook (we can even send you trash bags).

Local river organizations have a variety of events, from tree planting to invasive plant removals, all of which help the water quality in your river. Using River Network’s searchable map, you can find and connect with over 6,000 groups across the U.S. that are working on local rivers.

Catch the rain

Rain barrels, which attach to downspouts, catch rainwater which would otherwise flow into sewers and over dirty streets, carrying pollution into local streams. Rain gardens are an attractive way to collect runoff and encourage groundwater recharge. These approaches work in concert with nature to collect and filter runoff, reduce flooding, and minimize pollution in our rivers and streams, all while helping to save money and energy.

Reduce your use

One easy way to help protect your local rivers – use less of them! There are a few simple things you can do at home to ease the burden on your local water supply and save money in the process.

• Turn off the faucet while brushing your teeth.
• Only run the washing machine and dishwasher when you have a full load.
• Use a low flow shower head and faucet aerators.
• Fix leaks.
• Install a dual flush or low flow toilet, or put a conversion kit on your existing toilet.
• Don’t overwater your lawn or water during peak periods, and install rain sensors on irrigation systems.
• Install a rain barrel for outdoor watering.
• Plant a rain garden for catching stormwater runoff from your roof, driveway, and other hard surfaces.
• Monitor your water usage on your water bill and ask your local government about a home water audit.
• Share your knowledge about saving water through conservation and efficiency with your neighbors.

Every drop of water we drink connects us to a river. Together, we can make a difference for our rivers, ensuring clean water supplies for generations to come.

Deep into a multi-day trip on the Wild and Scenic Rio Grande in Big Bend National Park, I was swimming in the river. It was at the end of a hot day. Canyon walls rose around me and the cool currents felt good. And I wondered, am I in the U.S. or Mexico? I’d been told that the border is the middle of the deepest channel. But isn’t that constantly changing, on a monthly or weekly or hourly basis? When a river is a border, are boundaries fixed or fluid? People may care where the border is, but the river doesn’t. With all the noise around #BuildThatWall, what could we learn if we stopped for a minute to listen to the river?

We set up this trip in February to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act – the actual anniversary of the signing of this landmark law will be October 2, 2018. Senator Tom Udall from New Mexico joined us on the trip – his father Stewart Udall was Secretary of the Interior under President Johnson, who signed the Act. So did Ted Roosevelt IV, whose great-grandfather was the 26^th President of the United States, and Nick Paumgarten, a writer from the New Yorker.

Nick’s New Yorker story does a great job capturing our adventure and describing some of the issues facing the river (read the article).

The New Yorker story covers the controversy of new border wall construction, as well as an idea that has been percolating for decades: the creation of a bi-national park to permanently safeguard public lands in Texas and Mexico. Similar to Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park connecting Montana and Canada, a park encompassing the Rio Grande would tie together critical ecosystems on a grand scale. It’s an alternative vision, the opposite of a wall. A bi-national park would be about connection and collaboration. It could symbolize abundance and courage and generosity. Not the fear and separation that the wall stands for.

We need big ideas like that. Our rivers and public lands deserve nothing less, especially now, when the Trump administration is lobbing new attacks daily. That is why American Rivers and our partners launched the 5,000 Miles of Wild® campaign to designate 5,000 new miles of Wild and Scenic Rivers nationwide, in celebration of the 50^th anniversary of the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. For our clean water, our shared natural heritage, our children. Our future.

River guide Austin Alvarado said something that stayed with me: “When you put the river first, everything else falls into place.” He meant that when you protect a river, we all end up getting what we need. People benefit more from a healthy river than a dead river. So what if we listened to the river? What if we put the river first? On the Rio Grande, and beyond?

Visit www.5000Miles.org to share your river story and tell Congress it’s time to protect 5,000 new miles of Wild and Scenic Rivers nationwide.

American Rivers had an opportunity to sit down with Chris Johnson from the Nooksack Wild & Scenic steering committee, to learn more about his experiences fishing on the Nooksack river.

Great to meet you Chris, could you tell us about yourself?

I’m a born-and-raised local Bellingham guy and a fisherman for almost my entire life. Having just crossed into my 62nd year on this planet, I’ve experienced some memorable days fishing our local waters. Unfortunately those days are fewer and farther between as North Puget Sound salmon and steelhead runs have declined, so too have the seasons to fish for them.

Can you talk about the changing seasons?

On the Nooksack River, the fishing season used to stay open for steelhead and bull trout until the end of March. Now the mainstem and the South Fork close at the end of January, with the North Fork closing a few weeks later on February 15.

Can you give us an example of what it used to be like on the river?

When I think about the “good ol’ days,” one particular day comes to mind. Not necessarily for the number of fish we caught, but for the beauty of a day spent in the Nooksack River watershed.

It was one March in the late 1980s when the river had been high and off-color for a while, and I had been checking the river daily once the snow level dropped. One day, I drove out to Nugent’s Corner the night before to really inspect the river—this was the pre-USGS streamflow website era—and while there was still a lot of flow, the river was beginning to clear up. I returned home, called a friend, and asked if he wanted to drift Highway 9 to Nugent’s Corner. Minutes after he said “yes,” I was in the driveway hooking up the drift boat and getting my gear together.

Early the next morning, we met at the take out, ran the shuttle, and launched the boat. There was still a lot of flow and a touch of color to the river so we made the decision to pull plugs with the hope of triggering an elusive wild, winter steelhead to strike. But after fishing the first four runs we had no fish and zero takes. Since there were already a lot of boats on the river and just about all of them were ahead of us, we realized we were not getting any coveted first water. But since steelheaders are optimistic people, we pushed on with all the hope and energy we could muster.

As we slid the boat down a riffle into the Shake Mill hole (the run is long gone, thanks to the dynamic and wild nature of the Nooksack drainage), we let out our lines and I began pulling on the oars, backing the plugs down the run. We had a small bucket we were trying to hit, which put us so tight to the high bank side that my right oar was hitting the rip rap. About halfway down the run, just as I noticed a big white rock next to me, the inside rod went off, shaking violently with an angry fish on the end. A mad scramble ensued as I grabbed the rod and we switched places. My buddy rowed across the river to the soft water, where we could safely land and release this hard fought Nooksack River wild steelhead.

“Nice fish,” I said as the steelhead came into view. “Ten or 12 pounds I’d guess, but I think we better do that again!”

I hopped back into the rower’s seat, headed back up to the top, and started the process all over again. We followed the same drill which yielded similar results. Right next to the white rock, tight to the bank, and the inside rod went off again. This time the steelhead went on a finger-burning run, cleared the water, but was much bigger and more aggressive in nature than the previous fish.

After a good battle, we ferried across the river and pulled her alongside the boat. She was an absolute beauty. All of 15 pounds and dime-bright, just days in the river from her migratory run through Puget Sound and the North Pacific Ocean. After we released her I thought we should see if we can replicate what just happened one more time.

Again, I hopped on the oars and pulled the boat back to the top for another pass. I slowly backed the plugs down the run and as we approached the white rock my pulse began to quicken. Could there be another fish there, after all these boats had fished through this run before us? Sure enough, as we slid next to the white rock, the rod buried once again. The fish made a long, slow, dogged run. Then it exploded at the surface, giving us a flash of its brute strength.

After a long stubborn tussle he came sliding alongside the boat, ready to be released. What we saw was a magnificent male wild steelhead, pushing the mid-twenties weight class. His jaw was just beginning to kipe and there was a beautiful rosy pink hue on his gill plate that tracked all the way down his lateral sides.

It was an absolute specimen and to this day the biggest steelhead I have ever caught. We caught no more fish the rest of the day, but that didn’t matter at all after the spoiled morning we just had. That one wild winter steelhead was well worth the price of admission.

What’s changed with the river since then?

Days and fish like that are becoming rarer as time passes. As the state fish of Washington, we need to do all that we can to protect wild steelhead and their habitat. Take the lower Nooksack, which has been hammered by civilization, from dikes and stormwater run-off to roads and loss of riparian vegetation, this infringement on their habitat has taken a toll on the native fish.

What more can be done to help?

While the lower and middle Nooksack River habitat improvements are limited (there are great habitat restoration efforts being completed by a variety of stakeholders), we still have an opportunity to permanently protect the upstream habitat, which is still somewhat intact and considered a vital connection to the anadromous life-cycle of steelhead and salmon. But without permanent protections for the Nooksack, the great habitat restoration efforts happening on the lower river would not be able to carry the recovery load if we lose the upstream habitat and spawning grounds for many of these fish.

For the last few years, I’ve been working as a volunteer with the goal of designating portions of the upper Nooksack River forks and tributaries as Wild & Scenic. My hope is that if we can achieve these lasting protections, they can aid in the recovery of wild steelhead and salmon, help populations rebound, and one day I could be back fishing the river in March, sliding the boat patiently down each run with the potential of connecting with another North Puget Sound wild winter steelhead.

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Over the last decade, momentum for restoring Sierra Nevada meadows has been building. The State of California and the U.S. Forest Service have both increasingly recognized the benefits of meadow restoration for California watersheds and are now committed to meadow restoration. Healthy meadows provide a suite of benefits including improved groundwater storage, enhanced water quality, reduced peak flood flows, and critical habitat.

However, with an estimated 50 percent of the 191,000 acres of meadow in the Sierra (Sierra Meadows Strategy, 2016) degraded by human impacts, it is difficult to know where to start. To address this, in 2010, American Rivers partnered with UC Davis and the U.S. Forest Service to develop the Meadow Condition Scorecard, a rapid assessment method to quickly assess overall meadow condition and help identify meadows in need of restoration.

Since 2010, American Rivers has used this method in 11 watersheds throughout the Sierra. It has also been used by project partners including UC Davis and California Trout.

Last year, with funding from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, American Rivers completed scorecard assessments in two major Sierra watersheds, the Carson River and Truckee River. We assessed a total of 28 meadows in the Carson watershed and 30 meadows in the Truckee watershed for a total 58 meadows across 3380 acres. We then worked collaboratively with diverse stakeholders to prioritize the most important sites for restoration based on the scorecard data and other factors like water supply and wildlife benefits. The results of these assessments and others are available via the UC Davis Sierra Nevada Meadows Data Clearinghouse. For the full reports, see the links below.

Restoring Carson Meadows: Assessment and Prioritization

Restoring Truckee Meadows: Assessment and Prioritization

The meadow scorecard assessments have been an important tool for collaboratively identifying top-priority projects and galvanizing support. For example, as a result of this process in the Carson and Truckee watersheds, American Rivers and partners identified 12 priority meadows and have already raised $455,000 to restore the first four sites.

We plan to continue to use the scorecard to identify priority projects and bolster support for meadow restoration, including completing a new assessment of wilderness meadows in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks this coming summer.

Over the last week, those of us who eat, sleep, and drink Colorado River issues have watched with alternating measures of surprise, concern, and alarm as water users from the Upper Basin states publicly called out the operators of the Central Arizona Project (CAP) for “gaming” reservoir levels to maximize water deliveries to Arizona. The worry is that CAP’s efforts to find a “sweet spot” in managing the Colorado River has the effects of undoing nearly a decade of collaborative conservation successes and threatens to pull the entire Basin into shortage more quickly than is already likely.

Media coverage of this dustup has been welcome, highlighting the complexity and conflicting motivations at the heart of efforts to manage the Colorado River as a water supply for seven states and 40-plus million people. The states and major water users along the river agreed in 2007 to a set of guidelines that spelled out collaborative responses to drought and shortages in water supply. But these guidelines don’t resolve the tension between an ethic of “we’re all in it together” and the long-practiced tendency of each state to maximize their own water use. More critically, the guidelines are a good effort to respond to short-term drought, but deftly avoid the substantive management changes needed to address permanently diminished flows associated with long-term aridity.

Conflict between states and water users is regrettable, but more so, there is a missed opportunity within ongoing multi-state negotiations to fully acknowledge what all of us privately admit… there isn’t going to be enough water in the Colorado River in the future to fulfill all of the previously made promises. If the Colorado basin ever really provided a reliable fifteen to seventeen million-acre-foot (MAF) supply, those days were brief, and they are long gone. The consensus of climate science and hydrology points toward a future in which Colorado River flows total 12 MAF or less, perhaps as low as 9 MAF. The real problem isn’t one water user striving to achieve a “sweet spot” in reservoir levels to maximize its own water use; it’s the failure so far of the basin states to adjust to the new hydrology. Region-wide aridity and a warming climate just might force that hand for them.

In this regard, Arizona certainly could be doing more. Individual users of Colorado River water, some of the major urban water providers, and an irrigation district or two, have shown innovation and commitment to conserving water and creating more flexible tools for sharing their water resources. Likewise, cities in southern Nevada and southern California have demonstrated real foresight, either in reducing demand or developing resilient local water supplies as alternatives to uncertain and declining Colorado River imports. But as a whole, the states that share the river haven’t yet shown a full commitment to solving the underlying problem of getting by with a smaller share of Colorado River water.

If there’s a silver lining in last week’s airing of dirty laundry, maybe, just maybe, it’s in the way the family feud has highlighted our need to get to the real issues. As the basin looks toward negotiations around a new set of operating guidelines to succeed those adopted in 2007, let’s hope they can bring a spirit of innovation and honest, intentional, collaboration to meet this challenge.

Riparian floodplains are some of the most fertile agricultural lands in the world. Nutrients are carried from upriver and deposited in the floodplain during high flows. Some of the oldest civilizations were established in floodplains due to the productivity of the soil.

Unfortunately, farming and living in these floodplains comes at a cost. The process involved in depositing those massive loads of nutrients on the land requires flooding. This, of course, can be destructive. We try to battle these floods with our man-made infrastructure, but sometimes our best designs are not good enough to keep the floodwaters off of our developed lands. Sometimes it costs more to try to keep farming in these flooded areas than it costs to restore the land to its historical ecosystem.

In the Big Sunflower River Basin, approximately 290,000 acres of natural areas are at risk of being negatively impacted by the Yazoo Pumps. Of these areas, over 220,000 are state or federally-owned. This means taxpayer money was used to protect and restore those acres. Approximately 40,000 acres were added to that sum over the past 13 years. Depending on the value of the land, the recently protected lands alone likely cost $60 to 80 million to purchase and restore. Some may ask, “Why spend that money to convert it back to a natural area?”

Conservation Easements and the Farm Bill

Through the Farm Bill and other federal programs, landowners can apply for their land to be enrolled in permanent wetland or floodplain easements. The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) then purchases the development rights to the land. In most cases, the lands enrolled in these easements are lands that are highly susceptible to flooding and erosion and have become difficult to continue farming. NRCS then pays the landowner a fair price for land that would be difficult to sell due to the flooding and erosion. Then the land is restored to a more natural system that provides numerous benefits including fish and wildlife habitat, floodwater storage, recreation and nutrient removal.

Digging into Maps

Currently, the Yazoo Pumps project proposal lists a 926,000-acre area as the Yazoo Backwater Study Area, but during a major flood in 2011, approximately 160,000 acres of the pump area flooded. When looking at some maps, a few questions came to mind:

• If we assume the entire study area is affected by the Yazoo Pumps, how might they impact conservation land protected by taxpayer dollars?
• How will the Yazoo Pumps impact agricultural land in the entire study area?
• On the other hand, if only 160,000 acres are pumped, which of the lands in question would actually be affected by the project?

Scenario One: Pumping During All Flood Events

Some people believe that the pumps will decrease the overall risk of farming in the floodplain. The map below reveals that the Mississippi counties located in the Mississippi Delta, where most of the state’s row crop agriculture is located, receive the most crop insurance subsidies on an annual basis. The pumps would be located inside the study area as shown in the maps below. It is possible the pumps would then reduce the amount taxpayers must spend to relieve the flooding disasters in that area, but does the reduction in crop insurance subsidies pay for the pumps? No. Subsidies within the pumped area total less than $10 million each year. If the pumps cost over $300 million to construct, then it will take at least 30 years to pay for the pumps. However, by that time, the pumps will have cost more for repairs and management. Furthermore, the pumps will not relieve crop loss entirely. There will still be other problems leading to crop loss and the need for crop insurance, so we can assume there will still be millions of dollars spent on crop insurance in this area with or without the pumps.

On top of the fact that this argument for building the Yazoo Pumps doesn’t make sense financially, draining the entire pump area will most definitely impact a large portion of the wetlands. At that point, we would no doubt see detrimental impacts to the natural area that cannot be quantified financially. Over 200,000 acres of wetlands would be drained to some extent, and the investment of over $100 million of taxpayer money in conservation lands would be completely negated.

Scenario Two: Pumping During Major Floods Only

In the second pumping scenario, the Yazoo Pumps are turned on only during large flood events like the 2011 flood. This scenario presents an even worse financial investment. In 2011, the Mississippi River spilled over its banks and destroyed homes, farmland and infrastructure. During that flood, approximately 160,000 acres of the pump area was flooded.

Having pumps in place could have drained some of the water, but what type of land would it have drained?

As the map below reveals, most of the flooded area was wetland. Only 19,000 acres of the flooded area is currently in agricultural production. That means only 12 percent of the flooded area would have been cropland in need of protection, while 139,000 acres of natural wetlands and open water would have been unnaturally drained. If less than 20,000 acres of cropland are protected when turning on the pumps during floods, then the investment in the pumps will never be paid off.

Impacts on People

Another issue that has not been addressed is the impact that the pumps will have on developed areas and the people who live nearby. Two counties, Issaquena and Sharkey, make up 87 percent of the economic base of the pump area. Those two counties combined contain fewer than 6,000 people. The population in the area has been consistently declining in recent decades. Furthermore, the two counties contain a little over 200 farms, most of which are large industrial operations harvesting thousands of acres each. Therefore, the investment in the pumps would not aid many farmers, and most of the benefits would go toward a select number of those farmers.

No matter how we look at this $300-million investment, it is not a good use of taxpayer dollars.

If the pumps drain the entire study area, it will cause irreplaceable damages to wetlands and not save enough money in insurance and disaster relief. If the pumps are turned on only during flood events and drain only a portion of the study area, very few acres of crops will benefit while most of the wetlands will be drained.

Although floodplains are some of the most fertile lands in the world, sometimes it is better to restore them to their natural state rather than face the risks involved with farming them. Many taxpayers have realized this in the Big Sunflower River Basin and sought to protect those resources. Let’s not drain their investments.

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Guest blog in celebration of World Fish Migration Day by Matthew B. Ogburn.

I’ve only seen river herring in the Patapsco River once. A dozen silver flashes, finning among rocks on a warm spring day along the Grist Mill Trail upstream of Orange Grove. Place names hint of the mills, iron forges, and villages that once filled the Patapsco Valley.

Trains rumble by along tracks on the valley wall and planes fly overhead every few minutes on final approach to Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport. Guinness is building its new brewery and barrel house just downstream. And Bloede Dam stands in the way of fish migrating upstream to spawning grounds, the birthplace of their ancestors for millennia.

The Alewife and the Blueback Herring (two fishes collectively known as ‘river herring’) are born in spring into the warming waters of rivers and streams flowing into Chesapeake Bay. Alewife like the water cool, arriving in March and staying through April. Blueback Herring prefer the warmer waters of April and May. Like salmon, they are anadromous fish that migrate from the ocean into freshwater streams to spawn. Unlike the stereotypical salmon which dies after spawning, many river herring migrate repeatedly between the ocean and freshwater streams to spawn for several years.

Young river herring spend much of their first year in the protected waters of tidal rivers and marshes. As the cold of winter arrives, they swim to the relatively warm waters of the mid-Atlantic continental shelf. Maturing between ages 3 to 5, they may live to an age of 8 years or more.

The Alewife returned to Patapsco River a few weeks ago. Among the many returnees were several fish tagged by my research team from the Fish and Invertebrate Ecology Lab at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. (My team is on the river every week and sees many more herring than I do!) We use Passive Integrated Transponders, or PIT tags, which are the same ‘microchips’ that your dog or cat may have, to track the migrating fish. These are the first river herring recorded returning to the Patapsco for multiple spawning seasons!

It’s an exciting finding, because it confirms that the same individuals return to the river each year. These fish, or their kin that we tag in 2018, will be among the first in over 100 years to access up to 65 miles of habitat upstream of Bloede Dam. Thirty-five feet tall and an engineering marvel of its time, the long-dormant hydropower dam will be removed later this year. It is another step in the transformation of Patapsco Valley from industrial center to scenic State Park.

Will the herring pass the site of Bloede Dam? Will they pass the sites of Simkins Dam (removed in 2011) and Union Dam (removed in 2010)? Will they reach Daniel’s Dam, soon to be the last remaining major dam on the mainstem Patapsco River, or even use its fish ladder to move further upstream? We’ll be watching and waiting for them, learning the lessons individual fish have to teach us about the resiliency of two species that have survived despite a multitude of threats.

River herring are still in the Patapsco River because a few herring avoided the nets of foreign and then American fishing fleets that decimated populations in the 1950s-70s. Today, some fish are still caught accidentally in offshore fisheries, but efforts are in place to minimize those impacts. After migrating into Chesapeake Bay to the mouth of Patapsco River, they swim past Ft. McHenry and through the industrial Port of Baltimore before entering fresh water. Generations of herring have persevered in the degraded lower reaches of the river, where water power made the Patapsco Valley an engine of the Industrial Revolution.

Will river herring populations in the Patapsco River stage a comeback after the removal of Bloede Dam? Spawning runs 10 times greater occur in the Choptank River, much of which has never been dammed, and Marshyhope Creek, where a centuries-old dam washed out in 1935, giving hope that access to habitat will spur a recovery. Whether or not herring populations increase, removing Bloede Dam is a major milestone in the restoration of the Patapsco River and its valley, a conservation success story in the heart of the Washington-Baltimore Metropolitan Area.

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Author:  Matthew B. Ogburn
Dr. Matthew Ogburn is a Principal Investigator and Research Scientist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Maryland. Matt specializes in fish and invertebrate ecology.