Forest Guardians Online Newsletter: 12/23/97
12/23/97
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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Headline: Forest Guardians Online Newsletter: 12/23/97
Source: John Horning
Watershed Protection Program
Forest Guardians
1413 Second Street
Santa Fe, NM 87505
505 988-9126
505 989-8623 fax
www.fguardians.org
Date: 12/23/97
*FRONTLINE*: FOREST GUARDIANS ONLINE NEWSLETTER
ISSUE 6, DECEMBER 23, 1997
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1. GRAZING LAWSUIT FILED: 110 CRITICAL ALLOTMENTS TARGETED
2. MEDIA: U.S. ARMY CORPS LEVEE PROJECT THREATENS RIO GRANDE BOSQUE
3. JUDGE CONFIRMS AZ STATE STATE LEASING PROCEDURES ILLEGAL
4. AZ DAILY STAR EDITORIAL: OPEN THE STATE LANDS
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1. GRAZING LAWSUIT FILED: 110 CRITICAL ALLOTMENTS TARGETED
The Forest Service is violating the Clean Water Act, National Forest
Management Act and the Endangered Species Act according to a suit filed in
Federal District Court in Phoenix, Arizona on December 12, by Earth Justice
Legal Defense Fund on behalf of Forest Guardians.
The suit alleges the agency is violating the law on more than 110 livestock
allotments throughout New Mexico and Arizona. The allotments include
streams and rivers which provide habitat for four of the most critically
imperiled species in the Southwest; the Southwestern willow flycatcher, two
minnow species - the Loach minnow and spikedace - and the Mexican spotted
owl. Numerous rivers, including the Gila, San Francisco, Blue, Verde, and
numerous smaller tributaries are targeted by the lawsuit. In all, more
than 1.5 million acres of land on the Gila, Apache-Sitgreaves, Prescott,
Cibola, Santa Fe and Carson national forests are affected by the
litigation.
The centerpiece of the lawsuit is the National Forest Management Act's
requirement that the Forest Service ensure that "fish and wildlife
habitat.... be managed to maintain viable populations of existing
native...vertebrate species in the planning area." In 1996 Forest
Guardians submitted a petition to the Southwestern Region of the Forest
Service requesting that the agency protect dozens of imperiled native fish
and wildlife dependent upon Southwestern streams and aquatic ecosystems.
That petition asked the Forest Service to amend Forest Plans and eliminate
livestock grazing from watersheds and streams that were critical to
numerous imperiled amphibians, reptiles, mammals and birds. The petition
was accompanied by expert declarations from three of the Southwest's
premier ecologists; Dr. Robert Ohmart and Dr. Paul Marsh of Arizona State
University and Dr. Peter Stacey of University of Nevada-Reno. Each of the
experts have visited the allotments and will be important expert witnesses
in the case.
The suit also alleges the Forest Service is violating the Clean Water Act
by failing to obtain certification from state water quality bureaus to
ensure that permitting grazing will not result in violations of state water
quality standards.
The suit targets Southwestern rivers which are one of the most critically
endangered ecosystems in North America, according to a 1995 Department of
Interior report. In New Mexico and Arizona only 41,500 acres, or 17
percent, of the nearly quarter million acres of riparian habitat on the
national forests meet minimum Forest Plan standards. Over 19 of the 21
million acres of national forest land in Arizona and New Mexico is
allocated for livestock.
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2. MEDIA: U.S. ARMY CORPS LEVEE PROJECT THREATENS RIO GRANDE BOSQUE
The Albuquerque Journal, 12/6/97
Levee Project May Leave Bosque in the Balance
A Proposal To Repair a Decades-Old Water Delivery System
Endangers the Rio Grande Flood Plain, Conservationists Say
By Mike Taugher
The Rio Grande and the cottonwood and willow forest that runs along its
banks from Cochiti Lake to Elephant Butte are in decline.
The river no longer floods, shifts course or meanders through the
middle Rio Grande valley like it once did. Instead, its flows are regulated
to coincide with the irrigation season, its banks controlled to protect
nearby homes.
The bosque, that rare riverine forest that runs through Albuquerque and
the rest of the river's middle valley, is narrowing. Cottonwoods are aging,
and no new generation is coming up to renew the forest. Salt cedar, Russian
olive and other non-native plants are aggressively replacing the native
trees.
"That bosque is not healthy," said Jeff Whitney, a Fish and Wildlife
Service biologist who coordinates the bosque initiative, a project designed
to restore the middle Rio Grande. "If we don't change something, we're
headed for a sand wash that's bounded by concrete."
Two agencies are planning to rebuild a pair of aging water structures
around Socorro that will ensure the river and bosque continue their decline
in a portion of the river that biologists say holds the best hope for
restoration.
Instead of taking water out of the river, conservationists and
biologists want more water left in the river so it can spill over its banks
and create wet areas where cottonwoods can reseed and birds and fish can
thrive.
A levee and channel, each built in the 1950s for flood control and
efficient delivery of water, also would pinch the Rio Grande's flood plain
permanently in an area where biologists say the flood plain should be
expanded.
"They're applying a 19th century way of thinking of river management
when everyone agrees the river is endangered," said John Horning, a
watershed specialist with Forest Guardians in Santa Fe.
What's worse, biologists and conservationists say, is that the two
agencies planning the structures -- the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and
the Bureau of Reclamation -- are out of sync with each other, a possibility
they say could have severe consequences for the river.
The agencies, however, say there is no problem -- they are working
together and taking river restoration into account.
Declining environment
Biologists and conservationists want to see the flood plain widened and
water released throughout the year in a pattern that more closely mimics
the natural water cycle, with the highest flows in the spring and early
summer. Doing so would help restore the river by allowing natural processes
to return.
And the best opportunity to do that kind of restoration in the middle
Rio Grande valley is where the levee and channel are -- in the southern
portion of the valley, Whitney said.
Here, the flood plain is relatively undeveloped and rich in water. It
is also a home for endangered species like the Rio Grande silvery minnow
and the Southwestern willow flycatcher -- endangered species that already
have had an impact on how the levee and channel will be built.
"It'll never be what it was, but it certainly can be more vibrant than
it is," said Whitney.
In the lower part of the valley, widening the flood plain would require
moving the levee and the channel to the west, away from the river.
Failing to do so, Whitney said, will ensure that the plants and animals
that make up the Rio Grande environment will continue to decline.
"The status quo is the reason we have endangered species. Maintaining
the status quo is part of the problem," Whitney said.
Plans to rebuild
The levee and channel are both part of that status quo. The corps of
engineers wants to reconstruct 42 miles of the levee to control floods, and
especially to protect the Bureau of Reclamation's Low Flow Conveyance
Channel.
The channel, a big ditch built in the droughty 1950s to deliver Rio
Grande water outside the river from San Acacia to Elephant Butte reservoir,
has gone virtually unused during the past decade because silt has filled
several miles of its lower reach. At the time the channel was built, it
took 70 miles to reach the reservoir. Today, that distance has shortened
because the reservoir is fuller.
The bureau now wants to rebuild it. And the corps wants to strengthen
the levee that protects it.
But even though the bureau's plans for the channel are still in the
early stages, the corps' $70 million levee project is funded. Planning for
the levee is much further along.
That's a problem, say conservationists. The result, they say, could be
that a permanent levee could be in place right next to the river before all
the potential ways to widen the flood plain are considered.
"The concern of Defenders of Wildlife is that by going ahead with the
levee, it's going to severely limit the options for the Low Flow Conveyance
Channel," said Susan George, New Mexico state counsel for the conservation
group.
"We're going to miss out on restoration," George said.
Still, neither project's plans are cast in stone. While the Corps is
expected to formally set out its proposed plan and alternative plans fairly
soon, the bureau has yet to begin considering designs.
Concessions
The corps and the bureau dismiss the criticism they are hearing not
only from conservation groups but also from the Fish and Wildlife Service.
The corps and the bureau say they have worked closely together and already
have made concessions to environmental concerns.
For example, the bureau is considering moving the lower 10 miles or so
of the channel to the west in order to expand the flood plain in the area
nearest Elephant Butte. In response, the corps has shortened the levee so
that it now would end at San Marcial so that the channel can be moved west
from that point.
"There was a lot of coordination," said Pete Doles, the corps' levee
project manager.
But not nearly enough, said Horning of Forest Guardians. He said the
existing channel's lower reach already is waterlogged, and the channel
already is obliterated down there.
"The corps is an agency full of engineers, and for a long time the
engineers dictated how flood control projects were implemented," Horning
added. "The first and only method the corps used was to build levees and
try to make these dynamic systems like canals. In doing so, they brought
about the demise of the whole river ecosystem."
But the corps and bureau say they are just being realistic. The bureau
owns the flood plain below San Marcial, making controlled flooding there
more feasible. Above that point, the land is privately owned, much of it by
media mogul Ted Turner, according to the bureau.
The levee, the southernmost of three levees the corps is building in
the middle Rio Grande valley, also protects farmland, Socorro and the
Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District's water diversion structures.
Commitments
Conservationists and biologists have not objected to the levees in the
Belen and Corrales reaches of the river because, they agree, it would be
unrealistic to abandon flood control in those highly populated areas.
But they say river restoration is possible in the lower reach. Still,
the corps and the bureau say flood control is needed even there.
"A lot of people would like to see the flood plain expanded. I just
question the practicality of that," said Chris Gorbach, a planner for the
bureau. "Who's going to manage it? Who's going to own it? I'm more
interested in trying to get done what we can get done."
Gorbach added that the channel is good for New Mexico because it helps
satisfy the state's commitments for water delivery to Texas and Mexico.
"The amount of water that can be saved or conserved by diverting it
down the low-flow channel can be significant," Gorbach said. "The state is
the beneficiary of the increased water deliveries. Every drop they can
wring out and get in there (the reservoir) is beneficial to the state."
State water officials agree.
"We do find it is an important conveyance system to deliver water to
Elephant Butte," said Marsha Mose, an engineer with the Interstate Stream
Commission. "Since the 1980s, we've been in a wet cycle, so the importance
of the Low Flow Conveyance Channel has been camouflaged."
Maintenance costs
Two giant amphibious excavating machines owned by the bureau sit at the
end of the dirt road that follows the levee from San Acacia nearly to
Elephant Butte reservoir. The machines are used to dredge great volumes of
silt each year to keep water flowing from the river into the manmade lake.
"What would happen if the bureau walked away from all this?" asked
Brian Hanson, who evaluates federal projects in New Mexico for the Fish and
Wildlife Service. "I don't know, but maybe we'd have all this great habitat
here, plus you wouldn't have the maintenance costs."
Hanson said he sees folly in the channel. Water, he said, will get to
the reservoir from the river, even if it sinks into the ground before it
gets there.
"They look at it as inefficient if there's a wide delta here," Hanson
said. "Why they can't see it's evaporating at the reservoir at an
astonishing rate is beyond me."
Danger of extinction
The desire for efficient water delivery probably would have overrun
consideration of the river and bosque if it were not for the presence of
endangered species.
"Until the silvery minnow and the Southwestern willow flycatcher became
an issue on the Rio Grande, those action agencies never talked to us," said
the Fish and Wildlife Service's Whitney.
Rio Grande silvery minnows were once one of the most abundant fish in
the river, ranging from Espa¤ola to the Gulf of Mexico. Today, the minnow,
once an important food source for larger fish now gone from the river, is
in danger of extinction. Biologists say most of those remaining -- about 70
percent -- are in the lower portion of the valley below San Acacia, where
the Low Flow Conveyance Channel begins.
Biologists and conservationists say the silvery minnow is just one
indication that the river's ecology is out of whack.
But the silvery minnow is one of the survivors. Several other fish
species have either gone extinct or no longer are found in the Rio Grande.
The Rio Grande shiner is no longer found, and the phantom shiner and Rio
Grande bluntnose shiner are believed extinct.
Another indicator is the Southwestern willow flycatcher, a songbird
that used to inhabit riverside vegetation throughout the Southwest. But
biologists say 90 percent of that type of habitat has vanished from the
Southwest, and today the flycatcher is in danger of extinction.
Rising sediment load
The levee and the channel are hardly alone to blame for the declining
condition of the Rio Grande and bosque. Conservationists and biologists say
their effect has been significant.
The channel, by design, takes water from the river. Even when water is
not deliberately diverted into it, the channel still drains water from the
Rio Grande.
That's because the levee has pinched the flood plain and forced the
river's silt, which used to settle across a broad flood plain, to settle in
a narrow channel for more than 40 years.
The result is that the river runs atop all that silt and is now higher
than the flood plain outside the levee. Large quantities of water seep out
of the river and into the lower-elevation channel.
The same rise of the riverbed has also made flood control more
difficult below San Marcial.
"We've had years and years of building the levee to keep up with the
sediment load. We're getting to the point of diminishing returns," said the
Bureau of Reclamation's Gorbach.
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3. JUDGE CONFIRMS AZ STATE STATE LEASING PROCEDURES ILLEGAL
Rejecting the claims of the Arizona State Land Department and the livestock
industry, Judge Michael Dann of Maricopa County Superior Court recently
confirmed his earlier ruling that the agricultural leasing system fails to
generate revenue in violation of the state's constitution.
Although Dann would not order a new leasing system he affirmed his earlier
ruling that sealed bidding, public advertisement, elimination of the
preferential right of renewal to current leaseholders, and obtaining a
surcharge on the sublease of grazing rights were necessary to increase
revenue for the public schools - the designated beneficiaries of state
lands. In addition, Dann said if the state land department or state
legislature do not come up with a plan that complies with the constitution
by a deadline to be set in January that he would invalidate the system
currently in place.
The livestock industry will likely attempt to push a bill through the
Arizona legislature which will prevent competition from environmental and
hunting groups. In a related story, administrative hearings to challenge
the land department's rejection of Forest Guardians' and the Western
Gamebird Alliance's unranching bids have been set for early February.
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4. EDITORIAL: OPEN THE STATE LANDS
Arizona Daily Star
Thursday, December 11, 1997
For all the talk of collaborative problem-solving in the West these
days, the real story remains the intransigence of the old guard. A case in
point is the current state of efforts to reform Arizona's unfair and
ecologically unsound state land grazing system.
Months ago Superior Court Judge Michael Dann of Maricopa County,
ruling on a lawsuit filed by the Arizona Center for Law in the Public
Interest, declared the state's maze of unadvertised grazing lease
``auctions'' and automatic lease renewals unconstitutional.
Citing Arizona's 1912 Enabling Act, Dann concluded the state rips
off school kids by handing ranchers a monopoly on the use of 8.4 million
acres of state land.
However, the judge nonetheless refrained from dictating his own
reform. Instead, he gave the Land Department, the law center and four
ranchers who had intervened in the proceeding several months to begin
negotiating a new system. Work it out, you guys, is about what he said.
So how has Dann's invitation to collaborative reform worked out? So
far it has not worked at all. First the Arizona Cattle Growers' Association
tried to get then-Gov. Symington to appeal Dann's ruling. Then, in October,
having rejected negotiation, the Land Department submitted essentially the
same unconstitutional system to Dann as reform. And now, Dann has had to
pointedly ask the department to submit by tomorrow what rules and laws it
needs to change in order to introduce competitive bidding to the range.
The bottom line: The ranching establishment and its proxy state
agency have utterly spurned self-reform as they continue to insist on the
bad old ways.
And so Dann needs to step forward now. Shortly after tomorrow, when
the state is supposed to submit an outline reform, Dann will hold a hearing
to decide what order to issue to obtain compliance with his ruling. At that
time, Dann should take firm control after having seen his nod to voluntary
reform go to nought.
Specifically, the judge should simply order the Land Department to
begin injecting competition into a closed system by advertising the
availability of grazing leases and holding auctions on them. This Dann
could do right now because he has already decreed that the Enabling Act
requires openness.
In the meantime, the state has been treated to a depressing
illustration of how entrenched remain the West's ``lords of yesteryear''
even in an era of conflict resolution and collaboration.
Ultimately, the arts of collaboration provide the best hope for a
greener, healthier and fairer West. But for now, plenty of Westerners -
given the opportunity to sit down and adjust their traditions to a changing
world - are blowing it. They shouldn't complain when the courts do the
adjusting next time.
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John Horning
Watershed Protection Program
Forest Guardians
1413 Second Street
Santa Fe, NM 87505
505 988-9126
505 989-8623 fax
www.fguardians.org