Redwood Reader

71. Mercury Retrograde
Several events this week show how accurate astrology can sometimes seem to be. Mercury, planet of communication is appearing in the sky to backtrack, and this should set conditions on their head through missed communication, misunderstandings and so on. In the regulatory environment of natural resources, with many different interests and parties at work, it can seem like a Tower of Babel.
The first case is Mattole Restoration Councils Good Roads Clean Creeks program, ready to be implemented in the Middle Mattole being held up after several years preparation work, by yet another regulatory agency, CDF. Since the program is funded by DFG and Regional Water Quality Control Board and approved by the Coastal Commission, and involves neither timber nor fire, we have to wonder about the motives here, especially as it comes to light after the governors promise to abolish many boards and commissions. It looks like next year many of these agencies may not even exist. Hopefully MRC can work the issue out and do the work next year. Road based sediment is the single largest pollutant in the region and the effort to tackle it must be allowed to proceed. I have been trying to get funding for creek improvement since 1989. Meanwhile protesters may wind up with no place to turn except the courts for any issue of concern, sure to create a legal logjam until people tire and give up.
Meanwhile, up on the Klamath, low flows and warm water currently fill important stretches of the river. Several dead steelhead were found this week, and they showed one of the diseases identified in the large kill of two years ago. Regulators are trying to guess when to release water down the river to save the returning salmon spawners, who haven’t arrived yet. Like timing the stock market, it will always be a crap shoot until overall conditions improve, like temperature and restoring full scale glomalin production in the lower watershed so it won’t be so dependant on upstream water.
If we don’t take the Klamath as an example to learn from, we indeed will face the conditions reported in studies of Californias climate in twenty years. Desertification is well underway. Only the Northcoast is around normal for rainfall, the rest of the state is in a six year drought. However, our ability to store that water in the ground is being reduced by forest practices that interfere with infiltration and storage years after the job is done. So far it is not possible to purposefully change weather patterns, but it is possible to affect and control what precipitation is falling. Failure to do so will guarantee our rivers will struggle for the foreseeable future.
So once again we see science has brought us new discoveries that can improve old problems but threatens the established way of doing things. CDF, Board of Reclamation and the governor have all stepped in to make things ecologically worse in order to “protect” harmful practices.