Water Quality and Log Trucks

Extensive roadside use of mulch.  Basically just a bunch of shredded, burnt, roadside hazard trees

A small debris flow on private property that was piled up and drained with a culvert

This road was built decades ago in such a way that two streams were routed into ditchlines

Everyone likes using hay bales to capture sediment in ditches before it reaches the stream, but in order to be effective, you really need to install several in a row

Muddy water from road traffic in the ditchline is exactly what we don't want.  Fortunately, it's relatively easy to mitigate.

Got a real unique opportunity at work that I've never experienced before.  A representative for a large timber company had called the BLM and was trying to make the case that we weren't treating our logging roads well; roads that his company had to haul timber on.  This was all on roads adjacent to the Molalla River which burnt last fall and was now experiencing heavy salvage and log haul pressure.

Use of only one hay bale is clearly not working here.  Muddy ditch water is entering the stream network.

Lots wrong here (above and below): road with a ditchline that captured a stream and extensive road use crushing the subgrade which is leaching into the stream.

Anyway, the BLM Field Manager actually came to me and said that he really wanted me to accompany him and the timber company representative as they evaluated the roads for water quality violations.  Turns out there was more to the story: the timber company guy was saying that we weren't doing enough and was offering to do the work himself.  But what he really wanted was the maintenance rights to the logging roads so that his log trucks wouldn't have to pay the government for use of the roads.

Salvage logging on private property (above and below)

Nonetheless, we looked at roads, culverts, ditchlines, and erosion/runoff mitigation measures together and had some good conversations.  At the end of the day, my recommendation was to implement a few new mitigation measures, but to not give up maintenance duties to private industry because some of their mitigation measures were only temporary fixes that in the long term could actually make things worse.