Streams Panel Pulls On Its Boots Created To Cut Pollution, It’s Wading Past Politics To Action

Almost a year after it was formed, a group charged with guiding the restoration of Idaho’s polluted streams is about to make its first big decision.

The Panhandle Basin Advisory Group is one of seven such groups created by the 1995 Legislature to nurse the state’s 962 polluted stream segments back to health.

Last winter, Gov. Phil Batt also gave the basin advisory groups the job of keeping the state’s bull trout off the federal list of endangered species.

Although the Panhandle group has been meeting since early this year, the group has yet to form a Watershed Advisory Group (WAG). The WAGs are supposed to do the nitty-gritty work of saving North Idaho’s streams and bull trout.

Today the group is scheduled to decide on the makeup of a watershed group for the Coeur d’Alene River basin and another group to focus on bull trout in the upper St. Joe River.

Discussion will continue on watershed groups for the Lake Pend Oreille basin bull trout and the Priest Lake area.

“We’ve been struggling for a while on how the WAGs should be formed,” said Ruth Watkins, who chairs the Panhandle Basin Advisory Group. “We have spent a number of months doing the dance and waltzing through and getting to a point where we could finally agree.”

At issue has been the balance of government, industry and environmental interests on the groups, and whether to take advantage of groups already working on watershed issues - such as the Coeur d’Alene Basin Restoration Project.

Given the political differences on the advisory group, “it was necessary to go through a lot of the discussion,” said Watkins. “It’s not like we’ve wasted our meetings, although to an outsider it might have seemed that way.”

The pace of the appointments does not bode well for meeting deadlines under the governor’s bull trout plan and a recent court decision by federal Judge William Dwyer.

Dwyer ruled in September that the state’s effort at cleaning up its water under the Clean Water Act was glacially sluggish and ordered the state to come up with a new, aggressive cleanup schedule by March.

The order indicates that Idaho may have only five years to identify the pollution problems in 962 water bodies and start cleaning them up.

In addition, the groups have only until the end of 1998 to come up with specific conservation and recovery plans for the bull trout in each of its 59 key watersheds.

“It seems a bit overwhelming,” Watkins admitted. She said her biggest concern is that the watershed advisory groups won’t have enough time to develop the guidelines for allowed pollutant levels - called Total Maximum Daily Loads - for their watersheds.

“It is an incredibly involved process,” Watkins said. She should know. She’s spent two years on a committee trying to develop guidelines for the Clark Fork River that still aren’t finished.

The federal court’s interference may end up relieving some pressure on the local volunteer groups.

Dwyer’s decision means the state must streamline its process. That means fewer groups would address more streams and likely would be less involved in the technical details, said Michael McIntyre of the Idaho Division of Environmental Quality in Boise.

“Given the consensus-building that needs to go on, we’d never get there in five years,” McIntyre said. “We’re still looking at a pretty strong local involvement. We’re looking at a shift of when they’ll get involved.”

In addition, U.S. District Judge Robert Jones this month ordered the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to reconsider its refusal to list the bull trout as threatened or endangered.

The decision not to list the bull trout was based in part on the argument that other agencies were taking steps to save the fish. If the agency changes its decision, then the federal government would take the lead in recovery efforts.

While that would relieve the watershed advisory groups of the task, it could result in a greater impact on timber harvests, cattle grazing, mining and other land-use activities that affect the fish.

, DataTimes