Flood Repairs Doing Damage To Trout Habitat Rush To Fix North Idaho Roads Takes Toll On Rivers And Streamsi

Idaho trout streams are being harmed in the zeal to repair roads and otherwise clean up after last month’s floods, say state and tribal biologists.

One of their examples is LaTour Creek, where some of Lake Coeur d’Alene’s cutthrout go to spawn. Another is Lapwai Creek, where some of the state’s few remaining wild steelhead return from the ocean and where tax money is being spent to restore the habitat.

“One-quarter to one-half mile of stream has basically been reamed out,” state biologist Chip Corsi said of the bulldozer work done to reopen LaTour Creek Road.

“There are better fixes out there.”

It was absolutely necessary to dig out gravel in the stream bed and do it within days of the Feb. 9 flood, according to Ken Renner, supervisor of Kootenai County’s East Side Highway District.

He did not apply for the necessary permit from the Idaho Department of Water Resources, he said, because it takes so long to get one.

People needed the road reopened so they could get in and out of their homes, Renner said.

“Last summer, we needed to do work on that creek. We filed the permit in August; in October, we weren’t any closer to getting it,” he said.

Soon after the flood, the state waived the usual 60-day notice for stream alteration permits in cases requiring “immediate action to protect life and property.” Renner said the waivers hadn’t been announced when he decided the LaTour Creek channel needed to be cleared.

Ken Knoblock, stream channel specialist with the Water Resources Department, said he and a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers staff member will investigate the work done at LaTour Creek.

They’ll also look into complaints about work the highway district did along Evans Creek, another Coeur d’Alene River tributary.

Stream alteration permits are needed for such things as placing rock to armor streambanks, and replacing culverts that carry water under roads.

That’s the kind of work that agencies and private landowners are scrambling to do before snow melts in the mountains.

Since the flood, 102 waivers have been granted and more are being requested daily, Knoblock said.

Permit applications are normally reviewed by the Idaho Fish and Game Department, and Division of Environmental Quality. Either can put conditions on the work in order to protect habitat or water quality.

In the case of LaTour Creek, Corsi would have asked that the highway district not pile up gravel on both sides of the stream.

One berm protects the road, he said, but the second prevents flood-waters from spreading out over a field, which the water can lose some of the energy that causes destruction downstream.

The bulldozing wiped out streamside vegetation, he added.

“It’s the sort of thing the Stream Channel Protection Act was designed to prevent.”

Corsi fears that many people aren’t even applying for waivers.

When the Department of Water Resources issues waivers, Knoblock said, it alerts environmental agencies that stream work is planned.

The alerts are often inadequate and the waivers too broad, according to Gregg Servheen, environmental biologist in Fish and Game’s Lewiston office.

“The agencies don’t know what’s going on,” he said. “While we realize the need to take care of imminent threat to property and lives, we believe that time is long past.”

Immediate work was necessary when a raging Lapwai Creek took out a big stretch of U.S. Highway 95 south of Lewiston, Servheen said.

But now, he said, stream alterations done without expert advice can harm steelhead habitat that the federal government is spending money to restore.

Lapwai Creek is a tributary of the Clearwater River that crosses the Nez Perce Indian Reservation. County and railroad crews are removing flood debris that can create pools fish need to survive, according to tribal fisheries manager Silas Whitman.

“There’s always a rush to remove debris, to remove brush … what Mother Nature has left in the aftermath of flooding,” Whitman said. “They’re undoing what we’re spending millions of dollars trying to accomplish.”

Without expert consultation, Whitman said, work crews are on their own.

“The crew chief says, ‘Let’s get this done’ - then it’s rape, pillage, plunder.”

, DataTimes