Water Needs At Loggerheads With Project Striped-Elf Timber Sale Threatens Flow, Endangers Habitat, Critics Say

Plans for logging and liberal off-road vehicle use in the watershed that provides drinking water for Kellogg and Osburn are drawing the ire of both public officials and environmentalists.

The Forest Service recently decided to allow thinning of 2 million board feet of timber from about 390 acres in the Big Creek watershed. Three miles of road will be relocated from along Big Creek, south of Kellogg.

“It means the loss of our pure water supply for many thousands of people,” said Fred Bardelli, an Osburn native and schoolteacher. “Decades of mining and logging in the Coeur d’Alene River drainage have left few places unscathed by bulldozers and chain saws.

“This is one of the last extensive roadless areas in the Coeur d’Alene River drainage” and is prime habitat for endangered fisher, martin, West-slope cutthroat trout and game animals, Bardelli said.

Mac Pooler, manager of the Central Shoshone Water District, says the project - known as Striped-Elf - was sold as a means of “relocating the roads that harm our drinking water. But they threw in so many other activities that work against clean water that we have to ask them to reconsider.”

The Forest Service, meanwhile, is stumped by the roadless argument. In fact, the agency wonders if those appealing the timber sale have confused this area with the Big Creek roadless area in the St. Joe drainage.

There are lots of abandoned mining roads that have been used by off-road vehicle enthusiasts for years, said Kerry Arneson of the Coeur d’Alene River Ranger District - formerly the Fernan-Wallace Ranger District. In addition, a main Forest Service route, Road 2354, leads to Elsie Lake - the only alpine lake in the district with road access.

The Forest Service is required to provide places for off-road vehicles and “we don’t feel there is a significant problem with damage,” Arneson said.

The project means moving 3 miles of road that routinely are washing out from the creek bottom midway up the slope.

Some road miles also will be obliterated, and other watershed rehabilitation work will be accomplished, Arneson said.

That work will cost $405,600. The agency is $50,000 short and will get that needed extra revenue from the logging, she said.

The logging consists of thinning tree stands to give larch a boost by lessening competition for sunlight and nutrients. “If we do nothing, these stands are going to start falling apart,” Arneson said.

All but one of the units will be logged with helicopters. Overall, the Forest Service’s analysis shows the logging won’t hurt water quality, she said.

But opponents of the sale say the Forest Service’s environmental review shows no study of how the logging will affect water quality. They also charge the agency is sidestepping technicalities in calling the area roaded.

The Forest Service never has made the mining roads an official part of its road system, maintained the roads or officially closed them, said Jeff Juel of the Ecology Center in Missoula. Many are overgrown.

Most important, however, the Forest Service had enough money to just move the Big Creek Road and not log, Juel said. And the agency erred in not considering that option.

, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: MEETING PLANNED The Forest Service will meet with the people appealing the Striped-Elf timber sale Thursday at the Kellogg City Hall at 5 p.m.