Flood cleanup fouls creek

Two Sandpoint outfitters say the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers fouled a tributary of the Clark Fork River and destroyed protected bull trout habitat during a $250,000 flood-control project.

Calvin Fuller and Aaron Richter returned from a fly-fishing trip to Lightning Creek last week with smoke-shrouded pictures of log piles burning on gravel bars. An ashy sheen coated the water.

“It was kind of distressing to me to see the heavy equipment in the stream,” said Richter, who works for Sandpoint Outfitters, a guide business that Fuller owns. “Lightning Creek is one of the most critical spawning areas in the greater Pend Oreille system.”

The corps hired contractors to pull woody debris from 2 ½ miles of the creek and burn it. The emergency flood control work was done at the request of Bonner County commissioners, with the endorsement of Idaho Gov. Butch Otter.

But the sheer scope of the project has raised questions from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is charged with protecting bull trout.

“We are all very surprised and shocked by the pictures we’ve seen,” said Tom Buckley, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife spokesman in Spokane.

Bull trout are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. They spawn in the upper reaches of Lightning Creek and use the lower creek as a migration route to Lake Pend Oreille.

The Lightning Creek drainage was the site of a flash flood in 2006, which deposited 50,000 tons of tree trunks and branches in the creek, said Larry Merkle, the corps’ project manager. Much of the debris piled up a short distance from the town of Clark Fork.

Local residents feared that high water this spring would unleash a surge of debris that could wash out a highway and railroad bridge, or dam up the creek and cause flooding in town, Merkle said. After assessing the situation in April, the corps agreed to pay for the work.

“It posed an immediate threat to the town of Clark Fork,” said Lewis Rich, chairman of the Bonner County board of commissioners.

“They’re predicting 70 to 80 degrees by Wednesday,” he said. “There’s a lot of snowpack and it has a high water content. If the weather does what it’s forecast to do, we could have a lot of runoff.”

Since the work was done as an emergency flood control measure, corps officials weren’t required to formally consult with U.S. Fish and Wildlife on how the project would affect bull trout.

But Merkle said the corps did its best to avoid stream impacts. Contractors washed and inspected their equipment to avoid oil spills, he said. Merkle also said that a U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologist met corps officials at Lightning Creek to discuss the project.

Buckley has a different version of events. Corps officials mentioned the work to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologist two months ago while they were discussing a different Lightning Creek project, he said. The biologist told the corps that a bull trout consultation would be required, according to Buckley. The agencies exchanged a few e-mails, but corps officials never expressed urgency over the project, or indicated that they would pursue it as an emergency flood control measure, he said.

Under the emergency protocol, the corps is required to consult with U.S. Fish and Wildlife after the project is done.

“We do anticipate that the consultation process will be completed with them, albeit after the fact,” Buckley said. “We’ll probably end up looking at some lessons learned.”

The outfitters, meanwhile, said the fish have left that stretch of Lightning Creek.

“On Wednesday, we caught some 30 fish on a fly rod, including rainbow, cutthroat and bull trout,” said Fuller, describing an outing with four anglers.

“We’ve had zero luck since then,” Richter said.