Town's water supply proves vulnerable to logging

Falls City -- Logging on private land that muddied drinking water for this small Coast Range town has raised concerns about rules to protect that water.

City workers had to shut off the intake to the water treatment plant to prevent clogging its filters or sending dirty water through faucets. The reservoir that holds the drinking water for roughly 1,000 residents was drawn down over eight days.

"The concern was how long would we have to stop making water," said Mayor Darrin Fleener. "It is not just drinking water; it is also fire flow. If we have three houses go on fire, we have a problem."

Fleener and public works supervisor Don Poe investigated and found logs being hauled across a road cutting above a creek that is a source of city water.

"There is no reason they should have been at our headwaters shovel logging," Fleener said about the heavy-equipment clear-cutting. "Protecting that source of water for the future of the town is critical."

Fleener complained to the landowner, Weyerhaeuser Co., and the Oregon Department of Forestry. Weyerhaeuser employees responded immediately.

"We looked out over the next series of weather forecasts, and we shut the entire operation down as an additional precaution," said Greg Miller, Weyerhaeuser spokesman. "We moved off of it, and we didn't go back until the weather forecasts cleared up."

The state forestry agency investigation didn't find any logging violations.

But regulators and environmentalists say the incident shows logging rules fail to protect sources of drinking water and need to be strengthened.

Oregon was a leader when it passed the nation's first forest practices act in 1971, setting standards for reforestation, road construction and maintenance, timber harvesting and other procedures.

David Powers, regional manager for forests and rangelands at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said only incremental changes have been made since he testified about his concerns to state officials more than a year ago.

"We believe that there is a substantial body of science that demonstrates Oregon's existing forestry rules and best-management practices do not consistently meet water quality standards or fully provide riparian functions important to water quality, public water supplies and fish," Powers told the Oregon Board of Forestry in November 2005.

In addition to the EPA, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality has criticized the forestry rules.

"We feel that there are a lot of very vulnerable areas upstream of drinking water intakes that are very difficult to protect," said Sheree Stewart, the drinking water protection coordinator for DEQ. "They are vulnerable in terms of sediments after any type of operation or road building."

Powers said recent changes to the law increased protections for small fish-bearing streams, but those protections still are minimal.