The Swan Lake Ranger District is hosting a meeting Monday, June 24, 1-5pm at the Condon Community Hall to discuss the “Chilly James Project” in the Cold and Jim Creek watersheds. The Forest Service wants your involvement in restoration planning to improve water quality and fish habitat with road management options. See the attached invitation and explanation. United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service Swan Lake Ranger District (406) 837-7500 Fax (406) 837-7503 200 Ranger Station Road Bigfork, MT 59911 File Code: 1950 Date: May 24, 2013 REQUEST FOR PUBLIC INVOLVEMENT Chilly James Project Dear Interested Party: The Swan Lake Ranger District is asking for your involvement to collaboratively develop watershed restoration in the Cold Creek and Jim Creek Watersheds. This project, called Chilly James, is located in the Swan River valley (see Project Vicinity Map). The objective is to improve water quality and fish habitat conditions. The goal of the meeting is to review opportunities and ideas together, craft a purpose and need statement(s), and start developing a proposed action. This project is also located within the boundaries of the Southwest Crown of the Continent Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP). This program aims to provide for collaborative, science-based ecosystem restoration of priority forested landscapes. The Swan Lake District recognizes the need for landscape restoration with regard to roads and therefore will focus on roads within Cold and Jim Creek Watersheds. These two watersheds contain important bull trout spawning habitat. Currently, there is concern that fish habitat in Jim and Cold Creek has been left in a degraded condition from past forest management practices. Jim Creek is considered “impaired” by the Montana Department of Environmental Quality. The Swan Lake Ranger District would like to initiate recovery action. An Interdisciplinary Team of resource specialists have inventoried the roads and evaluated the short and long term need for each road. It is recognized that a transportation system is needed for long term timber management, wildfire suppression and recreation. The team seeks to find a balance for transportation needs while restoring water quality and fish habitat. We invite your input to help us develop the purpose and need and potential proposed action. As a starting point, the team has developed some preliminary opportunities. Enclosed you will find a map of these opportunities (see Opportunity Map). We hope that you review the map and bring your ideas and feedback to share at the meeting. The Chilly James meeting will be held at the Swan Valley Community Hall on Monday, June 24 from 1pm to approximately 5pm. We will start with about an hour overview of what the Interdisciplinary Team has completed to date and then begin sharing ideas and input. We have several possible management options for each road. Please use the information below to help craft your ideas or comments for the meeting. Description of Management Tools A. No Action/ Keep As Is. These roads have little or no consequence to aquatic resources in their current condition. The roads exhibit no erosion, they do not appear to intersect surface or sub-surface runoff, they have appropriately designed culverts or bridges and/or they are situated outside of riparian areas. These roads would remain in the road network. B. Road Maintenance (BMPs – Best Management Practices): These roads are presently needed or will be needed in the near future but their existing condition has negative impacts to water quality or fish habitat. Maintenance and BMP work reduce the concentration of sub-surface and surface water runoff, minimize road surface erosion, filter ditch water before entering streams, and decrease the risk of culvert failures during peak runoff events. Activities could include replacement of existing culverts with larger culverts, installation of drainage dips and surface water deflectors, placement of rip-rap to armor drainage structures, aggregate surface replacement, aggregate placement to reinforce wet surface areas, ditch construction and cleaning where needed, and surface blading to restore drainage efficiency of the road surface. C. Road Storage: These roads are not needed right away but they have negative impacts to water quality in their current state. The road would be placed in basic custodial care and yet it remains on the system for reuse in the future. In order to minimize aquatic impacts, all stream culverts would be removed and water bars installed as needed so ditches and road surface do not collect water. The entrance to the road would be bermed or re-contoured to prevent unauthorized use. The road is left in a self-maintaining state for an indefinite period and can be reutilized when needed. D. Road Decommissioning: Decommissioning removes roads from the landscape that are no longer needed for current or future resource management. Road decommissioning would lower the total road density. There are several ways to decommission a road. Some roads are so grown in with vegetation no action is needed (called “passive decommissioning”). Other times it may be desirable to remove all culverts and ditch relief pipes and then fully re-contour the road to restore the original ground slope along with placing slash and seed on the former path. Another method does not re-contour but still remove the culverts and other drainage structures, install water bars, seed and fertilize disturbed soil, and then block the entrance. E. Road Construction: The past checkerboard ownership led to adjacent road systems in neighboring sections. New road construction could connect road systems between National Forest and Legacy Lands to allow for more efficient transportation system. This would eliminate the need for longer, unnecessary road segments. This analysis will consider the future of roads on Legacy Lands (former Plum Creek Timber Company land) although they cannot be legally decommissioned until January 1, 2019. We look forward to working with you on Chilly James. We ask you to bring constructive ideas and a willingness to work with all the interested parties. If you need more information, please contact me or the Project Leaders, Beth Gardner (406) 837-7508 or Mark Ruby (406) 837-7531, at the Swan Lake Ranger District, 200 Ranger Station Road, Bigfork, MT 59911. Once the proposed action is finished, you will have the opportunity to comment on a scoping letter. If you wish to be on the mailing list for this project, please let us know either by coming to the meeting, or filling in your name and address on this letter and returning it, or e-mailing us at [email protected]. E-mail comments may also be sent to [email protected]. Electronic comments should be submitted in MS Word, Word Perfect, or RTF format. Please feel free to share this letter with neighbors or other interested parties in the event we have missed someone. Thank you for your interest in this project. Sincerely, RICHARD H. KEHR, JR. District Ranger Enclosures (Chilly James Project Vicinity Map and Opportunity Map)
Posted on: Thu, 20 Jun 2013 15:45:28 +0000
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