(4/14/2003 9:23:56 AM)
|  RE: Ashland's Watershed
There are several issues related to the Mt. Ashland expansion that should be addressed. Most importantly, snowmelt from Mt. Ashland represents Ashland's drinking water. Additional expansion at Mt. Ashland will, if anything, decrease the purity of our drinking water. Next, there's no way to ensure that a catastrophic failure of the waste treatment facility on Mt. Ashland will never happen, and the possibility of this happening is unnerving. Finally, expansion at Mt. Ashland will require additional logging and clearing of brush with the potential destruction of old growth forest as well as endangered species of plants along with the corresponding habitat for animals. This is simply not the right decision for Ashland, at this time or any time. |
Jay Lininger
(4/28/2003 9:18:58 PM)
|  RE: Ashland's Watershed
The Bear Ecosystem Assessment is critical because it researches the watershed's vegetation and fire history, and (hopefully) will enable intelligent fire management over the long term.
The Forest Service is spending less than $30,000 on the Bear Assessment in fiscal year '03 compared to over $50,000 for the Mt. Ashland expansion EIS. The figures come from Ashland Ranger District staff.
More, the Mt. Ashland EIS is proceeding on faster track and will be completed before the Bear Assessment, also from FS staff.
I think that's a scandal. What's the priority for Ashland? Playground expansion or fire safety? The FS says the former. I guess the Mt. Ashland Assoc. has effectively used public money to lobby elected officials.
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(moderator)
(4/29/2003 8:24:48 PM)
| RE: Ashland's Watershed
Jay, whose opinion is stated above further elaborated his position in an e-mail he sent to me. I will paste the contents of it below.
Hi Ned, thanks for your reply.
My understanding is the Bear Ecosystem Assessment includes an update of both the Bear Watershed Analysis (1995) and the Mt. Ashland Late-Successional Reserve Assessment (1996), including the latter's fire management plan. Both documents were required by the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan.
The new Assessment inventories the specific vegetation that exists throughout the Ashland watershed and surrounding drainages. This is a complex undertaking, as the watershed's steep slopes and variable aspects creates very fine-grained mosaics of soil types, trees, shrubs, grasses, vascular plants, all of which interact differently with natural fire disturbances.
More than that, however, the new Assessment updates information about wildlife occupancy of the watershed. The Mt. Ashland LSR is the "critical link" in the whole Pacific Northwest system because it connects the southern Cascades with the Siskiyou Crest and the interior Klamath Mountains Province and the Coast Range to the west. Any wide-roaming critter, like Pacific fisher or northern spotted owl, that uses older forest habitat depends on Ashland's watershed for refuge and dispersal opportunities.
I am hopeful that the Forest Service will use the opportunity, as well, to update its baseline data on sedimentation and erosion sources in the watershed, although this may not be possible given the high level of technical difficulty of such work and the scant funding relative to the Mt. Ashland planning effort.
My feeling about the Assessment is it is critical to Ashland's future relationship with wildfires that will occur in the watershed, probably sooner than most people want or expect. It should inform us how fire historically behaved in the watershed, where it did so, how often, and what to expect when it inevitably happens again. The popular mythology is that fires used to burn really frequently with low intensity everywhere. That's not the case. Our watershed is adapted to a "mixed-severity" regime that historically included frequent (5-40+ years) low- and moderate-severity fires punctuated by really hot, high-severity fires that coincided with periods of drought. Sorta like now!
So I posted my opinion regarding the funding difference between the two ongoing planning effort because, in my opinion, the Mt. Ashland expansion proposal doesn't rise to the level of necessity for our community that the Bear Assessment clearly does.
My two cents, jay
Jay Lininger
pyrolysis@ziplip.com
PO Box 9426 Missoula MT 59807
PYROLYSIS - chemical change caused by the action of heat. |
ashlandfreepress
(10/26/2006 11:11:30 PM)
|  RE: Ashland's Watershed
There is a well balanced article in the new Ashland Free Press which has a summary of the current situation, including a timeline and a large historical photo section. Also, it includes one on one interviews with Kim Clark and Eric Navickas. Available at Bloomsbury Books, as well as many other downtown locations, it provides readers with a wealth of difficult to obtain information, not found in the main stream media. http://www.ashlandfreepress.com
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