District Manager's Corner by Pat Frost Thirty years ago this October President Nixon signed the Clean Water Act into law. The Clean Water Act set the stage for efforts across the nation to improve the quality of our waterways with a back drop of massive fish kills and even one river that caught on fire. We have come a long way in making our rivers, lakes and streams safe for fishing, swimming and drinking. The first major improvements came by installing state-of-the-art technology to clean up the water flowing from the ends of pipes at factories, and the construction of new wastewater treatment plants. The new treatment plant in Hayfork is an example – when County public health officials announced closing popular swimming holes this summer, Hayfork Creek was not on that list! The second step has been to look at how we manage our land with an eye towards clean water. A lot of improvements have come from the good land stewardship that we see all over Trinity County. Of course more still needs to be done. This issue of the Conservation Almanac is filled with examples of what folks in Trinity County are doing to help meet Richard Nixon’s vision in 1972 of clean rivers and streams for future generations.

Trinity County Resource Conservation District is working on a comprehensive monitoring program in the South Fork Trinity River Watershed. The South Fork Trinity River watershed is included on California’s Clean Water Act Section 303 (d) list as water quality limited due to sediment. That means that the State Water Resources Control Board believes that the amount of soil getting into the streams of the South Fork Trinity River is harmful, particularly to the cold-water fishery. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) completed a sediment Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) for this watershed in 1998. With the completion of the TMDL Planning Process it is clear that additional monitoring is necessary in the South Fork Trinity River watershed.

This monitoring project begins or continues data collection and analysis to help landowners meet the TMDL targets set by the EPA through an adaptive management process. The State is required to adopt a plan to reduce the amount of sediment reaching the streams. This plan has not been developed yet, but reductions in sediment load are anticipated through existing restoration programs (see Page 5 of this issue). The program is an attempt to measure progress toward meeting the targets set by the EPA and to provide information that will help us to design more effective sediment reduction projects.

The District has subcontracted with the local hydrology consulting firm, Graham Matthews & Associates (GMA), to develop the program, train landowners and District staff, and coordinate the data collection and analysis. Funding comes from the Trinity River Restoration Program’s, Trinity County Grants, the State Water Resources Control Board’s Clean Water Act 205(j) program and the California Department of Fish and Game.

• Quality Assurance (QA) Plans for all of the procedures were developed, submitted to the State Water Resources Control Board and approved. These QA Plans guide field data collection, laboratory analysis and reporting.
  
• Sixteen continuous stream flow stations were installed and are operated throughout the watershed. 20 manual sites, consisting of a staff gage and a crest stage gage also are operated throughout the basin. A key partner in this project is the USFS. They operate approximately 15 other manual stations. Gage operation, which includes downloading dataloggers, calibrating the instruments, and collecting stream discharge measurements, provides critical information on the amount of water in these streams as it relates to rainfall. Over 100 of these discharge measurements have been collected so far.
  
• Turbidity and suspended sediment samples were collected at 39 sites by GMA and various volunteers. This information combined with the stream flows will tell us about the sediment loads for different streams.
  
• Barker Creek and Rattlesnake Creek were selected for more detailed stream flow and sediment transport monitoring. The purpose of the more detailed monitoring is to refine the relative sediment loading from smaller areas within each creek’s drainage.
  
• Geomorphic monitoring is taking place this fall. This monitoring is designed to look at changes in the shape of stream channels over time. Several streams were surveyed for cross sections and a selected length of each stream. The types and amounts of fine sediments and gravels are being analyzed with bulk samples of sediment, permeability measurements, pebble counts, and pool volumes. The USFS is cooperating in this monitoring to maximize our efforts and to insure that we use similar methods.

Dry autumn weather will shift to rain, and the winter monitoring of streams will begin for a third year. So, if you see someone standing on a bridge in the middle of a storm this winter they possibly are one of the members of our dedicated team.