Gosh, Who Knew? Weyerhauser's Extensive Logging On Steep NW Slopes Bred Landslides, Fouled Water

[hatrack]

EDIT

The Seattle Times, using information from state aerial surveys, examined 87 of the steepest sites that had been clear-cut. Nearly half of them suffered landslides during the storm. Those sites represented less than 8 percent of the total acreage — both logged and forested — in the Upper Chehalis and its tributary drainages. But the sites produced about 30 percent — 219 — of the landslides. Among the other findings:

• Weyerhaeuser routinely downgraded slide risks on those sites in logging applications submitted to the state. In watershed plans financed by Weyerhaeuser and approved by the state in 1994, more than half the acreage in the sites was rated at moderate- or high-hazard potential for landslides. But in a second round of site reviews before logging, Weyerhaeuser geologists concluded that most acreage had little or no potential for landslides.

• State forestry officials often noted "unstable slopes" or "unstable soils" in checklists that accompanied their harvest approvals. But there is no record in the files of any field visits by state geologists to scrutinize the logging plans in the 42 sites that later had landslides. Forty of those sites were logged by Weyerhaeuser, two by other companies.

David Montgomery, a University of Washington geomorphology professor who reviewed The Seattle Times' findings, believes Weyerhaeuser underestimated the risks of clear-cutting. He notes that several logged areas included features specifically defined in state rules as potentially unstable. Logging these areas removes trees that help intercept the rain and bind the soil. Decades of studies, which have been used to help shape state forest-practice rules, show logging such slopes can increase the number and size of slides. Montgomery wrote some of those studies. His blunt assessments of the connection between logging and landslides have sometimes rankled state and industry officials.

"If the policy is not to increase landsliding, then they have no business cutting on some of these slopes," Montgomery said. "There is not a mechanistic model on this planet that would predict cutting down those trees would do anything other than reduce stability. The only question is how much."

EDIT

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008048848_logging13m.html

[kestrel91316]

1. Certainly no one could have forseen THIS.

[XemaSab]

2. Never

:o

[pscot]

3. If a negative recommendation on a clearcut application reaches the DNR and nobody wants to hear it

Does it make any noise?

[XemaSab]

4. DNR

Do Not Resuscitate

[depakid]

5. ""There is not a mechanistic model on this planet"

Oregon State University has one!

Expert reviews of the December landslide that inundated U.S. Highway 30 and homes west of Clatskanie found that the chain of events started on slopes clear-cut by Oregon State University's College of Forestry but no evidence the logging caused the collapse.

Instead, the reviewers said extremely heavy rainfall reactivated ancient, deep rifts in the ground that existed prior to the logging and had slid long ago.

The reviews highlighted weaknesses in Oregon planning that leave homes in danger zones such as the area west of Clatskanie, where landslides have struck before and probably will again.

A separate administrative review by the Oregon Department of Forestry, almost finished, has found that when reviewing the OSU logging the state should have better recognized the history of landslides in the area and the homes in danger below.

"Clearly we didn't capture that - our tools weren't strong enough," said Mike Cafferata, policy unit manager at the Department of Forestry.

http://www.dailyastorian.com/Main.asp?SectionID=2&ArticleID=50714

Note: these are the same folks who rigorously defended spraying 2-4-5 T (agent orange) throughout Northwest forests.