A Review of Waterbodies Listed as Impaired by Silvicultural Operations
2000
 PDF version of this executive summary |
National Association of State Foresters and the Society of American Foresters
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The Environmental Protection Agency proposes to
reclassify forestry as a point source of pollution based
on its conclusion, purportedly derived from state data, that
forestry is a major source of water quality impairment.
But a study reveals that EPA has relied on inadequate and
unscientific data, misinterpreted the information provided
by the states, and ignored the effectiveness of state programs
to ensure water quality. These findings cast doubt
on EPA’s proposed rule change.
| PDF version of full report |
In August 1999, the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) proposed substantive changes to the
agency’s national pollution discharge elimination system—changes that could affect forest management across this country.
EPA proposes to reclassify forestry as a point
source and make forestry operations subject to permits
for total maximum daily loads (TMDL); this is
the same program that regulates industrial effluent
and municipal waste. To justify the regulatory action,
EPA argues that silvicultural operations have been
found to be a substantial contributor to impairment
of water quality.
This assertion contradicts accepted wisdom and
practical experience. Silviculture—which includes
reforestation, thinning of trees, pest and fire control,
harvesting operations, and road construction and
maintenance—can cause erosion and sedimentation.
States with significant commercial forestry operations
therefore developed best management practices (BMP)
to minimize water quality impacts and instituted programs
to encourage their use. Compliance in most
forested states is high, in the 90 percent range.
Consequently, silviculture has consistently been found
to be a minor source of water pollution.
Nevertheless, in March 2000 EPA sent to
Congress a list of 1,040 waterbodies it identified as
impaired by silviculture. In a separate report that
explains the proposed rule change, titled "Achieving
Cleaner Waters across America," EPA says that water
quality problems affect more than 20,000 miles
of rivers and streams and 220,000 acres of lakes,
but "due to data limitations, these numbers underestimate
the amount of waters impaired by forestry
operations."
Do the data justify, as EPA claims, an assertion
that forestry is a significant source of water pollution
requiring regulation via the permit program?
The National Association of State Foresters (NASF) and the Society of American Foresters
(SAF) have analyzed the EPA list and find that they do
not. In fact, due to those very same data limitations that
EPA acknowledges, the agency has dramatically overestimated
the amount of waters affected by silviculture.
As a result, the NASF-SAF analysis concludes that
EPA has no basis for its contention that silviculture
constitutes a serious water quality problem—the premise
of its proposed regulatory program.
Flawed List of Waterbodies
The NASF-SAF report was published in June 2000
as "A Review of Waterbodies Listed as Impaired
by Silvicultural Operations"; George Ice, principal
scientist at the National Council for Air and Stream
Improvement, is author of the study. Among the
findings:
- Of the 1,040 waterbodies listed by EPA as impaired
because of silviculture, only 84 may actually be
impaired by silviculture. And even for these, silviculture
may be only one of several activities contributing
to the impairment.
- About 48 percent of the 1,040 waterbodies on EPA’s
list are not named in the most recent state lists of
waterbodies that need more stringent controls to
achieve water quality standards.
- Another 37 percent of the waterbodies were listed
based on inadequate or outdated data or personal
observations, not scientific water quality measurements.
- Management activities other than silviculture are
most frequently the contributors to impairment of
the waterbodies listed.
- In one state, none of the waterbodies listed by EPA as
silviculturally impaired had silviculture categorized
as the primary source of impairment.
- Silviculture is uniformly ranked by state agencies as a
low-priority source of pollution.
Data Limitations
EPA prepared its list of 1,040 impaired
waterbodies from reports generated by the
states. Changes have occurred with each
round of reporting, causing year-to-year variations in information. There
are also inconsistencies between state reports. Some
states identify silviculture as a general nonpoint source
of pollution; other states break out logging roads, harvesting,
slash disposal, and chemical applications; others
don’t record silviculture as a pollution category at
all. And EPA’s lists are not current: The state reports are
collated by EPA into national reports that are usually
released two to three years later.
The quality of the data is another problem. State
agency personnel for Louisiana, Mississippi,
Oklahoma, and South Carolina indicate that their
reports, especially those developed in the past, were
often qualitative. State agency professionals in
Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, and Oklahoma
acknowledge that they in effect "padded" their lists of
impaired waters, based on anecdotal information and
best guesses, because federal watershed funding was
tied to their identification of a waterbody as possibly
impaired. Arkansas and Mississippi agency staff say
that EPA specifically encouraged the state agencies to
include waters identified as possibly impaired.
In Arkansas, for example, 14 stream segments were
not intended to be subject to the TMDL process.
Rather, the state agency listed them as waters that could
benefit from funding to prevent them from becoming
impaired.
So, too, in Oklahoma, where the early reports of
impaired waters were based on suspected problems;
there were no data requirements. The state maintained
these waterbodies on the lists so that it would be eligible
for watershed funding. Kurt Atkinson of the
Oklahoma Division of Forestry estimates that only 20
to 30 percent of the list has any supporting data.
Florida’s reports were likewise based on qualitative
surveys, in which water quality impairments were
reported without supporting data or field verification.
Eager to benefit from EPA’s programs to prevent water quality degradation, the state did
not seek to determine or verify any
sources of nonpoint pollution. "No
doubt," the director of the Florida
Division of Forestry wrote to EPA,
"the qualitative and nonscientific
nature of the assessment accounts
for the ‘silvicultural impairment’ of
waterbodies such as the Everglades,
Sarasota Bay, and the Myakka River,
where silviculture is virtually non-existent."
Illogical Listings
EPA’s list contains many surprises. Kim Kostelnik,
on the staff of the New Mexico Forestry Division, found
that eight of the waterbodies that EPA listed for her
state have never been listed as impaired.
The state forester of South Dakota found that none
of the nine waterbodies listed for South Dakota had
documented impairment due to silviculture; he considers
it "misleading and incorrect to assume there is silvicultural
degradation just because these waterbodies
are in forested areas."
In Louisiana, silviculture is named as the contributor
to impairment in a watershed where a forest was
converted to residential housing—this was deforestation,
not silviculture.
In other cases, the pollutant is not associated with
forest management. Silvicultural operations are not likely
to employ arsenic or beryllium, for example, or contribute
the E. coli bacterium—the named pollutants for
a "silviculturally impaired" stream in Arizona. So, too,
with the Salkehatchie River in South Carolina, where
the pollutant of concern is fecal coliform bacteria but
the river is listed as impaired because of silviculture.
Implications of the Rule Change
EPA’s proposed rule change would require the
states to develop TMDL plans—one for each pollutant
in the listed waterbodies—based on unreliable data; it
would create redundant and costly programs that
would duplicate efforts already proving effective in
minimizing the impacts of silviculture on water quality.
In Mississippi, for example, where waterbodies are
listed for multiple water quality parameters, the state
agency would have to prepare 2,257
TMDLs. Yet the list of impaired
waters is largely based on what
staffers describe as "unreliable anecdotal
information."
The NASF-SAF survey indicates
that state laws and other state efforts
are now beginning to require a
reevaluation of listed waters to
ensure that the data are credible and
that limited resources will be focused
on seriously impaired rivers and
streams. When Montana and
Wyoming required their agencies to
use more rigorous data for listing impaired waters, for
example, the number and miles of degraded streams and
rivers shrank significantly. This rigor becomes especially
important for streams identified as impaired by silviculture,
where data are often completely lacking.
Even if fewer streams and rivers are listed, the EPA’s
proposed change would create a redundant system that
could undermine state programs for best management
practices. All states with significant commercial forest
operations have already developed BMPs to minimize
water quality impacts and instituted programs—regulatory,
voluntary, or some combination thereof—
designed to ensure BMP implementation.
For example, as part of South Carolina’s silvicultural
nonpoint source control program, state forestry
commission foresters fly over the Salkehatchie River
and other watersheds to locate active forest operations,
then provide specific BMP recommendations to
foresters on the ground. The state has enforcement
mechanisms if poor operations are identified.
In short, the NASF-SAF report finds the proposed
regulations inappropriate for forestry operations.
Pollution permits could create a costly, time-consuming
bureaucracy and subject forest operators and landowners
to increased litigation. Policies and regulations that
discourage forest management can only lead to
decreased water quality in the long run. If the states
already have programs to ensure water quality, and if
the EPA’s list of silviculturally impaired waters is bloated
and riddled with problems, there is little basis on
which to recommend adoption of the proposed rule
change.
Background
The Clean Water Act of 1972 requires that
states identify streams, rivers, and lakes that
have not met water quality standards. For these
waters, the states develop total maximum daily
load allocations, or TMDLs, to achieve water
quality. By focusing on reducing point sources
of pollution, like industrial plants and municipal
facilities, this program has resulted in remarkable
improvements in water quality.
In 1988, EPA began to explore methods of
reducing nonpoint source pollution, or diffuse
runoff from sources like agriculture, forestry,
and municipal roads. Because silviculture can
cause erosion and sedimentation, best management practices (BMP) to
minimize water quality impacts have been developed and are widely
followed. As a result, silviculture is a minor source of water pollution.
The Society of American Foresters and the National Association
of State Foresters share EPA’s interest in reducing both point and
nonpoint source pollution and achieving the goals of the Clean Water
Act. For the past 100 years ensuring a quality water supply has been
a goal of professional forestry. Few other goods from our forests
match the importance of a clean and abundant water supply. Clean
water from the nation’s forests has been and remains one of the chief
concerns of forest management.
Best management practice (BMP) a practice or usually a
combination of practices that are determined by a state or a designated
planning agency to be the most effective and practicable means
(including technological, economical, and institutional considerations) of
controlling point and nonpoint source pollutants at levels compatible
with environmental quality goals.
Section 303(d) Section 303(d) of the Clean Water Act requires
states to identify waters for which technology-based pollution controls
(described in Section 301 of the Clean Water Act) are not stringent
enough to achieve applicable water quality standards. States must
then calculate the total maximum daily load to achieve water quality
standards.
Section 305(b) Section 305(b) of the Clean
Water Act requires states to prepare biennial
reports that describe the water quality of all
navigable water, assess the protection provided
for shellfish and fish propagation and recreational
use, analyze how elimination of pollutants has
contributed to shellfish and fish propagation and
recreational use, estimate the economic costs of
achieving the goals of the Clean Water Act, and
describe of the nature and extent of nonpoint
source pollution and recommendations to control
nonpoint sources. Individual state reports are
summarized, analyzed, and presented to Congress.
Section 319 Section 319 of the Clean Water Act deals with non-point
source management programs. Part of Section 319 involves identifying
those navigable waters within a state that cannot reasonably
be expected to attain or maintain applicable water quality standards
without additional action to control nonpoint sources of pollution.
Silviculture the art and science of controlling the establishment,
growth, composition, health, and quality of forests and woodlands to
meet the diverse needs of landowners and society on a sustainable
basis. In the EPA draft regulations the following silvicultural activities
are specifically listed: nursery operations, site preparation, reforestation
and subsequent cultural treatment, thinning, prescribed burning,
pest and fire control, harvesting operations, surface drainage, or road
construction and maintenance.
Total maximum daily load (TMDL) the calculated total pollutant
loading into a waterbody, including wasteload allocations from
point sources, load allocations from nonpoint sources, and natural
background, that can meet water quality standards. There are an estimated
20,000 waterbodies listed nationwide as requiring estimates of
the TMDL and plans to allocate it, and in some cases multiple TMDL
plans are needed for each waterbody.
Waterbody a stream, river, lake, estuary, or coastal water, or any
segment thereof.
Contact Information
Society of American Foresters
5400 Grosvenor Lane
Bethesda, MD 20814-2198
(301) 897-8720
www.safnet.org
National Association of State Foresters
444 North Capitol Street, NW
Suite 540
Washington, DC 20001
(202) 624-5415
www.stateforesters.org
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