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Restoring the watershed
Years of placer, dredge, and hydraulic mining have taken their toll on the banks of the Boise River. Residual effects are especially evident at one of the largest tributaries, Mores Creek, and restoration is badly needed. Heading up one such restoration project is Pam Smolczynski, Boise River Watershed Restoration coordinator for Trout Unlimited (TU).
Smolczynski started with TU in April of this year, after spending 12 years with the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ). The watershed restoration project, still in its infancy, focuses on restoring the watershed at Mores Creek to provide a suitable habitat for the area’s trout. Smolczynski attributes everything she has learned about stream bank restoration to her years with the DEQ, which she says, “gave me a foundation in project management [and] allowed me to hit the ground running.”
While working closely with the U.S. Forest Service on another project at Mores Creek, Smolczynski was recruited to help with Trout Unlimited’s new restoration efforts. Living near Idaho City, Smolczynski says the project was literally so close to home she would have regretted not accepting.
Because Trout Unlimited relies almost exclusively on volunteer work, Smolczynski is one of the organization’s few paid employees. She estimates that TU employs roughly 85 paid staff nationwide, and the rest are volunteers. “People’s time is everything,” she says. “Without them, we don’t have much—that’s why we have an organization.” Her salary for the duration of the project is supplied by contributions from Tiffany & Co., the famous jewelry company.
TU’s overall goal is to restore fisheries for the next generation and to incorporate a timeline for doing so. The basic premise is to create an environment where fish can live, beyond just creating hatcheries and planting fish.
The benefits of TU’s goals can provide tangible results for the surrounding environment as well. “Trout is an indicator species,” Smolczynski says. “They require excellent water quality in order to survive and breed.” So when conditions are suitable for trout, it stands to reason that the watershed can help support most other species that are reliant on clean water.
Within the Boise River Watershed Restoration project, Smolczynski and her team have several issues to manage in order to successfully restore the watershed for trout. The two most prominent concerns are:
Sediment pollution
Many Idahoans may be surprised to learn that the top water quality pollutant in Idaho is sediment. That’s right, dirt. The pollution comes from a number of sources, such as fires, road development, storm water runoff, and other development. For trout survival, the problems with sediment pollution are considerable:
Spawning limitations. Polluted sediment fills up the gravel in the stream, leaving no place for trout to spawn and resulting in obvious problems for reproduction.
Lack of food source. The macro-invertebrates that trout feed on also require clean water. Polluted sediment causes a decrease in the food-source, leaving the fish little on which to survive.
To address the issue of sediment pollution, Smolczynski and her team are working on erosion control and re-sloping the dirt roads so they don’t drain directly into the stream. They have also worked with the agricultural communities to install sediment basins to filter out any sediment before water returns to the river. Another option is engineered wetlands in which specific types of plants are used to absorb specific pollutants like phosphorus.
Water temperature
Just like humans, trout get physically drained when living conditions are too hot. Because the banks of the river have been worn down from mining, there isn’t enough shade to provide cooler water. In the summer months, increasing water temperatures can be dangerous to trout:
Stressed conditions. In temperatures above 72°F, trout become overly stressed and cannot function normally.
Fish-kills. When temperatures exceed 77-78°F, mass fish-kills occur. When the trout cannot find refuge from exceedingly hot water, they simply cannot survive.
Smolczynski and her team are working with volunteers to plant new foliage around the banks of the watershed. Another option the team is exploring is creating flood plains to allow water to soak in during periods of high runoff, instead of immediately rushing to the reservoir. This option would keep cooler water stored underground to provide refuge during periods of higher temperatures.
In keeping with TU’s grassroots spirit, Smolczynski values the altruistic aspects of her job. She places equal importance on the people she works with and the relationships she has formed—not only at TU, but also at the DEQ and at GM in Detroit where she worked in waste management prior to moving to Idaho. But she has a special gratitude for the people at TU and the kind of people you come to meet working for a nonprofit organization.
“The people here are not driven by money … [and] their passion is amazing,” she says. “People are working weekends and happy to do it.” She says the people she meets on a daily basis, whether it’s the people who work at TU or the volunteers working with her on the Mores Creek project, have enriched her life, and she encourages everyone to get involved with a nonprofit organization—even if it’s not TU.
Most importantly, Smolczynski says she’s learned that life is about taking chances and doing what you’re passionate about. Working together with the kind of passionate people you find at TU, she says, is how you accomplish something worthwhile, like the watershed restoration at Mores Creek.
Written by Natalie Orgill
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