This is the second installment of a two-part exploration of the impact of logging on watersheds that supply public water. Part 1 examined the benefits of older forests in providing and protecting water quantity, water quality, and timely release of water. Part 2 offers suggestions to protect watersheds that supply public water in order to improve quantity, quality, and timely release of water while also attaining coincidental conservation benefits for this and future generations.
Figure 1. The Jetty Creek watershed is private industrial timberland that is the source of drinking water for the City of Rockaway Beach, Oregon, which has repeatedly been issued water quality alerts for carcinogenic toxins. Too much chlorine to kill the nasties hiding in the dirt in their water due to logging. Stream buffers help drinking water quality a bit, but not that much. Source: © Trygve Steen.
I wrote in Part 1 that logging in watersheds that supply public drinking water can cause cancer. I dig into that topic in this installment. Protection of such watersheds can reduce cancer and reproductive problems. It can also improve the quantity, quality, and timely release of water while at the same time increasing coincidental conservation benefits, including for the climate.
How Logging Can Cause Cancer
Keeping water clean in the first place (by not logging in the watershed) is far preferable to making water clean. Here’s why. In the latter process, the water comes into the treatment plant and chemicals are added to first coagulate (clump the dirty particles) and then to flocculate (settle the coagulated particles). After sediments are reduced, filtration is necessary. Filters must be backwashed with clean (filtered) water. The dirtier the water going into the filters, the more backwashing with clean water is necessary. Really dirty water coming in cannot be coagulated, flocculated, and settled enough to not overwhelm the filtering apparatus. Either the plant has to shut down when it’s not producing a net of usable water or the plant operator adds a very heavy dose of chlorine before sending the water on to users.
The more logging in the watershed, the more sediment reaches the water treatment plant. To get around the dirty water problem and make the water “safe” to drink, plant operators can dial up dramatically the amount of chlorine used to disinfect the water. (So far, it’s been all about removing dirt, not harmful microbes—bacteria, viruses, and such.) Amping up the chlorine results in an interaction with the sediment that creates “disinfection byproducts” (aka toxic trash) known as trihalomethanes (THMs). THMs are known or likely carcinogens.
Regarding THMs, the Environmental Working Group reports:
[I]nside . . . . waterworks . . . . across the nation, chlorine, added as a disinfectant to kill disease-causing microorganisms in dirty source water, is reacting with rotting organic matter like sewage, manure from livestock, dead animals and fallen leaves to form toxic chemicals that are potentially harmful to people.
This unintended side effect of chlorinating water to meet federal drinking water regulations creates a family of chemicals known as trihalomethanes. The Environmental Protection Agency lumps them under the euphemism “disinfection byproducts” but we call them what they are: toxic trash.
The EPA regulates four members of the trihalomethane family, the best known of which is chloroform, once used as an anesthetic and, in pulp detective stories, to knock out victims. Today, the U.S. government classifies chloroform as a “probable” human carcinogen. California officials consider it a “known” carcinogen. Three other regulated trihalomethanes are bromodichloromethane, bromoform, and dibromochloromethane. Hundreds more types of toxic trash are unregulated.
Scientists suspect that trihalomethanes in drinking water may cause thousands of cases of bladder cancer every year. These chemicals have also been linked to colon and rectal cancer, birth defects, low birth weight and miscarriage (NHDES2006). [emphasis in the original]
Figure 2. City of Lincoln City drinking water watershed. Source: French et al. (2023).
The Agencies That Should Be Protecting Our Drinking Water
Legal jurisdiction over drinking water quality (water quantity? forgetaboutit!) is spread across three State of Oregon bureaucracies: the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, the Oregon Health Authority, and, for systems that use surface water from forests, the Oregon Department of Forestry.
Oregon Department of Forestry
The Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF) has authority from the US Environmental Protection Agency under the federal Clean Water Act to regulate stream quality from state and private timberland. But historically, the state forest practice rules were written by and for the timber industry.
Betsy Herbert points out that ODF doesn’t monitor water quality in streams. One cannot protect or manage what one does not measure. ODF also doesn’t track logging operations by watershed but rather by legal description. Finally, ODF throws all its records away after seven years. In addition, ODF doesn’t recognize a public drinking water watershed as being different from any other watershed.
Figure 3. City of Yachats drinking water watershed. Source: French et al. (2023).
Recently, as part of the private timber accords that are resulting in better water quality and quantity for imperiled aquatic species that are, or could be, protected under the federal Endangered Species Act, logging practice rules are tightening. This will coincidentally—but not adequately—benefit human drinking water. (See two previous Public Lands Blog posts: The Oregon Private Forest Accords, Part 1: The Deal and Its Significance and The Oregon Private Forest Accords, Part 2: Grand Bargain, Mere Détente, or Great Sell-Out?)
Oregon Department of Environmental Quality
The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (ODEQ) has jurisdiction over “source water protection” areas (SWPAs) under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act. While ODEQ can designate SWPAs and point out threats to said source water, it has no regulatory authority.
Figure 4. City of Yamhill drinking water watershed. Source: French et al. (2023).
Oregon Health Authority
Under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) has regulatory authority over water treatment plants. OHA generally uses this authority, including by enforcing pollution standards on cancer-causing compounds created in the water treatment process.
Figure 5. City of Rockaway Beach drinking water watershed. Source: French et al. (2023).
OHA monitors water treatment plants closely. If it issues enough water quality alerts, a bigger and better and more expensive (to build and operate) water treatment plant must be built. At least, this was the case for the City of Rockaway Beach, Oregon. Due to the near-total annihilation of the forest in the Jetty Creek watershed by Big Timber, a total of twenty water quality alerts for carcinogenic toxins have been issued to the Rockaway Beach water treatment system by OHA since 2005. Eight of these were issued before the bigger and better plant was built in 2011, and twelve of these were issued after the new plant went online, while clear-cutting in the watershed proceeded at a rapid clip.
Figure 6. Leaving a stream buffer is helpful, but the new artificial edge is often subject to severe blowdown, which both reduces shading of the stream and increases sediment runoff into streams. Source: © Trygve Steen.
Funding and Management to Secure the Public’s Water
Recently, the Oregon Legislative Assembly appropriated $5 million to protect community drinking water. With current timberland prices in the Oregon Coast Range, that works out to enough money to acquire less than five square miles. While a literal drop in the bucket, at least it’s a start.
To come up with adequate funds to reconvert private timberlands in drinking water watersheds to public lands, the legislature could issue bonds that are repaid with a tax on timber production (something Oregon has not done in the last few decades). Big Timber should actually like this approach as it would help the industry avoid increasingly bad public relations and regulatory restrictions associated with polluting the people’s drinking water. Also, reducing the industrial logging land base will make the remaining private timberlands more valuable.
Federal Land and Water Conservation Fund monies could also be directed to the effort. And I daresay that the beneficiaries of drinking water from forested watersheds should tax themselves to pick up some of the costs. Having skin in the game can increase the chances of leveraging other funding to acquire private lands in drinking water watersheds for endangered species, carbon storage and sequestration, or purposes other than drinking water. This coincidental conservation for other purposes will benefit drinking water.
While all municipal drinking water watersheds should be publicly owned, they should not be owned by benefiting the municipal or special water district government. The temptation to log is often too great for bureaucrats and politicians to resist. History is replete with waterworks selling timber on lands they own to help fund new treatment plants (the irony!) or otherwise keep water rates irrationally low. Such lands have even been logged to pay for other governmental services. While it is best to be publicly owned, it is best that it not be by a public entity that has conflicting interests.
Figure 7. The City of McMinnville routinely and regularly logs the hell out of its watershed and uses the money to pay for new facilities to store and/or treat water. Source: Betsy Herbert.
Public lands in drinking water watersheds should be managed by the Forest Service or by state forest, park, and/or wildlife agencies. Restrictions must be placed on the lands to prohibit commercial logging and require public access.
As an example, the City of Portland doesn’t own most of its drinking water watershed, and a specific and unique Act of Congress constrains any opportunities for abuse by the Forest Service and/or the City of Portland. After decades of citizen protest against Forest Service clear-cutting of the Bull Run watershed on the Mount Hood National Forest, the watershed was protected from logging. Congress passed the Oregon Resource Conservation Act (P.L. 104-208, Title VI) in 1996.
Figure 8. Portland's Bull Run watershed in the Cascades is closed to the public to protect water quality. Logging is also prohibited (by federal law) for the same reason. Betsy Herbert's research found that most city-owned watersheds in the Coast Range are also closed to the public to protect water quality. However, these cities actively log their watersheds, dismissing even more serious water quality impacts. Source: Wikipedia.
The Need for a Political Crisis Over Drinking Water
The Oregon Private Forest Accords are limited to logging practice reforms to protect imperiled aquatic species. Not to protect imperiled terrestrial (non-aquatic) species (including, but not limited to: northern spotted owl, marbled murrelet, coastal marten, red tree vole [both the North Oregon Coast Range distinct population segment and the rest], and Pacific fisher). Not to protect imperiled public drinking water supplies.
It’s time for the Oregon conservation community to create a political crisis addressing the ecological crisis that is the loss of imperiled terrestrial species from logging private timberlands. A second round of Oregon Private Forest Accords would have a salutary effect on logging within drinking water watersheds, but it wouldn’t be adequate.
A political crisis also needs to be created to address with the water quantity and water quality crises due to logging in drinking watersheds. Oregon Wild is leading a campaign to rein in industrial logging on private lands. You can get involved here.
Bottom Line: Municipal and community surface drinking water supplies need to be protected from logging, grazing, roading, and other development. The best vehicle for doing so is public ownership of the lands—but only if landowner mandates and incentives are not in opposition to long-term water quality and quantity.
For More Information
Coalition of Oregon Land Trusts. June 29, 2023. Oregon Legislature Approves New $5 Million Fund to Protect Community Drinking Water (press release).
French, Emily, et al. 2023. Oregon Coast Range Ecological Conservation: Mapping Recent Logging Within Drinking Watersheds of Oregon’s Coastal Range to Support Future Resource Management Policies. NASA Technical Report.
Friends of the Corvallis Watershed website.
Harr, R. Dennis. 1982. Fog Drip in the Bull Run Municipal Watershed, Oregon. Water Resources Bulletin 18 (5).
Herbert, Betsy. 2007. Forest Management by West Coast Water Utilities: Protecting the Source. Journal of the American Water Works Association 99 (2).
———. 2023. Forest Management Impacts on Public Drinking Water (YouTube video).
———. Logging/water (web page).
Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. Oregon Drinking Water Protection Program Interactive Map Viewer.
Oregon Howl. Oregon Drinking Watersheds (interactive map).
Oregon Wild. 2023. NASA Maps and Report Highlight Oregon’s Clearcutting Epidemic (media release).
Perry, Timothy D., and Julie A. Jones. 2017. Summer Streamflow Deficits from Regenerating Douglas-fir Forest in the Pacific Northwest, USA. Ecohydrology 10 (2).
Segura, Catalina, Kevin D. Bladon, Jeff A. Hatten, Julia A. Jones, V. Cody Hale, and George G. Ice. 2020. Long-term Effects of Forest Harvesting on Summer Low Flow Deficits in the Coast Range of Oregon. Journal of Hydrology 585.
Shannon, Elaine (ed.). 2013. Water Treatment Contaminants: Forgotten Toxics in American Water. Environmental Working Group.
Steen, Trygve. 2020. Guest Column: Oregon’s Forest Practices Act is Inadequate. Tillamook Headlight Herald.
US Environmental Protection Agency. 2005. National Management Measures to Control Nonpoint Source Pollution from Forestry.
———. Managing Nonpoint Source Pollution from Forestry (web page).
USDA Forest Service. Water Facts (web page).
USDI Geological Survey. 2018. Surface Water Use in the United States (web page).
Note: As is often the case in producing these Public Lands Blog posts, I am greatly indebted to Doug Heiken, conservation and restoration coordinator for Oregon Wild, and to Francis Eatherington, advisor to Cascadia Wildlands. For this two-part post, I especially want to recognize Betsy Herbert, PhD, of Corvallis, Oregon, who has for decades worked tirelessly to educate the public about the harms of logging in their municipal drinking water watersheds.