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Feds to eradicate weeds in Tonto Nat’l Forest

KELLNER CANYON — The worst year was 1969. The low flying U.S. Forest Service helicopters came more often that year, spraying with less accuracy than previous years. The pungent mist landed on homes, livestock and, on occasions, people.

On a hot August day that year, Bob McKusick was hiking with his wife, three children and two dogs They were exploring a clay deposit the family had recently acquired from the U.S. Forest Service near their home in Kellner Canyon in the Pinal Mountains just north of Globe

That’s when they heard the wahump of an approaching helicopter.

“We tried to wave them off,” McKusick says. “We were in full view.” They were sprayed away. Within days one of the dogs died, bleeding from “every orifice.”

In the coming years, the McKusicks and their neighbors would see birth defects, escalating cancer rates, deformed livestock and too many early deaths. The water supply was contaminated forcing residents to have their water trucked in from Globe for the next 35 years.

“We went through absolute hell,” says McKusick, now 77.

McKusick and his neighbors would soon discover the Forest Service had been dropping clouds of Silvex, a mixture of 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D on them. In Vietnam, the same stuff was called Agent Orange.

Now, the U.S. Forest Service once again wants to kill vegetation. Noxious weeds are pushing out competing native plants, running the ecosystem and creating a wildfire hazard. But this time, the agency is using herbicides at very low toxicity levels, as well as other techniques, to keep weeds from spreading across the Tonto National Forest through central Arizona and beyond.

The forest is the largest national forest area in the state at 2.9 million acres.

In June, the Forest Service released a proposed 10-year plan to eradicate 64 species of noxious weeds over the Tonto’s vast expanse. The agency’s preferred alternative would use a combination of mechanical, manual and biological controls as well as 13 herbicides. Similar plans have been used effectively and safely, officials say, on national forests in Arizona and throughout the West.

Not surprisingly, some Kellner Canyon residents like McKusick don’t like the idea.

It’s not hard to understand McKusick’s anger. In the late 1960s, the Salt River Project contracted with the Forest Service to spray a 1,900-acre chunk of the north slopes of the Pinal Mountains with defoliants in an effort to kill off water sucking shrubs and allow less thirsty grasses to take over. The grasses would mean better cattle grazing and more water flowing down the slopes and eventually into the Salt River for Phoenicians to drink and water their lawns with.

But the plan went wrong on many levels.

Diesel fuel was supposed to be mixed with the chemicals to avoid drift. According to Forest Service guidelines at the time, spraying was only supposed to occur when wind speeds were below 10 mph. On a handful of occasions in 1969, the chemicals were mixed with water and household detergent instead of diesel and helicopters sprayed on gusty days.

In early 1970, Time magazine ran an article that looked into the spiking cancer rates and tales of bizarrely deformed livestock coming out of Kellner, Ice House and Sixshooter canyons. When local physicians and veterinarians said they weren’t seeing anything usual, the article suggested residents were paranoid.

The McKusicks and four other families eventually sued Dow Chemical, the maker of Silvex, and the U.S. Forest Service, which the agency no longer uses because it is banned. The families ended up settling out of court in 1980.

“It wasn’t settled for millions and millions like they are nowadays, like it should have been,” McKusick says.

The Forest Service says everything will be different this time. Much has changed in 40 years. Thanks to passage of the National Environmental Policy Act, ironically passed by Congress in 1969, the federal government is now required to consider the environmental implications of any major plan and gather public comment.

Patti Fenner, noxious weeds coordinator for the Tonto National Forest, says past technology was not available to determine what levels of dioxin were safe. Regardless, she adds, her agency will only be doing ground-level spraying this time without helicopters or dioxin — a contaminant in herbicides that has also been banned.

“We made mistakes,” Fenner says, “There is no doubt. Trying to kill off an area’s vegetation is just stupid.”

Now the agency only wants to use methods that cause the least environmental impact to help save the West’s landscape. In an email to TZR, Fenner said buffel grass is taking over the Southwest’s Sonoran deserts, leading to less cacti and more intense wildfires. The thorny Yellow starthistle, she said, threatens to make certain lands unpassable by horse because it’s a toxic plant with one-inch-long spines. The plant is exploding in population in California and now Arizona, she said.

Fenner is particularly concerned with weeds like camelthorn, which is native to Central Asia. It’s a particularly tough plant that can grow through pavement and concrete. “You can’t get rid of this plant any other way,” except with herbicides, Fenner says.

Other weeds can be killed off with controlled burning and pulling by hand and other methods.

Still, such assurances aren’t good enough for McKusick or his son-in-law. Geof Condit, who also lives in Kellner Canyon, says nine of the 13 chemicals the Forest Service plans on using are toxic, according to the Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides.

“They make it sound all wonderful,” Condit says of the Forest Service plans.

Fenner doesn’t expect a final decision to be made until sometime next year. Even if the Forest Service decides to go ahead with its plan to use herbicides, federal officials may still avoid an ugly confrontation with Kellner Canyon residents. Fenner says very few invasive weeds have been found in the Pinals, which means little, if any, spraying may be needed – at least for now.

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>>Email the editor at aklaw@zoniereport.com.

Urban needs drain Colorado River delta

High over the southern edge of the lagoon, a bald eagle appeared as if from out of nowhere, wheeling through the cloudless sky. Then, in a beating of wings that shook the desert air, several thousand snow geese took flight, honking in terror at the sight of a mortal enemy.

“Man, look at all those snows,” says Brad Andres, a wildlife biologist from Colorado. “I think two on the left are Caspian terns.”

Paul Meyers, a biologist from Alaska, pointed his binoculars to the west. “Here comes an osprey,” he says.

That morning at dawn, Meyers and Andres had set out from Yuma, Ariz. with a half-dozen fellow biologists for a tour of the Cienega de Santa Clara, a 40,000-acre wetland thriving in the midst of the bone-dry Sonoran desert, near the Gulf of California in northwestern Mexico.

A crucial stop on the Pacific Flyway, the cienega — Spanish for “marsh” — provides habitat for hundreds of thousands of migratory and resident birds, some of which, like the endangered Yuma clapper rail, are found virtually nowhere else on Earth. It is a birder’s paradise, where white-faced ibis, sandpipers, gulls, warblers, cranes and pelicans hunt among tall cattail reeds and rise in flocks that can momentarily darken a flawless blue sky.

“It’s crazy how wetlands out in the middle of the desert are always so incredibly productive,” Meyers says.

Remarkable though they may be, these wetlands are only a tiny fragment of what once was one of North America’s largest and most productive estuaries: the Colorado River Delta. In the days before the building of dams on the river, and the creation of giant reservoirs such as Lake Powell and Lake Mead, massive surges of freshwater created a wetland area here the size of the state of Delaware.

In 1922, ecologist Aldo Leopold explored the Delta by canoe, through a seemingly endless landscape of emerald-green lagoons and towering cottonwood and mesquite trees, where deer, bobcats and even jaguars roamed.

“The river was nowhere and everywhere…” Leopold wrote. “He divided and rejoined, he twisted and turned, he meandered in awesome jungles, he all but ran in circles…”

Today, those green lagoons — and the wildlife they supported — are all but gone, replaced by agricultural fields, cities, and barren salt flats that stretch as far as the eye can see. Canals and pipelines divert so much water from the river that it fails to reach the sea except in times of exceptional flooding.

Of the Delta’s former wetlands, only the Cienega de Santa Clara remains.

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“It’s the last relic we have of the wetlands of the Delta,” says Martha Roman, a field biologist for the Mexican state of Sonora. “It’s a treasure.”

Yet even this remnant wilderness is threatened, as water officials north of the border weigh diverting as much as 70 percent of the water that sustains it for use in cities and farms in the United States.

ENVIRONMENT VS. ECONOMICS

As American water officials like to point out, this remaining marshland is an artificial creation, more replica than relic. For while the Delta’s former wetlands relied on the spring floods of the Colorado River for life, the Cienega depends on millions of gallons of agricultural run-off from farms in Arizona, water delivered through a concrete canal built in the 1970s.

That run-off was intended for delivery to the Yuma Desalting Plant, which was intended to purify and return the water to the river. But due to a series of unusually wet years, and the high cost to operate the desalter, the water was allowed to bypass the plant, which stood idle. Instead, it flowed into the desert, and there, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, the Delta’s wetlands were reborn.

“For the longest time people didn’t even know these wetlands existed,” said Robert Mesta, a birds of prey specialist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who is coordinating conservation efforts in the area. “They just depend on the fact that canals leak.”

For Arizona’s water managers, though, Nature’s gain is their loss. An average of 110,000 acre-feet of water – enough to supply 220,000 Arizona households for a year – flows across the border to the wetlands. This volume is equal to about 8 percent of Mexico’s total share of Colorado River water.

Yet until the plant begins operation, that water is subtracted from Arizona’s river allotment, a supply already stretched to the breaking point by massive population growth and compounded by the worst drought since the region’s record-keeping began.

“Because the U.S. is not operating Yuma, we were delivering water into Mexico that was not being accounted for,” says Sid Wilson, director of the Central Arizona Project. “It was just ice cream for Mexico, and it was lowering levels in Lake Mead by a foot a year.”

If elevations in Lake Mead and Lake Powell sink to a pre-determined level, a shortage will be declared on the Colorado River, leading to immediate cuts in water deliveries to Nevada and Arizona. With less water available, the Southwest’s development-driven economies would inevitably suffer.

Gloomy predictions about imminent shortages on the river have been tempered somewhat by heavy snowfall in the Rocky Mountains. At the moment, spring runoff is estimated to be about 117 percent of average, which would add about 10 feet to Lake Mead’s elevation, and forestall a shortage at least for a few years.

Nevertheless, booming population growth in the region, and the prospect of more dry years on the horizon, has water managers scrambling to secure every drop of water they can. One of the most attractive options has been halting the flow of agricultural runoff and other unregulated water into Mexico, and keeping it for use in the United States.

Yet while that water has been targeted under the banner of conservation, much of it flows down the main channel of the river, sustaining the Delta’s remaining wetlands.

“Some of the water that flows off of these fields really does support some important habitats,” says Karl Flessa, a paleobiologist and chair of the University of Arizona’s geosciences department, who has studied the Delta for decades. “But that flow is likely to be reduced to near zero, so that the United States can retain as much water in the river as possible.”

FEW OPTIONS FOR CIENEGA’S SURVIVAL

The Yuma Desalting Plant has been eyed for years as a potential tool for reducing accidental flows into Mexico. Were the plant put into full operation, however, flows to the Cienega would be reduced to a brackish, pesticide-laden sludge.

According to Jim Cherry, Yuma area manager for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, after a successful test run at 10 percent capacity last year, the plant could be restarted almost immediately. “It ran beautifully,” he says.

The reopening of the plant was simply a matter of time, Cherry adds.

According to Wilson, flows to the Cienega could eventually be cut by as much as 70 percent, down to about 30,000 acre-feet. But Wilson, who has been deeply involved in delicate negotiations with environmentalists and other groups over the fate of the Cienega, argued that such a reduction might not spell disaster for the wetlands.

“I don’t know how much water the Cienega needs, and neither do the environmentalists,” he says. “Nobody really knows.”

And while Wilson said he recognized the value of the wetlands as a unique habitat, he could not guarantee that they would avoid the impact of future shortages on the river.

“The Cienega, like the rest of us, will have to learn to deal with drought,” he says.

With a growing recognition of its environmental importance, it appears unlikely that flows to the Cienega de Santa Clara will be dramatically disrupted in the short-term. Even more promising to its long-term survival are several alternative strategies for providing water to the region.

The Yuma area suffers from an exceptionally high groundwater table, water that is too salty for use in agriculture. Were that water pumped into the desalting plant, it could replace the agricultural run-off that currently flows into Mexico.

“We’ve been looking at whether it makes sense for this plant to be operating a little bit differently,” Cherry says. “This is a more sustainable use of the desalting plant, and it would still allow the Cienega to flourish.”

Still other options exist, such as paying Yuma farmers for their water rights. “In times of real drought, where you don’t have supplies available to go to the Cienega, part of the solution might be short term, temporary leases of land, and fallowing of that land,” said Wilson. “That would free up some water to go down to the Cienega.”

MEXICAN INVOLVEMENT NEEDED

To environmentalists, while the long-term survival of the Cienega would represent a major victory, much more work remains to be done in the Delta, where around 95 percent of the original wetlands have vanished.

The task of restoring the greater Delta is complicated considerably by its location in Mexico. In the U.S., tens of billions of dollars have been spent restoring estuaries and wetlands such as Chesapeake Bay, the Everglades and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in California.

“You don’t see the same corresponding effort going into restoring the Delta, I think because it’s simply on the other side of the border,” Flessa says. “The United States hasn’t taken its full responsibility in assisting Mexico in restoring some of these habitats.”

North of the border, a $626 million effort to restore riparian and marsh habitats along the river is underway, led by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. That restoration work, aimed at shoring up populations of endangered birds and fish, ends at the U.S.-Mexican border.

Wildlife in the region, however, does not respect international boundaries. “The common interest is that these birds are found on both sides of the border,” Mesta says.

The key ingredient in further restoration of the Delta is water — lots of it. Conservative estimates suggest that at least 1 to 2 percent of the Colorado River’s total flow would be necessary to begin repairing significant amounts of habitat. But the river’s supply is under tremendous strain, with essentially every drop already divided up between users in seven U.S. states and Mexico.

Not represented at the negotiating table, of course, are environmental uses such as the Delta.

Dr. Osvel Hinojosa-Huerta directs the water and wetlands program for Pronatura, a Mexican environmental organization. On a recent bird-counting trip into the Delta’s remaining wetlands, he and his team identified 109 species — among them eagles, hawks, the endangered snowy plover and even a great horned owl.

Hinojosa has seen the Colorado River reach the sea a few times in his many years in the Delta, during times of major floods. He says he hoped one day it would be a regular occurrence, allowing the Delta to flourish once more.

“If we want it to happen again, we need to make a legal allocation [of water] for the environment , with both countries working together,” he says. “That’s a big challenge, but I think it’s very possible.”

WATER USERS BICKER OVER RIGHTS

High anxiety over water for human uses in the region, however, make the prospects for significant new allocations for the environment uncertain at best. Negotiations over the Colorado River are extraordinarily complex, involving seven U.S. states, the U.S. Department of the Interior and Mexico.

The Delta’s location south of the border provides additional cover for those who would rather prefer to steer the river’s water towards development.

Wilson, for instance, praised efforts by Mexican environmental groups working to secure water rights for the wetlands. But he expressed doubt that the U.S. was obligated to provide additional water supplies to the area. “It’s really a Mexican issue, to begin restoring the Delta,” he says.

Others feel that responsibility should be shared among all river users.

“Saying that Mexico should use its allocation to restore habitats in the Delta, would be like saying the state of Louisiana is responsible for the dead zone off the mouth of the Mississippi River, and that none of the upstream states in the Mississippi River system should bear any responsibility for putting excess fertilizer in the river,” Flessa says. “It’s simply unfair, regardless of the fact that it’s in another country.”

A number of U.S. environmental groups are working towards just that goal, including the Sonoran Institute, based in Tucson, as well as Environmental Defense and the Pacific Institute. But fair or not, implementing a policy to allocate U.S. water for the Delta will be far from easy.

Unless the Southwest breaks out of its current drought and enters a prolonged wet period, increasing demand from cities and agriculture seems almost certain to keep supplies stretched tight. With demand already exceeding supply, securing water for any new purpose—much less an environmental use in a foreign country—won’t happen without a long struggle.

After all, as Mark Twain once observed, “In the West, whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting.”

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>>Email the editor at aklaw@zoniereport.com.

Water war at Army’s Fort Huachuca

SIERRA VISTA — The U.S. Army has been allowed to drain the San Pedro River basin using a flawed environmental study, and the results for one of Arizona’s rarest ecosystems could be catastrophic, according to a recent lawsuit.

The suit was filed in federal court by the Center for Biological Diversity, a national nonprofit, and the Maricopa Audubon Society, a Phoenix-based group of birdwatchers.

Both parties have banded together in a 21-page lawsuit, which basically accuses the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service of cow towing to military interests by letting Fort Huachuca continue to tap more and more groundwater despite their own studies that show this could be disastrous for the upper San Pedro River basin.

The river flows north from Mexico and joins the Gila River in Arizona. Biologists say it supports more than 490 mammals and reptiles, a massive stand of cottownwoods and enough birds to gain the first “Globally Important Bird Area” from the American Bird Conservancy.

Because of this, wildlife officials declared almost 34 miles along the river’s upper basin as “critical habitat.”

But Fort Huachuca continues to draw upon its waters by adding more soldiers. Wildlife officials have repeatedly asserted in past that this is a problem, but have yet to act on those studies, the suit claims.

Biologists for the center sued and won in 2002. Now they are asking a federal judge to intervene again and force Army and wildlife officials to find a solution before the river runs dry.

“If the water table continues to drop,” the suit says, “the river’s hydrology will eventually reverse — in other words, instead of the aquifer feeding the San Pedro River, the San Pedro will feed the aquifer, and the river will dry up.”

The biologists are represented by McCrystie Adams and Andrew Hartsig of the Denver-based Earthjustice.