Big Wild Bi-Weekly 6/27/08

Dear friends,

As summer temperatures start to simmer, we are drawn to the streams and rivers that interlace the Clearwater Country with some of the Earth’s clearest and freshest water. Kayakers and rafters seek the challenge of whitewater rapids, while fisherfolk explore the deep pools and shallow riffles, of the Lochsa and Selway rivers. Swimmers and bathers embrace exhilarating currents, sandy beaches, and the hot springs at Colgate Licks, Lolo, Jerry Johnson, Red River, and Weir Creek. Hikers, backpackers, and horseback riders venture up cool, creekside paths toward pristine lakes on remote mountainsides. All of these crystalline, intricate waterways of the five major Clearwater tributaries define not only the beauty and recreational appeal of the Clearwater basin but also determine its (and our) health.

In October 1968, the United States Congress designated the Lochsa, Selway, and Middle Fork Clearwater rivers as some of the first Wild and Scenic river systems. Public Law 90-542 asserts that these rivers and their immediate environments “possess outstandingly remarkable scenic, recreational, geologic, fish and wildlife, historic, [and] cultural…values,” and serves to protect them from degradation. Although the Selway River flows from one of the largest virgin watersheds in the contiguous states, large reaches of the North and South Forks of the Clearwater River also course through unspoiled, forested, mountainous terrain. These two rivers, like parts of the Salmon and Snake rivers and the more populated stretches of the Main Clearwater River, deserve the protections that the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act (NREPA) would provide as well as stronger agency oversight and citizen stewardship.

Illegal Landfills and Agency Negligence Threaten the Lawyer Creek Watershed

Lawyer Creek, almost wholly within the Nez Perce Tribal Reservation boundary, flows south and east of the Clearwater River until both join just east of Kamiah in north-central Idaho. This major tributary is home to endangered Snake River steelhead, recently de-listed bald eagles, and yellow-billed cuckoos – neotropical, migrant songbirds who are rare in the state and an Idaho Fish and Game ‘Species of Greatest Conservation Need.’ The drainage also constitutes some of the originally proposed critical habitat for the federally protected bull trout.

Like all lands and waterways within the jurisdiction of the Nez Perce Treaty of 1855, the conditions of Lawyer Creek must not impede upon the ‘usual and accustomed’ rights of tribal members to hunt, fish, and gather in these places. But in 2002, the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) placed the creek on the Impaired Water 303(d) list from its source to mouth, for not supporting cold water biota and primary contact recreation. A waste disposal company headquartered in Kamiah, Idaho, illegally operates a Tier 1 landfill, a Tier 2 landfill, and a Tier 2 waste transfer station, all on Lawyer Creek, and refuses to abide by environmental laws and guidelines. Negligent Idaho departments of Environmental Quality (DEQ) and Public Health and an EPA hesitant to enforce environmental standards in Indian Country also currently threaten this drainage.

For more information about these environmental problems, please visit the Friends of the Clearwater (FOC) website page about