Spring Diversions threaten Clavey River Watershed

 Project will divert millions of gallons of water from Hull Creek,
a major tributary to the Clavey River!

     On April 22nd, the MiWok District of the Forest Service sent out a scoping letter asking for public comments for the "Fahey Water Transmission permit."

     It sounds complicated, but it isn't.

     Years ago Scott Fahey got agency permission to divert most of the water from a forest spring, to pipe it across USFS land to a huge water tank, and to fill water tanker trucks six days a week year-round. He now sells the water to water-bottling companies. Shortly after getting the first permit, he added a second spring to his pipeline.

     Now Fahey wants to divert the vast majority of water flowing from two unnamed springs located over in the Hull Creek drainage in the Clavey watershed. He has named the springs "Marco" and "Polo." He wants to divert 20 gallons per minute year-round from each spring, leaving only 5 gallons per minute left to flow downstream for frogs, macro-invertebrates, fish, etc.

     CSERC is strongly opposed to the taking of so much spring water for personal profit from national forest land, especially in the Clavey watershed. We provided written comments of concerns earlier, which prompted the Forest Service to finally ask for general public comments in response to the Marco - Polo spring diversion proposal. Now is that opportunity to raise concern.

     In addition to wanting to divert 80% of the water from the two springs, Fahey is seeking approval to create 4,200 feet of temporary skidroads across the forest landscape for getting heavy equipment in to trench for the new water line. He then plans to connect these two new springs to his pipeline and water tank operation.

    Removing most of the water from the springs will result in less water and thus higher water temperatures downstream, as shallower stream water warms more quickly. What will the warmer water temperatures do to macro-invertebrates, fish species, etc. downstream?  Additionally, there is the potential significant impact of tanker water trucks driving from the Bay Area and the Central Valley and back -- adding thousands of round trips each year and creating huge amounts of greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution.  At the least, the Forest Service should require a full calculation of all the GHG emissions that will be generated by the truck traffic along with proposed mitigation measures to compensate for those GHG impacts.  Finally, the Clavey River was designated by the Forest Service as the only Critical Aquatic Refuge on the entire Stanislaus National Forest. The Forest Service in an environmental analysis should fully consider the potential conflict of the proposed spring diversions with the intent and mandate for managing the Clavey watershed critical aquatic refuge.

If you have any questions or would like to be kept up to date on this issue, please contact John at CSERC at: johnb@cserc.org or 209-586-7440.

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