Salem, Ore. -The Oregon Board of Forestry voted to more than double streamside shade buffer requirements within the Oregon Forest Practices Act to protect cold water in western Oregon fish-bearing streams.
Board members voted 4 to 3 yesterday to develop administrative rules that create a 60-foot buffer on small fish-bearing streams (120 feet total including both sides of the stream) and an 80-foot buffer (160 feet including both sides) on medium-sized fish-bearing streams.
The rule concepts will now go into the formal rulemaking process.
“From the beginning of this process, the board has been focused on developing streamside buffers under the Oregon Forest Practices Act that meet the Department of Environmental Quality’s temperature requirements and the federal Clean Water Act, but that also allow for landowners to be stewards of their private land,” said Tom Imeson, Chair of the Oregon Board of Forestry.
The streamside, or riparian, buffer rules ensure Oregon’s streams are shaded and provide a blueprint for where to leave trees during a timber harvest. Existing since the 1980s, these rules were revised in the 1990s to further protect water quality.
In 2002, the Oregon Departments of Forestry and Environmental Quality (DEQ) analyzed the Forest Practices Act (FPA) streamside shade buffer rules to assess alignment with the federal Clean Water Act. The research showed that following FPA rules didn’t meet the protecting cold water (PCW) standard, which directs that human activity should not raise stream temperature more than 1/2 degree Fahrenheit, where salmon, steelhead and bull trout are present.
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