Letter: Logging is not the reason for poor water quality in Rockaway

Like most coastal perennial streams, Jetty Creek is rain-fed from a watershed with clay soils, as opposed to steams in other areas which are snow-fed or have more permeable soils, resulting in higher summer flows for comparable settings. Unfortunately, Jetty Creek's low summer flow occurs when tourism-driven water demand peaks. A few years ago, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife imposed a fish-enhancement program, which reserves a minimum flow for fish passage, and while this is helps fish, it further limits the amount of Jetty Creek water available for City use in summer. When the City’s summer demand exceeds what’s available from Jetty Creek, the City has to rely on its groundwater wells that have a long history of contamination from nearby leaky sewers.

A 2010 City study found that wells supply nearly all of the City’s water demand during peak summer periods, with occasional spikes of coliform bacteria, sodium, and organic compounds. When exposed to chlorine for disinfection, these organic contaminants form trihalomethane, a known health risk. This report predates recent timber harvest around Jetty Creek and concluded that the City’s water treatment system was inadequate to remove these exceptionally difficult to treat contaminants, advising the City to upgrade its water treatment facility, “seriously examine its available water sources”, or consider interconnection with the City of Manzanita or City of Garibaldi in order to reduce reliance on contaminated wells during the summer months. The City elected to upgrade to a state-of-the-art treatment system in 2013, which has since reliably produced excellent water quality throughout the year.

Between 2005 and 2013, the City had 23 drinking water alerts for trihalomethane, coliform bacteria and sodium. All of these water alerts were during summer months, when the City relied almost exclusively on its groundwater wells, and little on Jetty Creek. If timber harvest impacts on Jetty Creek were the root problem, the City’s past water quality problems would have been primarily during winter, when Jetty Creek is the primary water source. Clearly, the facts are being misconstrued to advance an anti-forestry agenda. Current forestry practices adequately protect water quality. A 2018 DEQ report concluded that of different land uses, forestry has the highest percentage of good and excellent surface water quality relative to other land uses, like urban and even agriculture. Moreover, as a medium fish stream, Jetty Creek will have a 40 to 80-foot buffer of trees left next to the stream to protect fish habitat, water quality and stream temperature.

While there is an ongoing need for coastal cities to address aging sewers and water treatment infrastructure, there is no urgent need to change forest management to address water quality.

-Greg Peterson, PE