100-YEAR CLEANUP: Riverbanks to be tidied up have been under water for more than a century
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Volunteers later this month plan to remove a century's worth of debris
from the newly exposed banks of the Rogue River unveiled by this
summer's removal of Gold Ray Dam.
Everything from old train wheels, old metal and more than 100
previously submerged tires now line the Rogue banks since the
106-year-old dam's removal drained the reservoir and sloughs upstream
of it.
The cleanup is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct.
30. Lunch will be provided.
Work gloves and bags will be provided, and volunteers should wear
their own rubber boots.
For more information and directions to the main cleanup area,
telephone the Seven Basins Watershed Council at 541-261-7796 or send
an email to mail.vresp.com.
The drop in elevation has exposed as much as 8 feet of new stream bank
in some areas. A similar cleanup of drained Tolo Slough netted more
than a ton of scrap metal and other debris discarded into the slough
over the decades, and much of the same materials were expected to be
mined in this effort, which is set for Oct. 30.
"It's mostly trash, plastic, tires and other junk along the river that
we'll be cleaning up," said Craig Harper, natural resources program
manager for the Rogue Valley Council of Governments, which has a
contract with Jackson County for the restoration work.
The cleanup will pave the way for planting of native grasses to
stabilize the banks and curb erosion during winter freshets when Rogue
flows rise.
Plans are to move in again next spring to plant hundreds of willows
and other native trees and brush to rejuvenate a streamside area
dominated for decades by nonnative blackberries.
"We're trying to restore the look of the natural riparian area,"
Harper said. "The challenge will be to beat those noxious weeks to the
punch."
The RVCOG is amassing a list of wader-wearing volunteers, Harper said.
Teams will be ferried up and down the Rogue in driftboats and
powerboats to cleanup areas, and the boats will help haul away the
garbage.
The effort will be focused around a boat ramp at rancher Dalton
Straus's property near the confluence of the Rogue River and Bear
Creek, Harper said.
The restoration and cleanup work will cost about $50,000 and was
covered by part of the $1 million grant from the Oregon Watershed
Enhancement Board that was part of the $5.6 million dam-demolition
project, Harper said.
RVCOG has requested an additional $67,500 from the Virginia-based Fish
America Foundation to expand wetland restoration work along the Rogue
banks, Harper said.
That foundations gave $50,000 toward a similar, but smaller,
restoration project done in 2008-'09 after the removal of the Ideal
Cement Co. diversion dam near Gold Hill.
Along with last fall's removal of Savage Rapids Dam, the Rogue now is
free-flowing for 157 miles for the first time since the Ray brothers
tamed the Rogue with Gold Ray Dam in 1904.
A $5 million federal stimulus grant covered the lion's share of the
removal project, which the dam's owner — Jackson County — chose as the
best and least expensive way to deal with the liability of a
decommissioned dam with a fish ladder that did not meet state and
federal passage requirements.
The RVCOG work is separate from the $507,000 bank stabilization
project now under way along the bottom 1,000 feet of Bear Creek, which
was funded through the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric
Administration-Fisheries.
The in-stream work on that project was set to end this evening, but
state and federal agencies this week approved an extra seven days of
in-stream work for that part of the project to be completed, Harper
said.
The in-stream work on the Bear Creek project now will end Oct. 22.
RVCOG managers originally planned the Oct. 30 cleanup for this
Saturday and had amassed an army of 30 volunteers for the project. But
the work was postponed two weeks amid safety concerns for volunteers,
said Craig Tuss, the RVCOG project manager working on the cleanup and
restoration.
The Rogue was flowing at just 900 cubic feet per second this week, and
boaters until today have been banned from a 1,500-yard area
immediately upstream and downstream of the old dam site, so volunteer
boaters have not had a chance to test-drive the new riffles, rapids
and flats formed by the dam's removal, Tuss said.
No closure was in place when the Rogue first flowed past Savage Rapids
Dam in October, and a Grants Pass power boater died after crashing
while running the newly formed rapid there.
Tuss said the two-week delay will give volunteers a chance to navigate
the newly formed channels and also could allow for new rains to raise
flows to more boater-friendly levels, Tuss said.
"I don't want to put people in a dangerous or uncomfortable position,"
Tuss said. "It's still fresh in everybody's mind what happened at
Savage Rapids Dam."
Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 541-776-4470, or e-mail mfreeman@mailtribune.com.
