THE CONTROVERSY AT WARD CREEK : Hydroelectric Plant Sparks Angry Reaction From Residents

Jack Rosebush frets on the porch of his rustic house, leafing through legal documents and swatting mosquitoes. The mosquitoes are a minor annoyance.

Nearby, a small hydroelectric plant sits behind locked gates on Ward Creek, which flows through a forest, down a mountain and through the meadows of Genesee Valley, a remote northeastern California community of about 50 rancher and retiree families.

Many feel violated by what Five Bears Hydro, Inc., has done to their valley. It’s too big to swat away, and it isn’t hard to find. Just follow the power poles and lines that weren’t there yesteryear and look for the scar 20 yards wide down the mountain, which the developers needed for a 20-inch-diameter pipe to divert water from trout to turbine.

The power poles, residents say, were supposed to be underground or out of sight. They aren’t.

The trout, the California Department of Fish and Game says, were supposed to have been protected during the construction. About a thousand were killed.

Mike Kossow, a U.S. Forest Service worker, said: “The worst part was their trying to hide it.”

One resident, Elisa Adler, said: “Ward Creek was once considered the best fishing stream in Plumas County.”

Rosebush, a logger, said: “I’ve got pictures of two fish my brother caught in ‘85--a two-pound brown and a three-pound rainbow. I walked my brothers down to the creek last year and they were real disappointed. It’s probably not even going to be worth fishing.”

The project--not yet operating--was conceived in 1981 by Ed McDowell, who had been a resident logger since the ‘50s but was looking for another source of income during one of the recurring slumps in the timber business. Five Bears was named for five old quartz mines--Brown, Polar, Cinnamon, Grizzly and Bear--on land McDowell bought in 1979. It was planned to pay back its $400,000 construction cost in only three years.

Later, McDowell, short of capital, sold his permits from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to Developpement, Innovation, Transfert de Technologie, a wholly owned subsidiary of Electricite de France.

His son Bruce, a former football player at Sacramento State, stayed on to work for DITT, but soon the project turned sour.

Mike Meinz, a DFG biologist, said he visited the site last August to check a report that a cement truck had dumped more than a cubic yard of concrete mix into the stream.

“I heard about it from another contractor (for) another power project,” Meinz said. “He started complaining about what was going on at Five Bears. Apparently, they were trying to keep it quiet.”

Game Warden Bill Peters said: “I counted 537 dead rainbow trout.”

Nine months earlier, there had been a similar accident, in which about 400 trout died.

Jerry Mensch, environmental services supervisor for the DFG, looked over the situation. His office deals with hydro projects that affect fisheries in the state.

“We observed dead trout as large as 12 inches,” Mensch said. “It’s all native trout production, and it appeared to have an outstanding population.”

Plumas County is, in effect, a small town of 18,000. It’s hard to keep anything a secret for long. After hours, the project workers would gather at the Taylorsville Tavern, about four miles away, and talk.

“I think it was on the verge of . . . mutiny,” Meinz said. “The workers were quite upset about that whole project. We started getting calls.”

Some of those calls concerned a spill of diesel fuel, possibly contaminating the ground water and, indirectly, the stream. Although jobs are scarce in the area, some workers quit.

Down on the flats, the creek flows through a ranch owned by Brian Kingdon, who has cooperated with locals in projects to save the fishery. Late this spring, Kingdon waved down Kossow along the road to tell him something.

“I don’t see any little fish out there anywhere,” Kingdon said.

Opinion is divided on how good a trout stream Ward Creek was. Too remote and under-fished to be stocked by the DFG, it depends upon its native trout to reproduce themselves, but Mensch said that silting from the project has damaged much of the spawning bed.

To fulfill terms of the FERC permit, DITT had to commission independent surveys, using Thomas R. Payne and Associates, Fisheries Consultants, of Arcata, Calif. Payne’s initial report in 1985 declared “a rough estimate of four to five fish per 100 feet of stream . . . a relatively low density for typical trout streams,” with no fish larger than eight inches seen.

Last March, after the concrete spills, Payne took another look and found 27 fish, from two to six inches. He sent his report to DITT, whose vice president is Robert Treiberg, with headquarters in Grass Valley.

“The claim that the trout population was either irrevocably damaged or ruined is simply not true,” Treiberg wrote to the FERC.

Meinz said, “I don’t agree with that at all. If it had been normal, they would have got maybe 100 fish instead of 27.”

Payne said his survey was conducted in “pretty crummy (weather) conditions . . . (and) “our sampling wasn’t anything that could really be relied on.”

He plans to return late this summer and again next spring. Meanwhile, he is skeptical about claims of big fish being caught in Ward Creek.

“It’s a very small creek,” Payne said. “There are probably some eight- or 10-inch trout occasionally. (Anything bigger), somebody would be dreaming.”

Kossow, who was a biologic technician with the DFG until five years ago, said: “I agree that the fish were not large . . . not by any means a trophy fishery. Just a typical Sierra stream.

“But the lower section is a nursery area. The huge fish come up from the river (Indian Creek) to spawn. I’ve seen 20-inch fish in there.”

Who’s right? Maybe it doesn’t matter. Beyond the debate of how good the fishing was, Ward Creek is a symbol of a little bit of paradise lost.

Mensch said: “It’s not a devastation of Northern California’s fisheries, but we consider every one of those streams to play an important part.”

Meinz said that otherwise, he has no current complaints with DITT.

“They’ve done quite a good job in reconstituting what they’d screwed up,” he said.

But a larger question is: Was the power plant feasible in the first place? Although it has been in place for several months, it has yet to produce a kilowatt of juice.

“I don’t think there’s been enough water,” McDowell said. “I think it takes (a flow of) three cubic feet per second (CFS) to trigger that thing.”

A statewide drought is not the problem, residents say. The Genesee Valley has had its normal, abundant rainfall this year.

Mensch doubts that the flow in Ward Creek--about 3 1/2 CFS--is sufficient to maintain a trout population and run a power plant, and that the FERC probably shouldn’t have issued a license for Five Bears in the first place. By DFG and FERC regulations, the fish come first, with guaranteed minimum flows.

“We set what the fish need and make that recommendation to FERC,” Mensch said. “We hear all the time, ‘You’re killing my project.’ We don’t care (about that) one way or another.”

But because it is so small and remote, Rosebush said, “A lot of people would say that Ward Creek isn’t worth wasting your time on.”

Even Tom Buckwalter, the Plumas County district attorney, seems to agree.

At the instigation of the DFG, Buckwalter filed a complaint on May 20, 1988, against the developers, citing 12 violations of the fish and game code.

Steve Millay, assistant planning director for Plumas County, also produced what he called “a fairly impressive list of violations” of construction regulations, “looking at a hearing for revocation of their special use permit.”

But a year later, like the power plant, the complaints just sit there, doing nothing. At the county courthouse in Quincy, the wheels turn slowly.

Buckwalter said, “I’ve only talked to the (DITT) attorney. That’s all I’ve done so far.

“I believe those are standard misdemeanors, which are six months and/or a $1,000 fine. It ranks quite a bit below child molesting, and I’ve got four of those set for trial right now.”

Also, because of a precedent set by a similar case in nearby Shasta County, there is a question of whether the state and county have any jurisdiction once the developer has been granted a license by the FERC.

As for the residents, they seem clearly overmatched.

“Our county is not a rich county,” Rosebush said. “We can’t go into litigation with these billion-dollar corporations.”

The fishery aside, some Genesee Valley residents are sickened by the sight of the transmission lines through their land. They are underground on land owned by the U.S. Forest Service, which demanded it, but out in the open elsewhere.

“Our gripe is that we wanted to protect the scenic quality of this area,” Rosebush said. “It was laid out in black and white what the scenic corridor was. If they have actually tried to mislead the facts--if FERC will review this--if they determine that they did mislead them and everybody else, they should be forced to remove it.”

Treiberg, the DITT executive, completed a 1 1/2-inch-thick report for the FERC, responding to the complaints, with copies to the DFG and others interested. Treiberg would not speak to The Times but forwarded a copy of the report that reflects confidence of the company’s legal position.

In a 15-page cover letter to the FERC, he said the company misled no one and has no intention of changing anything. He dismissed the opponents’ proposals as “technically infeasible . . . absurd . . . ridiculous or unsound and unacceptable,” and generally rejected all demands for mitigation.

The scar where the water tube was laid down the mountain will be reforested, according to prior agreement, but that’s about all.

After leaving the DFG, Kossow was hired by DITT to study the fishery but abruptly resigned one day during a field trip.

“We stopped for lunch and they were sitting around talking about how they were going to ‘handle’ this certain official and other problems,” Kossow said. “I finally got up and said, ‘You’re the most dishonest people I’ve ever been around.’ They just manipulate people. That’s what bothered me.”

Leo and Janey Leyva are ready to throw in the towel. They came to the valley 10 years ago, believing they had found a humble retirement home in a pristine forest wilderness. Now they have one hope left.

“We’re hoping to move,” Janey Leyva said. “We have done everything conceivably possible. I’m politicked up to my eyebrows.

“We’d had some financial setbacks, and we found this inexpensive, small piece of property with a national forest on one side and a ranch on the other. We had total privacy, and it was a backwater road. No one ever passed by except for a few neighbors. We thought we could stay here until we died.”

Looking out into the valley from their covered front porch, one now sees the transmission lines planted along the dirt road, which fords Ward Creek a hundred yards down.

“We have fought for 10 years to keep this a dirt road, any time anybody tried to make it better,” Leyva said. “We wanted to keep the dirt road full of potholes to keep people out. And now that these (DITT) people are here, they have bought the adjacent 30 acres so they can build a bridge across (the creek), and once the bridge is built this place is going to be like a house on a street.”

Treiberg points out that there always were transmission lines--those planted by Pacific Gas and Electric years ago.

“That’s absolute baloney,” Leyva said. “Theirs are just loaded down with all this paraphernalia. The PG&E; poles are simple little T’s with wire strung to them. They’re not wonderful, but they serve a purpose. They’re delivering electricity to us. We’ve learned to live with it. These (new) poles are doing absolutely nothing for the community.”

Treiberg says the county and the residents had plenty of warning. Five Bears and DITT filed all of the proper advance legal notices of intentions and public hearings in local publications.

Noel Folsom, the FERC’s branch chief in San Francisco, said: “A project is in the application stage for at least a year and usually several years. If the county wants to object, they have to do it then. Once it’s licensed, it’s very difficult to force the licensee to make any changes.”

Sharon Hyland, media specialist at the FERC’s main office in Washington, said: “We are looking at the complaints.”

Rosebush and others believe that the county officials, nearly 30 miles away in Quincy, let them down--in fact, were virtually duped when the project was subtly changed after initial county approval.

“Out here, we’re almost in the position of being our own watchdogs,” Rosebush said.

Leyva said: “We are equally guilty. They print these little public notices in the paper in fine print, and who ever reads them? We could have had input at some point, but none of us knew the political process.

“They’re covered. They know all the ins and outs, and we’re a bunch of bumpkins.”

Along the way, the residents formed the Alliance for Indian Creek to present a unified front.

“It may prevent situations like this from happening in the future, but I think it’s too late for this,” Leyva said.

One future consideration is a much larger project proposed for Red Clover Creek at the other end of the valley “with high-tension towers,” Leyva said.

The Ward Creek plant is designed to generate only 980 kilowatts. The $38.6-million Red Clover project is proposed for 30 megawatts--more than 30 times the size.

“You can just forget about living here altogether if they put that one in,” Leyva said. “I think it’s destroyed forever now.”

Rosebush said: “There are projects like this happening all over the state, all over the country. The feds can’t allow big companies like this to take advantage of them.”

Mensch, the DFG’s hydro specialist, said: “I’m not relating it to this project, but what we’re finding is that the Small Hydro Act provided a real opening for entrepreneurs and schemers to come up with new development schemes and obtain permits, which they subsequently sold . . . people not necessarily interested in energy production but strictly out to make a quick buck.

“These people picked any streams that were steep. Many of them filed dozens of applications strictly by looking at a U.S. Geological Survey topo(graphical) map . . . never been to the stream, didn’t know what was there, just wanted to make sure they got it. In those cases we have seen extreme resource damages.”

McDowell said he and his son at first intended to build and operate the power plant themselves. When they realized they were in over their heads financially, they sold their permits and 100 acres to DITT in 1986, and Ed dropped out.

He has lived in the valley for 30 years. His wife Dolores taught school. So it bothers him, he said, that “we’ve had these people that came here a short time ago--street people with street values--that haven’t had to go out in the hills and scratch out a living and don’t understand what those of us who have had to are faced with.”

The project did create jobs in the valley and, McDowell said, the opponents don’t speak for the entire town.

“There are more people down on Rosebush and Leyva,” he said. “They all thought they should be compensated some way. They look at these trees and don’t want to change it. Well, we live here and accept a lower standard of living because we like it, too.”

Kossow said the Alliance for Indian Creek, with 100 to 120 members, is representative of the local attitude.

“We speak for the people in Genesee Valley,” Kossow said. “(McDowell) has never been to a meeting.”

McDowell: “I was here first. If anybody leaves, they’re going to leave.”

The sides do agree, however, that the fishery has a future.

Meinz said: “It will probably recover on its own . . . probably take two years.”

Payne, the independent fisheries expert hired by DITT, said: “The power project is all above where any fish would be moving up to spawn. If there were fish spawning from Indian Creek (into Ward Creek), they’d be in the low gradient area down in the meadow, at least a half-mile or so below the power project.”

But Rosebush and others remain frustrated that a large corporation can alter the quality of life in a quiet little valley, and there’s nothing they can do about it.

“I’ll send a letter to the President if I have to,” he said. “I’ll say, ‘This is one of your ‘thousand points of light.’ Let’s shine on it.”