Despite Conservation Laws, Many Scenic Rivers Are Still in Hot Water

The McKenzie River begins as a spring and builds to a torrent, its clear waters cutting a riotous course from the crest of the Cascades through some of Oregon’s finest scenery.

Virgin stands of Douglas fir form a deep, green canyon little changed since Lewis and Clark probed the Northwest wilderness 185 years ago.

Last year, Congress added the McKenzie and 39 other Oregon rivers to the nation’s Wild and Scenic Rivers System, a step that doubled the number of federally protected rivers in the lower 48 states.

It was a rare victory for river conservationists, who have had little to celebrate in the 21 years since the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act became law.

More typical is the project now being planned three hours away in the city of Klamath Falls, which wants to divert the Klamath River through four miles of pipes, then drop it through turbines to produce electricity. City officials hope to sell the power and use the proceeds for property tax relief.

Conservationists say the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act has proved a weak defense against logging, second-home development and hydroelectric-power projects.

“It hasn’t failed, but it certainly has not reached anywhere near its promise,” said W. Kent Olson, president of American Rivers, a conservation group. “Insofar as federal land protection measures go, this is the least used of all the ones we’ve invented in the latter half of this century.”

Few natural resources are disappearing as quickly as the nation’s free-flowing rivers. Of 3.2 million river miles in the United States, an estimated 600,000--generally the mightiest, fastest segments---have been flooded by dams or drained by diversions.

Yet fewer than 10,000 miles, about one-quarter of 1%, have been permanently protected by federal or state laws.

Before the Oregon bill, the Wild and Scenic Rivers System annually gained an average of 400 river miles, according to American Rivers. Meanwhile, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission grants 200 to 250 new licenses for hydroelectric-power projects each year.

“River conservation is now the orphan of the general conservation movement,” Olson said. “We are way behind.”

White-water canoeists and rafters have long fought for river protection, but there is growing recognition that dams threaten more than recreation. Increasingly, river conservationists are stating their case in ecological terms, warning of threats to wildlife habitat and biological diversity.

“Rivers are vital to preserving the nation’s capacity for wild genetic exchange,” Olson said. “When we segment a river by placing dams in it, we cut off important biological exchange. We disassociate habitats from one another.”

The conservationists’ view gets considerable support from some government scientists, who warn of a steep decline in natural systems vital to fish. “I’d say it’s much greater than what most people would even anticipate,” said Gordon Reeves, a U.S. Forest Service fishery biologist and president of the Oregon chapter of the American Fisheries Society.

Human intervention--dams, diversions and disruption of habitats from logging--has altered or destroyed 85% to 90% of natural fisheries in Oregon’s 90,000 miles of streams and rivers, according to Reeves.

Against that backdrop, the Oregon rivers bill was an unexpected bright spot, adding 1,423 miles to the national Wild and Scenic Rivers System and requiring eligibility studies on seven additional rivers, including the Klamath.

“We wanted to try, through a proactive approach, to protect these rivers,” said Bob Doppelt, director of the Oregon Rivers Council, which played a key role in the legislation. “We decided we were not going to be reactive, just trying to put out brush fires.”

He added, “I can’t imagine another organization having as good a year as we had last year.”

Key to the bill’s success was the sponsorship of Oregon’s senior senator, Republican Mark O. Hatfield, who pushed it through over the objections of some timber interests that traditionally have been his allies.

Supporters argued that the bill would help the state’s tourist industry. “My goal was to make Oregon the wild and scenic river capital,” said Rep. Peter A. DeFazio (D-Ore.), who sponsored the bill in the House. “We have an incredible number of world-class white-water and recreational rivers that have been a well-kept secret, and this puts us in the forefront.”

Many local officials were impressed by the example of the Rogue River in southwestern Oregon. One of two Oregon Rivers included in the 1968 Wild and Scenic Rivers bill, the Rogue’s famous white-water rapids and adjacent wilderness draw about 300,000 visitors a year, said Jim Leffman, Rogue River program manager for the Bureau of Land Management.

“It’s very important to the local economy,” Leffman said.

But protection under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act is not without its failings. The act protects only the river corridor, providing a quarter-mile buffer on either bank, but says nothing about external threats. Rivers can be affected by activities miles away, such as pollution of tributaries.

“What we need is an endangered ecosystem act,” Doppelt said. “You really don’t protect a river by just protecting the corridor. You’ve got to protect the whole watershed.”

Moreover, the act, which grades rivers as wild, scenic or recreational, does not provide absolute protection even within designated corridors. Grandfather clauses frequently allow development on private land, for example.

And the law does nothing for unprotected segments of river. Under last year’s Oregon bill, just 12.7 miles of the 85-mile-long McKenzie were included in the Wild and Scenic Rivers System. Second homes are common on the river’s lower reaches, where the Leaburg Dam has significantly damaged the local fishery. Logging on private lands has stripped some adjacent hillsides.

“The real point of the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act is to preserve the status quo,” Doppelt said. “It’s not an act that has tried to turn the clock back.” The Oregon bill, he said, “is greater by far than anything that’s been done in the past. But it’s still just a drop in the bucket.”