Page 23 - Georgia Forestry - Fall 2017

Water Quality Specialists
Canvas the State
Meet some soldiers on the ground whose job it is to ensure forestry practices don’t impair our water supply. The Georgia Forestry Commission (GFC) water quality team’s roster is short, but between its five professionals — Bert Earley, Cathy Black, Richie Mullen, Harold West and Scott Thackston — there are more than 130 years of forestry experience. And they take their water quality protection mandate seriously.
“Things have come a long way since I started this job,” said Harold West, a water quality specialist who’s clocked more than 30 years with the GFC. “The biggest change is the education of the forest industry and the forest landowner. We identified over 400 water quality risks when the Best Management Practices Survey began in 1991, and now we’re down to about 60. That’s a positive trend.”
The program is aimed at minimizing erosion and stream sedimentation from forestry practices in Georgia. Under agree- ments with the Environmental Protection Division (EPD) of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, U.S. Environ- mental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers, GFC water quality specialists monitor forestry practices, investigate water complaints, and provide training for loggers and industry partners about ways to protect waterways and forestland from harm. GFC conducts Master Timber Harvester classes and presentations year-round throughout the state, and training is available online as well.
Every two years a survey is conducted that documents the forestry community’s implementation of BMPs that impact water quality. Those practices include activities on stream crossings, streamside management zones (SMZs), forest roads, harvesting and planting sites and more. In 2015, the overall BMP implementation score was 91.13 percent — an improvement of 1.2 percentage points from the 2013 survey. Overall scores have been at about 90-95 percent for more than a decade.
While those are viewed as good scores, the team isn’t letting up. It’s focusing on educating loggers and others in the business about BMPs, and especially stream crossings and roads.
Water Quality Staff Forester Scott Thackston shows how geowebbing shores up SMZs.
GFC water quality specialists (left to right): Mullen, Earley, Thackston, West, and Black.
On a hot June day in Baldwin County, GFC Water Quality Staff Forester Scott Thackston checks on a 160-acre site that was harvested last fall. “Roads tend to be the potential problems,” Thackston said. “So first thing we check is road access. This gravel here at the entrance makes it stable, and keeps mud from being tracked onto the highway. They’ve held up good.”
Other indicators of a by-the-book harvest site include effi- ciently spaced and properly located and constructed water diversions that have turnouts, so that water falling on the sloping land spreads equally over the property and into stable areas. He points out strewn slash (logging debris) that holds back dirt and slows erosion, and notes the logging decks (loading areas) were properly located at higher elevations, away from drainage to the stream.
Trees on either side of the running stream are marked in red paint, indicating the required SMZ where harvesting and other activities are limited. The required SMZ width varies with the type of stream and the slope of the terrain; a 20-foot SMZ was calculated for this property. Thackston evaluates activity that’s taken place and still needs to happen. “Geo-webbing,” a woven synthetic mesh placed on the equipment path, was used here to shore up the stream crossing area — a tool Thackston endorses for extra protection of stream sides where suitable.
“You can’t always trust a map to be accurate,” he said, noting the flow of one of three drainages on the property. “You have to do an on-site check. A drainage marked as intermittent stream on a map may not actually be that when you get on the ground.”
Something to Talk About
Thackston emphasized the importance of communication between landowners and logging crews. Best management considerations on any tract of land should be called out and discussed before harvesting, so that loggers have a clear under- standing of what is expected of them.
“If it causes a water quality risk, it can get you in trouble,” said Thackston, referring to consequences of Clean Water Act violations. “You’re better off putting in precautions and
The ABCs of BMPs
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