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Great New Books on Organizing:

With headwaters in southwest Virginia’s Jefferson National Forest, Dry Creek usually lives up to its name. Water from the creek sinks into a cave system, leaving a bare streambed in the lower reaches.

But not always.

As reported in this magazine’s October 2006 issue, after years of logging in the headwaters, Dry Creek rose rapidly on July 29, 2001, causing widespread property damage to the private landowners downstream. In a nearby watershed which had also been affected by logging, flooding washed a man to his death.

Charlie Osborne is one of many private landowners who live downstream from the National Forest around High Knob. “The Dry Creek watershed is like a funnel, and we’re right here at the mouth of the funnel,” he said. “The day it flooded, we had about 20 minutes from when it hit that bridge to when I came in and it was up to the floorboards of my four-wheel-drive truck.”

High Knob is a mountain that straddles the line between two counties. One is Scott County, with a poverty rate 75 percent higher than the Virginia state average, and the other is Wise County, with a poverty rate 108 percent higher than the Virginia state average. The rural communities adjacent to the National Forest are dominated by small family farms. These small landowners feel they can’t influence U.S. Forest Service’s management decisions, but they are the ones stuck picking up the pieces when flooding events occur.

Osborne’s 92-year-old father reported that 2001 was the first year Dry Creek had overflowed its banks in almost 150 years. Scientific studies have shown that extensive logging can result in flooding, so the Dry Creek flood was no surprise to The Clinch Coalition, a grassroots group devoted to protecting the National Forest around High Knob. But the group was surprised in 2006 when the U.S. Forest Service proposed logging another 371 acres in the same watershed.

The Clinch Coalition went into action as soon as they heard about the proposed timber sale. Over the next year, they worked to extend the comment period, arranged a public meeting to give local landowners a chance to speak their mind to the Forest Service, and then submitted a request for the timber sale to be canceled.

Diana Withen, The Clinch Coalition president, was delighted when the Back Valley timber sale was withdrawn by the Forest Service in 2007. “The public has spoken,” Withen said. “Let’s work together and jointly manage our public lands in a way that keeps southwestern Virginia a beautiful and wonderful place to live.”

The local landowners’ relief was short-lived, however. This year, the Forest Service resubmitted the same plan and, despite an appeal by The Clinch Coalition, approved the Back Valley timber sale. Logging may occur in the watershed as early as this winter.

With no other legal recourse, The Clinch Coalition has decided to take pre-emptive action, blending activism, education and science in a citizen monitoring program aimed at preventing unsustainable land management practices in the National Forest. In a study launched in 2007, the Coalition set up permanent vegetation plots in the Joel Branch timber sale, another area slated to be logged near the Dry Creek watershed. Volunteers systematically counted trees, shrubs and herbs to collect baseline data. If the worst happened, the group would be able to scientifically prove the negative ecological effects of unsustainable logging practices.

The results have already been much better than The Clinch Coalition anticipated. No logger is willing to bid on the Joel Branch timber sale, so logging has not occurred!

This summer, The Clinch Coalition expanded their citizen monitoring program to encompass testing the major streams running out of High Knob — including Dry Creek. They follow Virginia Save Our Streams protocols to sample aquatic macroinvertebrates. Like other plants and animals, different types of aquatic macroinvertebrates live in different niches — some prefer clear, cool streams with fast-flowing water while others thrive in polluted water below straight-pipes. By counting the number of each type of macroinvertebrate in the water, the volunteers are able to determine the relative health of the stream.

Like the vegetation surveys completed the year before, the stream monitoring is meant to provide baseline data so that the group can prove that sedimentation and other factors resulting from clearcutting harm the region’s water quality. The Clinch Coalition hopes that their citizen monitoring program will help hold the Forest Service accountable in a region where National Forest management decisions have traditionally ignored the input of local residents.

“Our stream monitoring program is also just plain fun,” said Clinch Coalition member Carmen Cantrell from Norton. “Who can resist wading in a stream on a summer day?”

To learn more about The Clinch Coalition’s citizen monitoring program and to get involved, visit their website at www.clinchcoalition.net. Or contact Anna Hess at (276) 467-1417 or anna@kitenet.net.