NEVADA CITY, 26 January 2010 – If you live, work or recreate in the Sierra and are concerned about how water quality is being improved and maintained in national forests in California, then The Sierra Fund needs to hear from you!
The Sierra Fund is participating in a one year stakeholders group that is working with the National Forest Service (NSF) and the State Water Resources Board to create or improve Best Management Practices (BMP) for protecting water quality on NFS lands as they pertain to some of the major activities that take place in the forest including logging, grazing and off highway vehicle (OHV) use.
The goal of this group is to help create or update BMPs to be used for controlling nonpoint source pollution originating in the National Forest System, and the processes for implementing them. Specific attention will be paid to transparency, accountability, and implementation of realistic BMPs that not only protect water quality and beneficial uses, but do so in a way that protects and supports the interests of the people who live, work and recreate in the Sierra Nevada. The Forest Service will use these BMPs and processes to comply with provisions of Federal water quality statutes and regulations, and California’s water quality requirements.
The Sierra Fund’s objective in this process is to make sure that these best management practices protect water quality, and do so in a way that takes into account the values and views of people in the Sierra. Since a century and a half of intensive mining took place on these lands, it is also important to consider the impacts of these activities on legacy mining toxins.
The Sierra Fund would love to get your input so that at stakeholders meetings we can accurately represent what people in the Sierra want BMPs to look like and how they should be implemented.
You can contact Mining Project Community Organizer Mike Thornton at 530-265-8454, 530-262-7335 (cell), or via email: mike.thornton@sierrafund.org.
