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Next week, the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board will consider tweaking regulations for Humboldt Redwood Company’s sediment discharge agreement for the Upper Elk River.

HRC is seeking a handful of changes to the agreement, which is the regulatory tool used by the Water Board to control nonpoint source pollution. Logging activities in the watershed have long caused sediment to run off land and be deposited into the Elk River.

While Water Board staff found the proposed changes minor, saying in a staff report that they “will not result in a decrease in water quality protection,” the environmental group CalTrout leans the other way.

The Elk River was designated a sediment-impaired waterbody in 1998 by the Environmental Protection Agency. Sediment has clogged river channels, causing extensive nuisance flooding in the area and a shoddy habitat for fish, who use the river as spawning and rearing habitat.

People still can’t safely drink from the river, and floodwaters inundate roads and properties in the lower Elk during winter storm events.

The river is affected by both current and past logging practices, particularly when Maxxam Corporation-controlled PALCO moved to massively increase harvesting there during the late 1980s and ‘90s, in a basin already prone to sediment production.

Two commercial timber companies currently operate in the watershed, HRC and Green Diamond, according to the Water Board’s website. (The companies each have made commitments to practices that reduce erosion.) HRC owns about 79% of the Upper Elk Watershed, according to Water Board documents.

The changes HRC are seeking, in their waste discharge requirements, are alternative compliance methods. They appear to allow for a few more timber activities, under certain conditions.

Water Board staff are supporting approval for the changes. According to a staff report, the requirement for changes like these specify that “HRC may propose and submit for approval by the Regional Water Board, alternative measures that can be demonstrated to provide beneficial uses protection and nuisance abatement that is equal or better than that provided by these specific requirements.”

But CalTrout, an environmental organization that has done extensive restoration and study of the watershed, says the changes to the requirements have the potential of increasing pollution.

“This is a highly impaired watershed already, and so you don’t want further actions that will have the potential to increase pollution downstream,” Katy Gurin, project manager for CalTrout who oversees restoration and flood reduction projects on the Elk River, told the Outpost.

She said the organization doesn’t know the exact impact the proposed changes would have on the watershed but is concerned they’d have the potential to result in an increase in erosion and downstream sediment pollution.

In particular, CalTrout is concerned about loosening a rule prohibiting group openings — clearings of trees — on steep slopes. The organization is also concerned about changes to canopy cover requirements in the Riparian Management zone, the protected strip of forest along streams.

But Water Board staff believe the changes and “quite moderate and reasonable,” according to a spokesperson.

“The proposed changes in slope for group openings from 30% to 40% and deviation in canopy retention to allow HRC to apply restorative silviculture on slopes below 40% are not anticipated to increase sediment loads,” said Blair Robertson, a spokesperson for the Water Board in an emailed response to questions.

“This permit provides the strongest water quality protections of any timber permit in the region. The revisions preserve that high level of protection while better aligning the permit with real‑world operational conditions by allowing HRC flexibility in managing its forest while still fully complying with the TMDL [total maximum daily load] targets for riparian zones,” the email said.

Gurin is of the position that sedimentation should be clearly improving before any regulations are relaxed.

“We’re not seeing strong, consistent evidence that the watershed is improving,” she said.

In a comment letter on the changes, the organization points to a 2022 review from the Water Board where “staff recommend that the water quality protections of the current WDRs not be reduced until there is evidence that impairment conditions are improving.”

The 2022 review also found “available data are insufficient to comprehensively assess the degree to which WDRs and Waivers have successfully controlled sediment delivery to the impacted reach,” and pointed to “evidence of worsening in and around the confluence of the north and South Forks.”

Separately from the items to be discussed next week, the Water Board is working on possible revisions to the monitoring and reporting program with an eye toward improving the effectiveness of the regulations, according to the spokesperson.

Gurin said many CalTrout projects on the river depend on reduced suspended sediment to make progress. And downstream residents and fish populations are at risk if sediment gets worse.

“We want to see people be able to drink from the river again and be able to have all of those beneficial uses fully recovered,” she said.

HRC did not immediately return a voicemail seeking comment before publishing time.

Also at the meeting, the Water Board will host an informational update on the broad plan to address sedimentation in the river, the “Upper Elk Sediment Total Maximum Daily Load Action Plan.”

This will include details on “health and safety, coordinated monitoring and sediment remediation improvements.”

The meeting will be held May 7 and May 8 at 9:00 a.m. at Eureka City Hall’s city council chambers. The Elk River-related discussions are each set for May 7. Find the agenda and Zoom attendance information here.