A prescribed fire monitored by forest staff,
(Courtesy of Hoosier National Forest.)
A controlled burn and logging project in Hoosier National Forest is set to move forward despite concerns it may affect Lake Monroe’s water quality.
The Houston South Vegetation Management and Restoration Project seeks to treat vegetation and conduct related management activities for more than 15,000 acres of forest over the next 10 years, improving overall forest health.
The project was halted temporarily in April after the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana ruled that the Forest Service failed to “fully evaluate the environmental effects to Lake Monroe.”
In response, the Forest Service released a supplemental report outlining and reiterating its plan to utilize Best Management Practices (BMPs) to prevent pollution to Lake Monroe.
Chris Thornton, District Ranger for the Hoosier National Forest, said that they released the report to better share the methodology of the project.
“I think it's important to note, the judge did not say that this project was a danger or a risk of any sort to the water quality of Lake Monroe, she just said she wanted to see us provide some additional information and clarity,” he said.
Thornton said that utilizing BMPs has shown to be highly effective in controlling erosion, the primary concern for the lake.
“The research shows that best management practices are greater than 96% effective at preventing erosion issues out there. So that's a very high success rate for one,” he said. “So, we're out there monitoring regularly and if something fails, in that 4% window of rarity of when it does fail, we have people on the ground who were there to see it, and to mitigate what it is that didn't work in a particular case.”
However, Sherry Mitchell-Bruker, President of Friends of Lake Monroe, feels that reiterating the use of BMPs does not alleviate their concerns for Lake Monroe.
“Just to give you an example of best management practices that go wrong, there was recently prescribed burn in New Mexico,” she said. “And they went through the process of saying they were going to use all of the BMPs, and so forth. That burned escaped, it burned 300,000 acres, it displaced hundreds of people from their home, and it threatened the municipal water supply. So, we're not just making these things up.”
Another concern held by Bruker is that in the supplemental report, the Forest Service implied that because they cooperated with Friends of Lake Monroe on the watershed management plan, they have absolved themselves from any responsibility for damage to the watershed.
“And that is absolutely not the case, we have not approved this project, (and) we do not approve of this project,” she said. “And we have asked them repeatedly to change the project from one of logging, burning and applying pesticides to 10,000 acres and more to one that improves water quality using some of the tools that they have available to them.”
Moving forward, Thornton said that now that they have responded to the court’s concerns, they are ready to start the project.
“There's no further steps that need to be taken from our standpoint, in terms of analysis or anything like that,” he said. “That part is completed, we are cleared to start implementing at this point.”
The Forest Service doesn’t have a schedule laid out yet but reiterated they’re ready to get things going soon.
Bruker believes that this battle may continue through the legal system.
“The only way that I can see that this is going to get resolved is through the courts, and that's unfortunate,” she said. “I feel that the Forest Service has a responsibility to work with the local community, and the local community has made it very clear that they do not want this project.”
