Bureaucrats, property owners and environmental activists will float down the Russian River next week to check on the River’s condition and imagine what it might look like in the next 150 years.
“It’s a pretty ambitious event,” said Healdsburg resident and Russian Riverkeeper Executive Director Don McEnhill, who will be one of the invited paddlers when the planned 10-day River trek begins next Wednesday at Lake Mendocino in Mendocino County.
“It’s a pretty ambitious event,” said Healdsburg resident and Russian Riverkeeper Executive Director Don McEnhill, who will be one of the invited paddlers when the planned 10-day River trek begins next Wednesday at Lake Mendocino in Mendocino County.
The group of attendees includes federal, state and regional policy makers, Native American tribal representatives, and stakeholders from business, agriculture, energy, timber and the arts all floating down the River from Mendocino to Jenner in three separate trips over the next eight weeks.
Called the Russian River Confluence, next week’s paddle is limited to invitees only but a public participation is scheduled for October when the paddlers will travel from Forestville to Jenner on Oct. 7, 8 and 9. A middle reach trip from Cloverdale to Forestville is scheduled for Sept. 7, 8 and 9.
A key goal of the confluence effort is to get the Russian River and its tributaries off a federal list of water bodies whose beneficial uses are designated as “impaired.”
Russian River impairments include pollution from urban and agricultural run-off, and high bacteria counts attributed to sources including dairy waste, residential septic systems and homeless camps.
The North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board is currently drafting a Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) action plan that will target pollution sources and impose regulations to restore and protect the River’s beneficial uses as a source of drinking water, irrigation and recreation.
“There are many water bodies around the country that have undertaken similar actions and have gotten removed from listings, which is a laudable goal,” said Healdsburg’s Fourth District County Supervisor James Gore. “It gives you an achievable mission,” said Gore, who has spearheaded the watershed confluence gathering that will culminate with a one-day summit meeting next May.
The River trip and the May summit will bring together “not just the fisheries and the water quality aspects and the water supply but the idea of idea of arts and culture and the different components of the River and the watershed itself that we need to celebrate if we want to regenerate it,” said Gore.
“We need to have a plan to remove, through active conservation, all the impairments throughout the Russian River,” said Gore. “If we can do that we can say we have a clean river.”
Representatives from county government entities such as the Economic Development Board, Regional Parks, the Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District, and the Sonoma County Water Agency are invited next week along with non-governmental groups including Russian Riverkeeper and LandPaths, the nonprofit that is providing the boats.
Public participation opens on Oct. 7 “with hundreds if not a thousand people floating together out to Jenner,” said Gore.
“The goal is to storytell with a wide variety of people to bring out those lessons of where we are currently as a river system and as a watershed and where need to be,” said Gore.
Source: Russian River trippers to experience watershed on multi-day trek