command and control

I'm learning more about Logan County, Ohio.

It turns out that there is public land adjacent to the Hine's emerald dragonfly type locality. Indian Lake State Park wraps just about all the way around the man-made lake, created about 1851. The state lands come very close to where the dragonflies were collected in 1929-1930, and they were state lands at that time. I've found only coarse-scale maps thus far, best guess is that the type locality is a few hundred feet outside the public land boundary.

Taking a closer look at Google Earth, it's evident that the dredged channel is now much wider than the 20 feet described by E. B. Williamson in 1931. It's more like 50 feet wide now, almost all the way up to the bridge. According to a newsletter I found, the North Fork is scheduled to be dredged again in 2011. Apparently, there are two dredges working pretty much every year in Indian Lake and vicinity.

Then, I found "Indian Lake State Park's Natural Resource Management Plan, 2007-2012" posted online. If I read it literally, it's a metaphor of everything wrong with natural land management practices in America.

I can't find any evidence that park management knows that a federally listed dragonfly was first described from their backyard. There's an appendix with species lists for just about everything except dragonflies, although it's much more thorough for some taxa than for others.

Resource management goal #2 is to "continue to use the Lake Management Plan and Lake Dredging Plan to monitor, control, and protect the lake and lakeshore areas." So basically, never-ending dredging is official policy. That's necessary because:

"Indian Lake, a shallow lake with a dirt or silt bottom, is the ultimate downstream destination of the 63,000+ acres of residential and agricultural land that comprise the watershed. Sediment entering the lake over the past 100 years threatened the future of the recreational value of Indian Lake and property values around the lake and surrounding community, not to mention the loss of productive farm ground. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) had operated a suction dredge in the lake, as money allowed, for nearly 30 years to remove sediment. The cost of this operation had risen to over $300,000 per year." (from Appendix 1 of the Resource Management Plan).

The situation improved somewhat after 1987 with the onset of no-till farming practices and reduced upstream erosion, and with formation of a "Development Commission" to help raise funds for dredging. Yet the dredging continues, and no cost is given.

Let's go back to the beginning, and look at the sequence of events and how things got to where they are.

Prior to Euro-American settlement, the North Fork of the Great Miami River meanders through swamp woodlands, it's dynamic course depositing sediment within the relatively low-gradient valley. Sediment loads would have been low relative to modern times because of nearly complete ground vegetation cover. Thus, the 1800s valley represented over 12,000 years of post-glacial sediment deposition.

1851, dam construction begins. By 1857 the lower North Fork and the confluence with the South Fork are inundated by the rising lake.

Surrounding lands are cleared for agriculture, greatly increasing erosion and runoff. Water quality suffers, and the North Fork in most recent accounts is rated as "non-attainment" by OEPA. The greatly increased sediment load begins to fill the already shallow Indian Lake, and eventually frequent dredging becomes necessary to support recreational use of the lake.

Dredging gradually extends up the North Fork. In 1929, a 20-foot wide channel extended to a quarter-mile below the SR 117 bridge, according to Williamson. In a 2006 air photo, the channel is closer to 50-feet wide almost up to the bridge, and at least 20 feet wide above the bridge. The channel is straightened, bypassing the sinuous historic meanders.

Channelization moves more sediment, more quickly and more efficiently, from the farm fields into the lake. Soon the dredging operations increase to keep up. When the North Fork itself begins to clog, it is dredged again, as it apparently will be next year. This will once again allow efficient sediment transport into the lake.

This is 1950s command-and-control thinking, tempered slightly by late 1980s no-till agriculture. And it's all being subsidized by the taxpayers of Ohio.

I suppose it could be argued that it creates jobs for a couple of dredge operators, a few truck drivers who transport the sludge tainted by agricultural pesticides to wherever it is they take it, and a few bureaucrats who handle the paper.

Natural ecological processes had addressed this by creating, over time, a wide floodplain where excess sediment was deposited by a meanding channel. The meanders and the lower gradient channel slowed floodwaters, allowing sediment to deposit. The adjoining swamp forest and resulting woody debris input further filtered sediments. If a channel began to fill, it migrated laterally. A dynamic equilibrium held for millenia.

The "efficient" humans came along, and messed everything up in less than 100 years. Now we're fighting a never ending battle to maintain that disequilibrium. Somewhere along the way, we extirpated a population of a rare dragonfly, and who knows how many other things.

If not for the subdivision in the way, and the stubborn human attitudes, this could all be put back for the cost of perhaps a decade of dredging. The road is no real obstacle, it could be raised or the bridge widened. The original channel course could be determined from old maps and photos, it could be re-established and the old straight channel filled, and wet-tolerant trees and shrubs planted or allowed to naturally regenerate. The sediment load into the lake would immediately drop dramatically, because it would instead deposit on the floodplain. Hydrology studies could determine how much the water would back up in a 100-year event, and if necessary some additional floodway capacity could be excavated to prevent damage to upstream property. The permits and design to do all this would be of moderate complexity at most. There would be a short term (a few years) creation of engineering, environmental, and construction jobs, and because of transportation costs local firms would likely do most of the actual construction work with direct benefits to the local economy.

But first, a little imagination and creativity is required. This is the key first step, the place where restoration starts.