-Photo by KEITH KINNAIRD

A tree with an intact root structure waits to be hauled away while burn piles smolder in the bed of Lightning Creek on Monday.

Lightning Creek debris project moving quickly

By KEITH KINNAIRD

News editor

CLARK FORK — An estimated 30,000 tons of woody debris clogging Lightning Creek has been incinerated, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineer official estimated on Monday.

The work began late last week and is designed to keep downed trees from being pushed down the creek bed and into the Highway 200 bridge and a Montana Rail Link bridge downstream.

Officials are concerned the undersides of the bridges could become plugged in a large runoff event and cause the creek to back up and spill over a levy protecting the city.

“It’s a precautionary measure that reduces the potential of a flood event,” Jay Baker, Panhandle field officer for the Idaho Bureau of Homeland Security, said of the debris removal project.

Crews have been using grapple skidders and excavators to pull logs into piles so they can be set on fire with a propane torch. Logs with intact root structures are being stockpiled at the corps’ driftyard for use in habitat restoration projects in the Panhandle.

Eric Winter, an emergency management official with the corps’ Seattle district, said as much as 2,000 tons of logs with root wads have been salvaged for habitat improvement projects.

There were 40-50 burn piles scattered along a 4-mile stretch of the creek extending north from the highway bridge, said Winter.

“We’ll continue to burn as long as we can,” said Winter.

The creek rose by about a foot and a half over the weekend, which is eating into the supply of gravel bars on which to conduct the burning. Winter said ash from the burn piles is being pulled out of the creek bed as crews work.

“They went through there pretty fast,” said Bob Howard, Bonner County’s director of Emergency Management. Some of the bars closest to the bridge had been littered with downed trees from the flooding in the fall of 2006, but were mostly vacant on Monday.

The corps provided more than a quarter million dollars in “advanced measures” funding to ease the flooding potential in Clark Fork. The work is only addressing the woody debris and there are no immediate plans to deal with the creek’s signature round cobbles, tons of which were also shoved down the creek during the flooding.

Howard said the railroad secured federal permits to remove cobbles and clear woody debris under its bridge earlier this spring. The bridge had less than 10 feet of clearance underneath, he said.

Idaho Homeland Security is keeping a close eye on three Panhandle drainages — Lightning Creek, the Upper Coeur d’Alene and St. Joe. All three have snowpack that’s well above average and officials are hoping for cooler, drier weather with little wind. Those weather conditions will lessen the chances of the melting snowpack become a problem.

“It’s all in how it comes off,” said Baker.