Sampling Begins Soon!

Hi all-
Things have been getting started rather slowly. We finally got the second truck from Hollister yesterday. But just when we thought we'd gotten through with all the administrative stuff, HR at the state office informed Holly and I that our fingerprint cards (which had to be the ink kind) were unreadable and we have to go to Sacramento to get them redone. What a hassle! That will probably happen next week. Aside from the administrative stuff, things have also been moving slowly because of restrictions on where BLM will let us enter the wilderness, as the marijuana eradication project is still underway. Last week we were near the staging area for the operation and saw them helicoptering the special agents away 2 at a time to drop into the gardens... they removed over 55 thousand plants and arrested a farmer with an assault rifle. The good news about that is, I am now allowed to get into Harley Gulch. But... none of us are to go anywhere by ourselves, so I have to work around Jim's schedule (he is doing several hours of shorebird monitoring on the coast each morning until mid-July). He'll be over tomorrow afternoon, and I believe we are going out to do some sampling technique practice.

That brings me to the main point of my post- in speaking with Jim this week I have deduced that I will not actually be sampling any water for mercury. A gentleman from USGS (whose name currently escapes me) will be doing that. I may accompany him, but the only water sampling I will be doing is for general water quality indicators (temp, pH, electroconductivity, etc). Jim has informed me that the methyl mercury in the area is a methyl mercury chloride, so he's hoping that electroconductivity will let us know about the salinity of the water and we will be able to infer from that which areas are potentially high in methyl mercury. I will be taking sediment samples from the Harley Gulch "Delta" (confluence with Cache Creek) as well as soil samples which will be analyzed for mercury content. Jim would also like for us to get into Davis Creek, but that is off-limits for now.

That's it for now! Please let me know if you have any questions!

~k

Recon of Cache Creek

Hey Everyone,

I spent Thursday and Friday up in Cache Creek checking the place out. I drove by the Cache Creek Settling Basin, although there wasn't much to look at except trees and bushes. About 99% of the water in the creek gets diverted at Capay into two canals, one heads north and one heads south, and by the time the rest of the water reaches the CCSB it isn't flowing any more. The Cache Creek is surprisingly big and powerful, usually at least 50 feet across, several feet deep, and moving quick. It's not nearly as fun to swim in as I was hoping for. On my adventures I saw a bald eagle, two golden eagles (one on Sulphur Creek), a blue heron, 2 red tail hawks, dozens of turtles including three in Harley Gulch next to the old gaging station, lots of cliff swallows, bear sign, and everything else. The region is almost impossible to walk around due to thick chamise growing almost everywhere, mixed in with oaks, pines, manzanita, and poison oak. Luckily, there are a handful of old fire roads and trails to follow

Where Harley Gulch meets highway 20 I ran into Janis Cooke and Roberto Cervantes from the Central Valley Water Board. Janis is the one who put together the TMDL report for Harley Gulch, and seems to be the one managing Harley Gulch issues for the CVWB.
Janis Cooke: (916)464-4672, jcooke@waterboards.ca.gov.
Roberto Cervantes: (916)464-4682
I talked to them for awhile, and they weren't aware of us or our research. They recommended I read both the TMDL report and the Tetra Tech report to get a better idea of samples that have been taken and possible remediation solutions for the different sites. Not reading those reports it was kinda difficult to have an informed conversation, but Janis said that mercury is pretty much an erosion control issue since it binds to the sediment, unlike other toxic metals. I was going to email her later and ask for any spreadsheets or data on sampling that she has or knows of. It seems like there are so many organizations collecting data and it is going to be easy to miss some.

From the intersection of Harley Gulch and Cache Creek to Abbott Mine, there were 14 mercury samples taken very recently, probably within the last week. Janis said that was probably the responsible party, aka the company that owns the Abbott Mine is monitoring how affective their cleanup was. I'm hoping to get that data, but I have no idea who to contact and what the monitoring plan is. We have to do our project with the BLM within the context of existing plans, which requires a really good understanding of what those plans are and how BLM fits into everything.

The erosion control project on the Abbott mine appears to be working well, and everything is covered in a fairly thick layer of grass. There is a lot of exposed rock at all the other mines I saw though including Turkey Run, Manzanita, and Central. It's going to be interesting to calibrate the WARMF model for Harley Gulch because of the Abbott Mine cleanup, and trying to calibrate it using very little information and assumptions about how much the cleanup helped with erosion control.

If people want to check out my photos, I put them here: G:\Photos\2010 June Cache Creek
They are also georeferenced: G:\Photos\June CCB.kmz, but remote desktop does not have Google Earth.

My forest service job doesn't start for another week, so I'll be around SB with plenty of time on my hands.

-Nick

First meetings with BLM staff

Holly, Yemi and I got all settled into the McLaughlin Reserve Field Station on Thursday and took a trip to the BLM field office in Ukiah on Friday (the office is about 1.5 hours from where we live, so they're hoping we won't have to drive out TOO often). There, we were met by the field office manager, Rich Burns. Rich introduced us to the few staff members that actually work on Fridays, and they presented us with a general overview of the areas their office over-sees. Pardee Bardwell, whose official title is Rangeland Management Specialist but wears many hats for BLM, took us on a driving tour of the outer edge of the Cache Creek Natural Area to show us the main gates we'll be using to enter the property.

This morning, Jim and Mark Conley came out from the state office in Sacramento. They brought us a ton of equipment we'll be using in the field, a pile of literature to sort through, and most importantly, a better understanding of what they think we'll be doing this summer. Holly and Yemi have a very interesting task ahead of them and its broad scope will make it challenging, to be sure. One of their main duties is to beta-test the Bureau's new wilderness monitoring protocol... Jim and Mark referred to them as "guinea pigs" for a program that will eventually be implemented nation-wide! Very exciting stuff! You can ask them about it if you'd like to know more.

Jim has outlined some tasks for me that he thinks will most benefit our project. My focus will be mostly on Harley Gulch and Davis Creek:

1. Assemble existing data sets on water quality and soil chemical properties on soils in high mercury sites in Cache Creek Watershed, including the EPA CERCLA projects at the Sulfur Bank Mine and the Abbott-Turkey Run Mine Complex

2. Characterize the state of knowledge about the chemical pathways for mercury methylation and demethylation in natural settings

3. Meet with staff of agencies who are concerned with mercury management in the Cache Creek Basin (BLM, US EPA, US FWS, Yolo County Flood Control and Water Conservation District, USGS, Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board, UC-Davis McLaughlin Natural Reserve)

4. Digital photographic documentation of current conditions and environmental problems on BLM lands in Harley Gulch and Davis Creek

5. Assist with characterizing the stream bed of Harley Gulch Creek and Davis Creek found on BLM lands

6. Assist the USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service botanist in collecting and surveying abandoned mine sites to be revegetated

7. Assist with production of cross-sectional and longitudinal stream profiles, with staff from the Gualala River Stewardship Council

8. Sample water quality in Harley Gulch and Davis Creek every second week (pH, temperature, DO, oxidation-reduction potential, electro-conductivity, ion concentration strips for salinity (chloride) and sulfate)

9. Determine sediment/soil profiles to a depth of 10 cm along the east branch of Harley Gulch Creek, the main stem of Harley Gulch, Harley Gulch Delta, Upper and Lower Davis Creek, and Lower Bear Creek (as time and funding permit)

10. Augur soil profiles in the Harley Gulch Delta to send for mercury sampling (to determine the volume of mercury-contaminated soil)

Jim has given me the liberty to add to the list or adjust any of these tasks to suit our information needs. I'd love to hear your feedback on the fieldwork plan!

We have the day off tomorrow. On Monday morning, we will be attending the weekly staff meeting at the state office in Sacramento and then taking a defensive driving course (if our background checks go through and we are indeed granted access to BLM computers) so that we can be assigned BLM vehicles. Sometime next week, Holly and I will be taking a road trip to Hollister where they've located a truck with an automatic transmission for her to use. We're both glad that they are providing us with vehicles... this summer will involve A LOT of driving.

O.K.- that's all for now! I hope you all are having a pleasant start to the summer.

~k

Google Spreadsheets Created

Hey Everyone,
Here are our spreadsheets for trying to keep the data organized into one location. Everyone with the link has full editing permissions, so feel free to edit them however you see fit. I wasn't sure exactly what columns were needed on the Remediation Methods spreadsheet, so feel free to tear it apart and make it something useful.

Links removed for security concerns, but you guys all got the links in the email I sent you.