Editor’s note: This article has been corrected to state that flooding was addressed in the hydrologic analysis and environmental assessment of the Tiger-Mill plan.
Nathaniel Farnam was a wildland firefighter for five years, and for 25 years he has hunted and hiked up near the Mill Creek Watershed. He’s observed the old-growth forest from the trail — signs around the boundary note it as a protected watershed where access is restricted.
He said he appreciates the usefulness of prescribed fire and noncommercial thinning in mitigating the severity of wildfires.
“Commercial logging is a different story,” Farnam said.
From the outside, the watershed looks like it has the big trees of an established, old-growth forest, which he doesn’t see as one that would burn severely. Built-up ladder fuels — the mid-height trees and brush that could carry flames to the tree canopy — could produce a severe fire.
“That’s why there may be a place for prescribed burns in some places if there’s a substantial understory,” he said. “But I guess my question at the end of this would be: If we’re looking at fire mitigation, what place does commercial logging have in our water supply?”
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Public Works Director Ki Bealey and Walla Walla Fire Department Chief Eric Wood started the town hall with a truncated presentation on the project using previously presented materials from the city and Forest Service.
City Council members then had a chance to share their experience from two recent tours into the Umatilla National Forest with the Forest Service, before the meeting opened to an hour of comments and questions from the public.
The city collected written questions in advance of the meeting, as well, and the City Council will decide at its Wednesday, Nov. 5, meeting, which questions, if any, it will forward to the Forest Service for replies.
A full recording of the town hall is available on the city’s Tiger-Mill webpage.
Residents packed into the Walla Walla City Council chambers and adjoining hallway for the Tuesday, Oct. 14, town hall regarding the Tiger-Mill project, which includes logging, forest thinning and prescribed fire in and around the city’s protected water source.
Most speakers opposed the plan and asked for the city to support a new assessment of environmental impact that would specifically look at potential impact to the city’s water. They spoke about impacts to native fish and other species in the forest that has been otherwise untouched.
They asked questions they would want to see answered by the Forest Service before the plan goes forward.
Some supported a proposal made by Mayor Tom Scribner just before public comment to revisit and make more specific the 1918 agreement between the city and the U.S. Department of Agriculture regarding the watershed.
Still others said the Forest Service had done its due diligence in crafting the project, which has been in progress since 2023 with a work plan approved in February.
It is a Forest Service-led plan, but the city has supported the plan in official documents from the perspective that the work will help prevent a severe wildfire that could harm the protected watershed.
Residents who see similar harms resulting from the prevention plan have repeatedly shown up at City Council meetings over the last several months, leading City Manager Elizabeth Chamberlain to plan the town hall about two months ago.
The Forest Service was unable to send representatives to the meeting because of the ongoing government shutdown, according to the city.
Exposed mountain and forest is visible along Tiger Creek Road in the Umatilla National Forest.
Proposing a new agreement
Before public comment began, Scribner said that each of the City Council members, on their tours, had a chance to hear directly from the Forest Service about the plan from the Forest Service’s perspective.
“I suspect that if we seven had trips to the same areas that they took us with some of you, we may have a very different interpretation of what we saw and the information,” he said.
The 1918 agreement between the city and the USDA states a purpose of conserving and protecting the city’s water supply.
City of Walla Walla
He said he would support the City Council sending two letters: one to the USDA to renegotiate and make more specific the 1918 agreement, and one to the Forest Service based on the comments and questions at the town hall.
Scribner said the two-page agreement is badly drafted, using ambiguous terms that could be interpreted differently by the city and the Forest Service.
“It’s an important document because I think it’s the document that controls how we relate to the Forest Service with respect to their plan and what we do as a city relative to the Forest Service going forward,” he said. “At least from my perspective, this agreement does not tie our hands as a city relative to this plan.”
He asked commenters to share specific feedback to help guide the city’s potential writing of those letters.
Randall Son, a 54-year resident of the Valley, said he would want to see a definition of “injury” included in the agreement and an explicit explanation of the Forest Service’s liability if harm were to come to the city’s water.
“There are a number of ways to specify what injury to the water supply might mean — a particular negative change,” he said. “And then, in an agreement, you need recourse for the city. You discover injury: Now what? Figure out your recourse, whether it’s consultation, amendment, suspension of activity to figure out what’s going on … there are many more tools today than in 1918.”
Fish, water and erosion
Many speakers supported a new environmental impact statement for the project assessing the impact to the water supply and environment from native species of fish and birds to erosion, sediment buildup in the water and flooding.
Concerns over who would be responsible for paying for water filtration efforts if the water supply was impacted came up over and over again.
The plan
Within the Mill Creek Watershed, 351 acres will be commercially thinned, or logged, through cable, ground and helicopter thinning. That work will cover 1.6% of the watershed land. Another 2,562 acres in the watershed will be noncommercially thinned by hand or through mastication, covering 11.94% of the watershed. In all, the work planned in the watershed will cover 2,913 acres or 13.58% of the watershed’s acreage.
Source: City of Walla Walla
Bob Carson, a retired Whitman geology and environmental studies professor, asked questions about how much erosion would occur during and after logging; effects to native fish species from sediment in the water or changes in water temperature; and plans for fire prevention.
Tracii Hickman, a resident for 13 years, a fisheries biologist and board member for the Tri State Steelheaders, said she was hired by the Forest Service for an Endangered Species Act (ESA) consultation for Tiger-Mill and fully supports the project.
She said that consultation was independent, and that the project design team included a hydrologist, soil scientist and a fisheries biologist who helped decide where the logging would occur to address sediment deposits.
Hickman challenged statements, like those made by Carson, that the project documents were inaccurate, incomplete and misleading.
“My support is based on my analysis and review of the specifics of the Tiger Mill project, knowledge of the conditions on the ground in the project area, the rigorous scientific review by the ESA regulatory agency and monitoring of similar projects,” she said.
Resident Paul Lynn said in response to Hickman that the hydrologic analysis pointed to an increased risk of flooding when you have a landscape level disturbance like commercial logging.
The analysis determined, however, that the planned work would not measurably affect hydrological functions or increase risk of flooding. That finding was summarized in the environmental assessment, which also reviewed past flooding events.
Balance of risks
Fire Chief Eric Wood said in the city’s presentation that the work within the watershed was planned strategically to aid in safe and effective firefighting.
Brent Thomas, a resident, spoke as a parent of two wildland firefighters to say that intention was an important factor of the project.
“It’s to truly enhance the probability of success of what we ask somebody’s son or daughter to do late at night, early in the morning and throughout the day,” Thomas said. “You all ask them to do that as taxpayers and the responders — not only federal responders, but city responders, contractors.”
Risk — or the balancing of risk — was a key component for some council members, who understood pieces of both sides.
Council Member Gustavo Reyna said his question was how to minimize risk for 35,000 people who rely on the water supply when all options include some level of risk.
“It’s not really a binary thing,” he said.
With that in mind, he said he had some helpful takeaways from his visit into the forest, from learning about how thinning could help reduce competition for resources among trees to seeing how quickly forest growth can occur in the year or two after a prescribed or low-severity fire.
In addition to recognizing the risks to soil, risk of flooding, ecological risks, he said, there are also risks to be minimized to keep firefighters safe and also, “giving them the best chance to fight the fire.”
The question of risk also came up in public comment, from a slightly different angle.
Sue Parrish, a retired middle school science teacher, asked: “What is the real chance of a catastrophic fire in the watershed?”