May Issue of the Texas Water Source Now AvailableSaturday, May 1, 2010
May BMP Q&A
By: Chris Duncan, BMP Forester (Ret.), Texas Forest
Service
Q: The Texas Forest Service over the last several years has released several reports documenting how well BMP’s are being used on forestry operations here in East Texas. I would like to know if the Texas Forest Service will be conducting any more of these surveys in the future and are the past reports available anywhere.
Q: The Texas Forest Service over the last several years has released several reports documenting how well BMP’s are being used on forestry operations here in East Texas. I would like to know if the Texas Forest Service will be conducting any more of these surveys in the future and are the past reports available anywhere.
A: Since 1991 the Texas
Forest Service has conducted six rounds of BMP implementation monitoring. During each round a minimum of 150 randomly
chosen tracts are inspected for the implementation of BMP’s with the
cooperation of the landowner. Once all
the tracts have been inspected the data that was collected is used to produce a
report which shows how well BMP’s are being used.
In
December 2008 the Texas Forest Service released its seventh BMP implementation
report. The overall implementation rate
for the sites selected in round seven was 91.5%. Family forest owners had an implementation
rate of 88.7%, forest industry had an implementation rate of 91.1%, public
lands (national and state forestlands) had an implementation rate of 100%, and
corporate (our newest category of landowners) had an implementation rate of
95.7%.
During
round seven improvements were seen in several areas such as a decrease in the
number of significant risks to water quality, higher BMP implementation on avoiding
or minimizing the number of temporary stream crossings, and higher overall BMP
implementation on site preparation and wetlands. Although improvements were seen there were
also major deficiencies seen. These deficiencies were failure to restore and
stabilize stream crossings on temporary roads and leaving inadequate SMZ widths
along intermittent and perennial streams.
Starting
in May 2010 the Texas Forest Service will begin its eighth round of BMP
implementation monitoring. Over the next
12-14 months, the Texas Forest Service will randomly select a minimum of 150
tracts and with the cooperation of the landowner evaluate them for the implementation
of BMP’s. In 2011 the eighth report will
be released showing the overall findings of these inspections. Hopefully we will continue to see an increase
in the implementation rates and see a decrease in the number of deficiencies.
All
previous reports can be found on the Texas Forest Service website at http://texasforestservice.tamu.edu/water. You can look at each report and see how far
we have come over the years in the implementation of BMP’s but also see the
areas in which we still need to improve.
If you have any questions about the BMP implementation reports or BMP’s
in general please feel free to call me at (903) 297-3910.
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