Fire silt turns Cottonwood Creek brown

NOT MILK CHOCOLATE:
Salmon and trout cannot spawn in silt-choked Cottonwood Creek and its tributaries after recent rains eroded burned land.

Fierce June rainstorms stripped soil from hillsides laid bare from last year's lightning fires, depositing the mixture of soil and ash into Beegum and Duncan creeks that feed Cottonwood Creek and the Sacramento River.

The resulting deposit into the creeks was catastrophic to trout and salmon in Beegum Creek and will turn Cottonwood Creek the color of milk chocolate every rainfall for another year, said Doug Killam, associate fisheries biologist with the California Department of Fish and Game's office in Red Bluff.

Photographs provided by Cottonwood rancher Bill Gibson depict the ruddy creek with dark, fine deposits.

"That's likely from the ash, a direct consequence of the Deer Lick and Noble fires last summer," said Environmental Scientist Mathew Boone of the Regional Water Quality Control Board.

"I expect every time it rains, Cottonwood Creek will look like it did in June," Killam said. "It will take at least another year to flush it all out."

Pools ten-feet deep over the past decade are filled completely with sediment in Beegum Creek, he said. Culverts were plugged, causing washouts and closures on Beegum Road.

"What was a crystal clear creek is now a dirt-bottom creek," he said.

How much sediment found its way into the creek? Anywhere from two inches to three feet, Killam said.

"Fill the Anderson Cottonwood Irrigation District canal for at least seven miles with dirt," he said. "That's the kind of volume we're seeing."

Killam cannot yet approximate how many fish may have died, but added that catfish and carp would survive.

"It probably killed any Steelhead that spawned in the water," Killam said of any winter hatchlings in Beegum Creek.

Any creek repairs will have to wait until after the state funding crisis passes, Killam said.