Good comments, and an interesting topic--one that lands firmly in the realm of resource management more than anything else.

Having caught fish both above and below the Stilly's color line, I'm not averse to a planned reroute, but to think it'll solve all the river's ills is like thinking a band-aid will solve cancer.

The mass wasting occuring in this stream cannot be attributed only to the slide; neither can the sedimentation. As logging (...hello? can you say Deer Creek?...) and agricultural practices take their toll, the river will be blessed with higher flood levels and lower non-flood norms resulting from the loss of (wetland) biomass. No secret there--seen it in plenty of ruralized watersheds. For some reason this slide has been a bone of contention...perhaps it deserves it, but there are other issues here, and throwing some LWD around will not cut the chocolate cake the river becomes after a good rain.

StillyD has a good point: there are two small feeder creeks that flow through that slide, and gurgle and puke slops of mud like mini-lahars. LWD and rip-rap will not stop them.

Can we mitigate the liver spots this river is showing? Maybe in the short term--but the prognosis becomes more and more bleak with every tree chopped in that watershed.

I applaud the SIRC and the SFRB, because I do believe they have all of our best interests in mind, but the crank in me snorts...pfft--I'll believe it when I see it. Please please prove me wrong.

-----------<*))>><