23G

• Board Meeting Date: 4/30/2004
• Description: 23G
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Executive Session

alternative which achieves a reasonable degree of resource protection.... Voluntary measures
by the permittees to protect forest resources are not effective." (AR -G at 2584.)
In May of 1994, the cities and WS SC offered the Forest Service a revised JOP which, the
government asserts, provided additional environmental benefits when compared with the original
JOP. The Final EIS was issued in July of 1994. The government states that because production
of the FEIS was substantially complete when the Forest Service received the revised JOP, the
revised JOP was addressed in a separate addendum rather than in the main volume of the FEIS.
In the FEIS, the Forest Service informs the public that implementation of the proposed action,
Alternative B, would require amendment of the Forest Plan provisions calling for the agency "to
issue permits with bypass flows and to maintain habitat potential."
The FEIS includes as Appendix I a detailed assessment by the Forest Service of the May
1994 JOP:
... [T]he applicants' claims of habitat enhancement in the Cache la Poudre River
System are overstated. While the Plan represents an improvement over existing
conditions for a five month period, it does not fully mitigate project impacts. At
no place does the Plan represent an enhancement above natural conditions that
would offset negative effects to aquatic habitat elsewhere. Due to the fact that the
JOP is limited to a five -month period, and that no mitigation is proposed for
several stream segments, reservoir operations continue to have a detrimental effect
on all stream segments evaluated.
(AR -LD at 4483.)
The Forest Service's assessment ultimately concludes that "[c]laims that the JOP results in more
aquatic habitat than Alternative C [which requires bypass flows from Long Draw Reservoir]
appear to be unfounded from both a physical and biological perspective. In consideration of the
facts as we now understand them, there is little question that implementation of Alternative C, as
opposed to the Joint Operations Plan, would be in the best interest of National Forest aquatic
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