Logs, Roads and WildcTiicss 



The Rt)ck tlrcck AdvisDry Ci)mniittcc. 

 chartered by the I'.S. Department of Agriculture, 

 held its first meeting in Philipsburg in the basement 

 of the Flint Creek Valley Bank t)n Halloween night. 

 (.October 31. l'-)"^; some ft)rmer members say they 

 are still haunted by the ghosts and goblins of their 

 contentious meetings.'^ Unlike anything the Forest 

 Service had attempted before, the committee was 

 a grueling experiment in diplomacy, a sort of Camp 

 David of local environmental politics. 



In the end, though, it worked more like a 

 jury — a jury that met for three-and-a-half years: 

 Those with facile agendas or a short attention span 

 .soon fell silent or dropped out. Those with the grit 

 to stick out monthly meetings, and the tedious sub- 

 committee work in between, determined the 

 outcome. 



It took thick skin to participate in early 

 meetings of the Rock Creek Advisory Committee. 

 To many with the best of intentions, it simply w-asn't 

 worth the time or the cost. Robert Bassett, of the 

 Sierra Club, dropped out even before the commit- 

 tee was chartered; in the super-heated political at- 

 mosphere, he feared for his Elkhorn Guest Ranch 

 business. Howie McDowell, who represented the 

 Western Wood Products Association, says the 18 

 groups tended to send their "hardline" advocates, 

 making consensus difficult, and that only in the 

 subcommittees did work proceed smoothly 



Conservationists also felt they accomplish- 

 ed more in the subcommittees, which gave them 

 access to new Forest Service scientists, who tend- 

 ed to be more sympathetic than the older, more 

 powerful Forest Service administrators trained in 

 timber extraction. Within the context of the sub- 

 committees, observes Tom Huff, government scien- 

 tists found they could do meaningful work without 

 publicly contradicting traditional Forest Service 

 policy." 



Former committee members disagree about 

 the details of what they accomplished, but most 

 were surprised at how soon they came to a fun- 

 damental compromise. The meetings began in a 

 miasma of paranoia; miners, loggers, cattlemen and 

 residential developers all were afraid of being shut 

 out of the Rock Creek drainage. The Forest Service 

 dared not give priority to one resource over another 

 for fear of violating the multiple-use mandate. The 

 conservationists wanted no development activity, 

 but they found a way to compromise. The Forest 

 Service could make water quality the top priority 

 in Rock (.reck, thc\ .irmictl without excluding 



anyone. "We didn't say d(jn't log," recalls Gary 

 Eudaily of the Western Montana Fish and Game 

 Association. "We didn't .say don't build a house or 

 a road. We didn't say don't graze or mine. We didn't 

 ask for anything on Rock C'reek other than, don't 

 screw up the stream. We just said do it right " 



The argument worked. Within the first year, 

 the committee reached a unanimous decision that 

 the pristine waters of Rock Creek must be protected 

 above all else. Everett Miller is capable to this day 

 of maintaining a straight face while announcing that 

 the fish in Rock Creek were healthiest when the 

 streams of the drainage ran "muddy all year long " 

 from mining.'" Yet even he was part of the consen- 

 sus. The committee decided that to log without 

 polluting Rock Creek, the Forest Service needed 

 more information. "We wanted to tie them down," 

 says Ron Marcoux, former fisheries biologist for the 

 Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, 

 a committee member and now a researcher for the 

 Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. "We kept asking: 

 are you sure you're not polluting Rock Creek?" 



The answer to that came from a subcommit- 

 tee. Marcoux, timber industry representative Howie 

 McDowell, Rock Creek resident Adam Michnevich 

 and others joined Forest Service scientists on an 

 Aquatic Resources Subcommittee. '' Less than six 

 months later, in April of 1973, they had a water 

 quality monitoring plan. 'We felt we were setting 

 a trend for the Forest Service, the first detailed water 

 quality monitoring program," says Marcoux. "We 

 were trying to set up something that would be 

 developed for use in all streams " across the country. 



The subcommittee proposed standards for 

 the five major Forest Service activities of logging, 

 grazing, "roading," recreation and mining.'" They 

 concluded: 



Water quality must be monitored for two 

 years before, during and after any activity. Monitors 

 must be placed above and below the site. When a 

 monitor shows a change in vN-ater quality below the 

 site, the activity must be halted for inspection and 

 corrective measures. Tributaries up to the third 

 order (that is, a third branch off Rock Creek), must 

 be monitored. '^ 



In what many consider the single most im- 

 portant achievement of the Rock Creek Advisory 

 Committee, it approved these monitoring standards. 

 But there v^-as one more step. "We asked for a letter 

 of acceptance from the two forest supervisors," says 

 Rock Creek resident Adam Michnevich. »« The 

 heralded water quality agreement that has since 



