Section 319
NONPOINT SOURCE PROGRAM SOGGESS STORY
Coordinated Resource Management and Riparian Restoration Improves Creek
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Historical livestock grazing practices resulted in damaged
riparian areas and eroding streambanks along Whitelaw
Creek, leading to poor water quality and degraded fisheries. Local landowners, the
U.S. Forest Service (USFS), and other partners worked through a process known as
Coordinated Resource Management (CRM) to implement improved grazing management
practices. After two decades of improved management, monitoring data indicate improved
water quality, restored riparian areas, and improved fisheries.
Problem
Whitelaw Creek is a 2.4-mile-long tributary to
Beaver Creek, approximately 8 miles north of the
town of Sundance in the Belle Fourche River Basin
of northeast Wyoming (Figure 1). The creek's
headwaters originate at an elevation of approxi-
mately 6,100 feet near Warren Peak in the Black
Hills National Forest. Whitelaw Creek is protected
by the Wyoming Department of Environmental
Quality (WDEQ) for drinking water, cold-water game
and non-game fisheries, fish consumption, aquatic
life (other than fish), recreation, wildlife, industry,
agriculture, and scenic value uses. For the purposes
of this project and its ongoing evaluation, WDEQ
divides Whitelaw Creek into upper and lower seg-
ments, which are separated by USFS road 851.
Season-long historical livestock grazing practices
in the mid- to late 20th century resulted in dam-
aged upland and riparian areas and degraded
stream banks, which consequently led to increased
sediment loading, elevated water temperatures,
and reduced dissolved oxygen in Whitelaw Creek.
Biological information collected in the 1980s
indicated the cold-water game fishery consisted
entirely of brook trout in low densities.
In 1988 the USFS implemented a two-pasture,
deferred-rotation livestock grazing system along
Whitelaw Creek. Unfortunately, poor water distri-
bution and a lack of late-season water limited the
opportunities to implement the new grazing system,
and thus the resource received minimal benefits.
Whitelaw Creek,
Wyoming
Project Highlights
In 1992 WDEQ partnered with local landown-
ers and grazing permittees, USFS, the Natural
Resources Conservation Service, the Wyoming
Figure 1. Whitelaw Creek is in northeastern Wyoming.
Riparian Association, the Wyoming Game and
Fish Department, the Crook County Natural
Resource District, and the Wyoming Department of
Agriculture to initiate CRM in the Whitelaw Creek
watershed to address the known water quality
issues, including water quality problems from over-
grazing. As part of the CRM, the collaborators man-
aged a Clean Water Act section 319 project, known
as the Whitelaw Riparian Improvement Project, in
the early to mid-1990s. The partners implemented
numerous agricultural best management practices
(BMPs) that focused on improving riparian condi-
tions, stabilizing stream banks, and enhancing
water quality through short-duration, multi-pasture
rotational grazing, the development of off-channel
water sources, and cross-fencing (adding fences to
limit pasture access for rotational grazing purposes).
Project partners installed signs and conducted tours
of the project area to offer opportunities for the
public to learn about time-controlled grazing man-
agement and improvements in the resource that
benefit multiple uses. Project partners monitored
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Figure 2. Whitelaw
Creek before (1995,
left) and after (2013,
right) riparian recovery efforts.
the effectiveness of the BMPs from 1992 to 2012 by
periodically collecting fish and macroinvertebrate
data, conducting vegetative surveys, and gathering
chemical and physical water quality data.
Results
The Whitelaw Riparian Improvement Project has
successfully improved riparian and water qual-
ity conditions throughout the length of Whitelaw
Creek. Monitoring data collected from 1992
through 2012 show that the combination of
improved water distribution and short-duration
rotational grazing has improved riparian condi-
tions. Assessments of four riparian vegetation
transects distributed throughout the upper and
lower segments all show an appreciable increase in
desirable species, specifically sedges in the Carex
and Scirpus genera. The increased density and
diversity of riparian vegetation have stabilized seg-
ments of streambanks by allowing the channel to
narrow and deepen and to become more sinuous.
Approximately 20 percent of streambanks expe-
rienced improved stability and increased riparian
vegetative cover between 1992 and 2012; nearly
all stream banks are now at optimal stability and
cover conditions (Figure 2). These enhancements
have significantly reduced the sediment loading to
the stream. The reduction is most apparent within
the lower segment of Whitelaw Creek, which had
been the segment most negatively affected by
excess sediment. Data show that mean embed-
dedness (percent of coarse substrate covered or
surrounded by sand and silt) in riffle substrates
in this lower segment declined by approximately
30 percent between 1992 and 2012. Reductions in
fine sediment corresponded to coarsening of the
riffles, with 35 to 45 percent increases in gravel
composition throughout Whitelaw Creek (though
most notably in the lower segment) during the
same period.
The in-stream and riparian changes, combined with
reductions in sediment loading, have translated
to cooler instantaneous water temperatures (a
reduction of approximately 5 to 8°C) and improved
instantaneous dissolved oxygen concentrations (an
increase of approximately 1 milligram per liter) during
early autumn over the 20-year monitoring period.
Temperature and dissolved oxygen levels now meet
WDEQ's water quality standards.
The biological condition of Whitelaw Creek has
improved with the decreases in sediment loading and
water temperature and the increase in dissolved oxy-
gen. WDEQ's Wyoming River InVertebrate Prediction
and Classification System (WYRIVPACS) indicated a
significant (31 percent) increase in biological condition
from 1992 to 2012 within lower Whitelaw Creek with
respect to the taxa expected to occur under reference
conditions. Moreover, increases in macroinvertebrate
community density (from 833 to 2,047 individuals
per square meter), percent EPT (Ephemeroptera,
Plecoptera, Trichoptera) taxa (a 22 percent increase),
and the ratio of EPT to Chironomidae taxa (from a ratio
of 5.3 to a ratio of 12.3) were also evident in the lower
segment. The percentage of pollutant-tolerant non-
insects (e.g., aquatic worms, leeches, etc.) decreased
13 percent within the lower Whitelaw Creek segment
from 1992 to 2012.
In the upper segment of Whitelaw Creek, the per-
centage of sensitive mayflies increased by 10 per-
cent, while the percentage of tolerant organisms and
number of burrower taxa decreased by 11 percent
and seven taxa, respectively, over the same evalu-
ation period. Both WDEQ's WYRIVPACS and the
multimetric Wyoming Stream Integrity Index (WSII)
show that the current biological condition throughout
the creek is comparable to reference expectations.
Partners and Funding
The Whitelaw Riparian Improvement Project
addressed water quality issues on nearly 3,400 acres
of federal and private lands. The project received
a total of $9,635 of Clean Water Act section 319
funds and used $10,839 of non-federal matching
funds. Funding supported BMP implementation,
educational deliverables, and effectiveness monitor-
ing of the management changes. The project was
a cooperative effort involving local landowners,
grazing permittees, USFS, U.S. Department of
Agriculture-Natural Resource Conservation Service,
Wyoming Riparian Association, Wyoming Game and
Fish Department, Crook County Natural Resource
District, Wyoming Department of Agriculture,
Wyoming Game and Fish Department, and WDEQ.
a
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Office of Water
Washington, DC
EPA841-F-14-001A
January 2014
For additional information contact:
Jennifer Zygmunt
Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality
Phone: 307-777-6080 • jennifer.zygmunt@wyo.gov
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