Published April 1964 — Download PDF of the original newspaper column
From the Office of UNITED STATES SENATOR ROBERT C. BYRD Room 342, Old Senate Office Building, Washington 25, D. C. Volume IV -- Number 17 4/24/64 BYRD' EYE VIEW A Public Service Column by SENATOR ROBERT C. BYRD WATERSHED RESEARCH IN WEST VIRGINIA The recent highly destructive floods from a number of streams draining the central Appalachian Mountains again point up a longstanding and critical problem associated with these very important watershed lands, for land today has new values beyond the production of food and fiber. The central Appalachian region is the headwater area of several major rivers, including the Allegheny, Monongahela, Kanawha, Potomac, James, Roanoke, and, in part, the Susquehanna. Due to its geographic location, West Virginia is possibly the best drained State in the Union. However, floods in this region are a recurring menace. The flood of June 24-25, 1950, lasted only a few hours but did an estimated 50 million dollars damage in West Virginia. The January 1957 flood in the tri-state area of Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky resulted in 14 deaths and many millions of dollars in property loss. This flood was attributed in a large part to land misuse. Improved forest land management holds great promise for damage reduction. In West Virginia, there are about a million acres of poor pasture--mostly on steep slopes--and abandoned farm land that should be reforested. These watershed lands, because of past heavy grazing, overcutting, fire, and cult1vation of steep slopes, are in poor cond1tion for regulating stream flow. Watershed research must furnish the guides for effective methods of treating these lands to restore their full capacity for receiving rain and melting snow, retarding runoff, and releasing water in the form of stable flows of good "quality" water so important to soil, plants, animals, and man. Watershed research was started by the Forest Service in this area in 1950, and has been centered on the Fernow Experimental Forest near Parsons, West Virginia. Nine experimental watersheds have been instrumented and used to determine the effects of various intensities and patterns of timber harvesting on water quality, annual and seasonal flows, storm-flow peaks, and low flows. Also included are studies to determine how storm runoff and sedimentation may be reduced by reforesting pastured slopes and abandoned crop lands on steep slopes. Completed studies have shown how to locate, construct, and maintain logging roads so as to keep runoff and erosion at a minimum. This information has been made available in a number of publications and by on-the-ground demonstrations, and results are being put into practice on both public and privately owned lands. Preliminary results of different intensities of timber removal from experimental watersheds show that the amount and timing of water yields can be significantly affected and that the effect of timber harvesting on storm runoff, water quality, and sedimentation is related to the care exercised during the logging operation to avoid disturbing and compacting the soil and to staying out of stream channels when skidding logs. This research program is providing an ever-increasing volume of research results. A highly significant boost to this important research will be the soon-to-be-completed laboratory at Parsons. This modern facility will provide the Forest Service scientists with the scientific tools they need to do a more efficient and thorough job. When one considers that 65 per cent of the total land area of West Virginia is absorbed as commercial forest area, the importance of this program becomes apparent. -30-