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The Boise River Basin--Good News and Bad News

By James Piotrowski

The three forks of the Boise river have great fly fishing--for now. But trouble looms on the horizon.

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outhwest Idaho's Boise River watershed offers fantastic fly fishing, where an angler can still get away from the crowds. The watershed also has some of the state's most productive hunting, and most popular hiking and camping areas.

Countless mountain valleys are formed and defined by the basin's three main forks and numerous tributaries. These valleys are full of both native and introduced fish and game. To top it off, this bounty is within a two-hour drive of metropolitan Boise, Idaho's largest and fastest growing metropolitan area.

Whether you're in the mood to cast tiny flies to finicky trout, catch lots of native fish on dries, or drift worms to stockers, the Boise Basin offers it all--and "all" sometimes includes more than what you'd like to see happening; but more on that latter.

The South Fork

The South Fork of the Boise below Anderson Ranch Dam (just north of Mountain Home) is a classic western tailwater. The fish are big, the bugs are numerous, and novices are likely to get skunked. Regulations requiring artificial lures only and single hooks have the effect of encouraging fly fishing, while not actually requiring it. High spring and early summer flows make the South Fork suitable for driftboats. And heavy fishing pressure in some stretches makes the fish tough to catch.

Fortunately, a year-round parade of insects means there is always an opportunity to catch the South Fork's beefy rainbows on a fly. "The giant stoneflies in late-spring gets the big fish and the drift-boaters excited," says Caldwell angler Chris Topmiller. "Caddis hatches that start in June and hatches of pink albert mayflies in August give you another shot at big fish on dry flies.

Then in late summer and fall, hoppers, flavs, and craneflies show up, and the caddis can be like clockwork on some stretches of the river. When nothing else works, big stonefly nymphs are the go-to fly, or you can throw streamers and try to get into one of the South Fork's really big fish, Topmiller adds.

The North Fork

The North Fork Boise and hundreds of tributary streams offer small mountain stream fishing with lots of trout that will rise to a Royal Wulff (or, if things get really tricky, a Parachute Adams). "There are all kinds of places where you can spend all day throwing just about any fly and catch fish. The smaller tributaries tend to have more native trout, and in some of those streams the bull trout are so thick you can't even keep them away from a dry fly," according to Boise angler Mike McDonagh who has been fishing the river system for over thirty years.

The Middle Fork

As its name suggests, the Middle Fork offers something in between the South Fork and the Middle Fork. "On most summer days just about any dry fly will do so long as its big, juicy and attracts attention," says McDonagh. "Once in a while, though, the fish will pick a bug and stay with it, and your fly better look something like that bug. An exact match is almost never necessary, and a Madam X is a great go-to fly."

Trouble in Paradise?

But there's more going on in the Boise Basin than recreation. Everything that's happening in western watershed is represented here: water disputes, conflicts between resource extraction and conservation, and examples of local citizens and conservationists fighting to protect the last best places in the American west.

The Boise River has long been seen as a resource for local development. The river and its tributary creeks have been panned and dredged for silver and gold since at least 1864. Today, miles of the Middle Fork, North Fork, More's Creek and other tributary streams are scarred by the dredging which left behind banks piled high with gravel and cobbles without enough soil to support plants.

Hardrock mining also had its heyday in the area. The town of Atlanta, 70 miles from Boise along a twisting washboard of dirt road, was home to numerous mines which plumbed the depths of the ore veins. Small scale mining efforts continue today, with numerous recreational dredges permitted by the Boise National Forest.

Despite the changing nature of the river's use--from transportation to recreation, agricultural to municipal--the Bureau of Reclamation, at the request of Congressman Butch Otter, has prepared an analysis of potential new water storage opportunities on the Boise and Payette systems.

Reclamation's report includes numerous options, including raising the level of existing dams such as Anderson Ranch or Arrowrock, and the construction of new dams or off-river storage. One such "opportunity" is to revisit an old proposal for a Twin Forks dam to be built at the confluence of the North and Middle Forks of the Boise.

Cyanide Anyone?

By far the greatest potential danger to the river is the Atlanta Gold proposal. Atlanta Gold Company, a Canadian firm with funding from a variety of foreign sources, wants to construct an open-pit cyanide heap leach mine a few miles from the town of Atlanta.

If the mine is permitted by the US Forest Service, it would dig two pits, the largest one involving the removal of over 1000 feet of mountain and the creation of a pit over 600 feet deep. While the smaller pit would be filled, according to Atlanta Gold's Plan of Operations, the larger pit would only be partially filled. Ultimately, over 27 million tons of waste rock would be generated by the operation, and dumped into a valley on the mine site.

In heap leach mining, ore-laden rock is placed in huge piles and a solution of sodium cyanide is allowed to percolate through the piles or "heaps." The cyanide solution extracts the gold from the ore. At the bottom of the heap a plastic liner (in this case Atlanta Gold proposes to use an 80 mil liner) directs the cyanide solution to a collection point where it is pumped to a processing facility which concentrates and extracts the gold.

The cyanide leach heaps inevitably leak, but the waste rock and tailings piles may present the worst environmental risk. Arsenic and heavy metals will leach out of the piles of tailings and possibly into the watershed for decades or even centuries to come.

Is "As Good as it Gets" Good Enough?

Atlanta Gold officials promise that their mine "will be as good as a cyanide operation can get." But the use of massive amounts of cyanide and diesel fuel in the headwaters of the Boise River is not the sole problem with the proposal.

Simply getting the materials to the mine site puts mile after mile of river at risk of poisoning. Atlanta sits at the end of 60 miles of dirt road maintained by the Forest Service and the Atlanta Highway District. The direct route from Boise to Atlanta follows the edge of Lucky Peak and Arrowrock reservoirs with plenty of blind, hairpin turns before following the banks of the Middle Fork Boise.

The alternate route, which Atlanta Gold says will be its primary route follows More's Creek before traveling along the banks of the Crooked River, the North Fork Boise and then the Middle Fork Boise. The supplies will then be trucked up the Yuba River to the site. Other than More's Creek, all these waters are habitat for endangered Bull Trout and native redband and cutthroat trout.

Following this narrow, twisting, dirt road will be 611 tankers of diesel fuel, 37 deliveries of sodium cyanide, 50 of ammonium nitrate explosives, 25 2,000-pound propane tanks, 370 cement trucks, and 416 busloads of workers--each year for the life of the mine according to Atlanta Gold's Transportation Plan.

The transportation plan calls for all of these trips (other than the busloads of workers) to happen in the middle of the night, arriving in Atlanta at 1 a.m., and starting the return trip to Boise at 2 a.m. Referring to a recent traffic accident along part of the same route, angler McDonagh wonders whether "we should get the fallen crane out of Lucky Peak Reservoir before we start trucking diesel and cyanide around Arrowrock."

While traveling in the dead of night may reduce conflicts with other road users, Atlanta Gold has expressed no opinion (at least publicly) as to whether the plan actually increases the risk of an accident which could spill a truck load of diesel or cyanide into the river or its tributaries.

Manager "Doesn't Get It"

Bruce Thorndycraft, Atlanta Gold's manager responded to questions from the Idaho Statesman with "Where's the risk? I don't get it."

There are several risks according to Dr. Perry Brown a Boise pediatrician who also fly fishes in the Boise. "The city of Boise gets 20% of its drinking water from the Boise River, and tens of thousands of people in the Treasure Valley float, fish or swim in the Boise River. Those are the people at risk if there is a diesel or cyanide spill."

"Every single claim to a 'state of the art' cyanide heap leach mine in the last 20 years has proven to be wrong; every single one of these mines has failed and polluted. The only reason that this mine has not yet done so is that it has not yet been built," says Dr. Brown. "I know that the chemicals that Atlanta Gold risks spilling or leaking would be devastating. Cyanide, diesel fuel, arsenic, mercury, or lead, would do untold harm to the local ecosystem, could result in a massive fish and wildlife kill, and may threaten the water Boiseans drink," he concludes.

What Anglers Can Do

Fortunately, sportsmen and conservation organizations and the public will have a chance to weigh in on this plan before it is approved. Idaho Trout Unlimited (www.idahotu.org) has been actively educating the public about the threats posed by the mine to the river, wildlife, people downstream of the mine site, as has been Idaho Families for Clean Water, a coalition formed by environmental groups.

A public comment period will occur during scoping meetings held by the USFS, the first step towards drafting an Environmental Impact Statement. That scoping period will take place until May 30, 2006. Public comments about the proposal can be made in person at a series of open house events, or on-line at www.atlantagoldeis.com.

Save the Jewel

Dr. Perry sums up his concerns, "We risk losing a precious and unique jewel in Idaho's crown if this mine is built. And if we lose this jewel it is never coming back."

James Piotrowski lives in Boise, Idaho where, when he is not working, raising his family, fishing for trout, or tying flies, he'll be found in his woodshed, planning bamboo late into the night for his latest rod project.

Uploaded 06/11/2006.

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The forks of the Boise River are close to a metropolitan area and offer excellent recreation opportunities.

Fly fishing ranges from relaxed and easy to serious and technical, depending on which fork you're fishing.

A foreign corporation wants to put a cyanide heap-leach mine in the basin--a watershed that supplies drinking water to the city of Boise.