“Sediment can increase by a factor of 100 in areas that burn,” says Whiting. That means clogged streams and culverts nearby; farther downstream, silts and clays can smother fish eggs and disrupt drinking-water quality. The Forest Service and other agencies are preparing for the worst, re-seeding 80,000 acres with quick-growing grasses, laying down barriers and trenches along hillsides and expanding culverts. The efforts have already paid off in New Mexico, where the summer thunderstorm season passed without major incidents. “We had thousands of volunteers up on the slopes,” says the Forest Service’s Penny Luehring. “But prevention is never 100 percent. We were lucky there wasn’t much rain.”
That luck may hold for the rest of the burn areas. The National Weather Service’s forecast for the next three months, released last week, calls for warm, relatively dry conditions in the West. Of course, nature has a way of foiling forecasts, short term and long.
