Kathryn Gray | South Yuba River Headwaters: Donner Summit Spring

Kathryn Gray | South Yuba River Headwaters: Donner Summit Spring

Published on May 12, 2009 - 6:56:18 AM

and the stars reel over your heads
spooled out like thread thrown out by a subtle spider
casting her web over the universe

and the water, listen for it
seeps, and weeps, and drabbles down the rocks
a bright shine in the daylight
a damp reverse inflorescence in the night

spring comes surreptitiously
not so much creeping
but interrupted by unexpected snowfalls

welcome snowfall -
we need the water!
begone snow-
enough already!

but then the melt, slow, or sudden
over glistening tumbled rocks
gorging the South Yuba
with icy pure water

grinding snow plow dumps, road run-off
raggle-taggle dams, effluent,
cleansed by

the melt of a Donner Summit Spring.

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Comments

Kathryn Gray
13 May 2009, 18:56

I'd like to mention that this was written as a small thank you for Susan Snider, SYRCL's Yuba Headwaters Campaign Director.

On behalf of all of us up at the South Yuba River's Donner Summit headwaters, I'd like to thank her for all the hard work she put in regarding the Donner Summit Public Utility District's (DSPUD) NPDES permit. Her work was highly instrumental in the State realizing that the river is a precious resource, whose water quality needs protected. The CVRWQCB, after a rigorous and thorough hearing, elected to NOT grant DSPUD dilution credits, thus keeping excess levels of nitrate and dichlorobromomethane out of the river.

SYRCL is really the sum of all the Citizens who work to protect water quality and fishery resources, and dedicated volunteers like Susan Snider offer a shining example of what persistence, and devotion to a clean South Yuba River can do.

Thanks for being there for all of us, and for the river!

Oh, and the nonpoint source pollution references? That's a job for another day!