Tempest on the Issaquah

DANGER UNINTENDED…DANGER NONETHELESS

OVER THE PAST 20 PLUS YEARS GREAT EFFORT HAS BEEN INVESTED IN RECOVERY OF SALMON RUNS IN REGIONAL STREAMS.

Some efforts have been relatively benign…others not so. And some have been clearly sources of danger to folks who venture near our popular streams for recreation and enjoyment. Especially children and youngsters. These kids are playing on a logjam trapped by the “installed LWD” in the foreground…the log with the squarecut end and the chain wrapped around it!

One of the most controversial, and of unproven value, is the placement of what has come to be called LARGE WOODY DEBRIS in areas along stream-banks and in the channel as well that create immediate danger to swimmers, boaters, “tubers” and others.

Perspective from common vantage point upstream as debris builds up.

Recent admissions by certain agents of King County and the state dept of fish and wild life confirm what has been only too obvious to other observers: these very dangerous projects…which have caused injury and death to the public in recent years…have brought no perceptible improvement of fish populations.

These admissions have come only after great effort by some in the community who challenged the LWD programs after studying the matter for several years. These folks have identified the hazards and noted the tragedies only to be ignored or marginalized by the wild life “experts”. But at long last their efforts have paid off.

Another perspective of build-up from the bridge.

One of the most shattering aspects of these LWD installations has haunted these good folks for many of these years. The front page photograph says in an instant what these folks have argued for years…LWD ATTRACTS KIDS AND DRAWS THEM INTO RISKY PLAY AND ADVENTURE! WHERE THESE INSTALLATIONS ARE ACCESSIBLE TO KIDS THEY REPRESENT VERY DANGEROUS “ATTRACTIVE” NUISANCES. PROHIBITED BY LAW…BUT THERE NONETHELESS!

Major debris build-up seen from same point as the top photo (with youngsters) but taken weeks before.

The photo with the youngsters at the top of this post was taken in April 2006… AFTER the removal of the original build-up that led to severe flooding in December 2005. The installed LWD log in the foreground has trapped the two “volunteer” logs that were swept along by another later storm. Not only do they inspire the adventuresome kids in the photo…they were the beginning of the next build-up. Issaquah officials had asked to remove them during the earlier operation but were told by WDFW that they were “new salmon habitat” and they had to stay! Imagine!

This installation that repeatedly trapped so much debris was installed right in the heart of Issaquah… in the “storied little river” that runs through downtown, the Issaquah creek. All of this within 300 feet of the Issaquah salmon hatchery which annually draws tens of thousands of visitors, probably half of whom are youngsters. It is also within 400 feet of an Issaquah middle school. Potential victims could hardly be nearer!

Flood surge well below the peak...covering LWD dam...already flooding the neighborhood.

Issaquah officials were sorely concerned about damage to the bridge…a vital traffic link…as well as the safety of the public. Fortunately damage was manageable…this time!

The accompanying photo montage gives a clear picture of this absurd project from the perspective of time passage and differing stream conditions. They illustrate the build-up of debris caused repeatedly by this project…the flooding that this exacerbates…the danger as seen in the lead picture…and the final result of an act of nature that leaves one to wonder at the message of nature.

Flooding forced into nearby neighborhoods because of the obstruction.

In the big storm this past winter Mother Nature abated the danger once and for all. She stripped the stream clean of the man-made artifice…and left it again reasonably safe for the legions of kids who have ever…and ever will…haunt her shores!

We at the KCRJP feel it is time to respond to this clear natural signal…and clean up the other dangers in our streams. And to those so sympathetic to the salmon…we say, safety first…for the kids.

AFTER ALL…HOW MANY FISH WOULD YOU TRADE A CHILD’S LIFE FOR??

The Scene of the Crime

This picture of yours truly pulling a make-shift diving-board from the rootwad of a stump on the Cedar River doesn’t begin to tell the story. Earlier I mentioned a “felony conviction” for malicious mischief some years back. This is where the “mischief” took place. This is a swimming hole on the Cedar - famous for over half a century as “beer bottle beach” - a mecca that I visited with buddies back in the day on our “trusty Coast Guard approved” 7-60x15 inner-tubes. You get the picture.

Matter of fact we learned some fateful lessons back when! First trip down one spring on an unauthorized field trip from Mrs. Hanis’s afternoon study hall session at our venerable alma mater, old RHS, we nearly lost Pete Cunningham in a logjam.

“Little Pete,” as we called him, hit the water first and sped off with the beer…beer purloined from the back shelf of me beloved mother’s Kelvinator (generous soul she was; never seemed to keep much count…never missed a grog or two, now and then)!

Anyhow, Little Pete rounded the next river bend and was abruptly plunged under a big logjam we had not anticipated! But for the heroics of Eddie “grappa” Tasca and I think it was Lee Douglas, it would have been the end of Pete!

We had no sense of the gravity of that moment. Our main concern was recovering the beer (only marginally successful at that)! It was only years later that I began to realize that our experience was…is…and always will be…a hard fact of life when kids get around rivers. There is no holding back. And nature has a way of filling rivers with dangerous snags…all by herself!

Then a few years back I learned that so-called Large Woody Debris was actually being placed in our rivers…in extremely dangerous manner as you can see in the “crime scene photo”…root-wads protruding into the stream on the outside radii of bends where the current is swiftest…injuries and deaths to floaters…kids and adults alike…were occurring…all for what was… and still is…unproven “fish habitat enhancement!”

Recording several injuries and near death situations at this site…we began to press King County to make the site safe…with the question… “how many fish would you trade one of your kids for”??…if in fact the habitat did work. No one from King County has ever answered.

As the near misses continued I felt finally I had to act. We had removed numerous “diving boards” the kids would place haphazard in the stumps…and then dive into the pool…IN WHICH KING COUNTY HAD PLACED LARGE BOULDERS WITH NO WARNING SIGNS!!! One young lad stated in a KING TV report we arranged from the site that he had rescued several kids who had hit the rocks and nearly drowned.

All to no avail. The County sat on its hands…it was all for the fish!! Never mind the kids!!

So we fired up the trusty “STIHL” and out came three of the stumps!!! Danger done with!!! No more injury. No death period.

Well the short version of the rest of it all was that I was later convicted of malicious mischief and King County demanded $119,000 FOR THEIR DAMMED STUMPS.
That finally became $19,000…but what the hell…I ain’t gonna pay in any event…the County has already confirmed that I was right…and announced that “we don’t do it that way (install big trees with the roots out in the current on river bends) anymore”… “Chuck Pillon showed us we were wrong”!

Damn faint praise if you ask me…be nice if they went back and told the Judge they were wrong…but we are still building on that success…on river danger and other concerns. I will settle for that.

Log Jams: The Facts and the Folly

Remarkable bit of prophecy in the essay below (Deadly Rivers) about the expensive “engineered LWD” at Cedar Rapids on the Cedar River, where the “bundles” of logs chained together on the riverbank had started to pull loose and into the river! In spite of the fact that the County crew frantically re-chained the bundles (this time to huge cottonwoods on the bank) the whole thing blew out and headed downstream dragging their new companions (the huge cottonwoods) along. The following piece written after that fiasco tells the dangerous, potentially deadly, tale.

When this man-made “engineered LWD” monster finally hit Renton seven miles downstream, it nearly took out the Williams Street bridge. Had it tipped that bridge into the riverbed the dam it formed would have diverted the massive torrent into the entire downtown area. Casualties would have been in the hundreds. Unthinkable, but nearly the fact!

So, read LOGJAMS…FACT AND FOLLY (from Jan 2010)

So long as there have been rivers…trees…and people to be near them…the danger of logjams has been evident. Too often the result is in human terms…death and injury. Historically they have been a primary concern for agencies with responsibility to keep rivers open for public use…commerce and travel. The most important task…the safety of the public near them.

The United States Army Corps of Engineers and other local agencies have long cooperated in this effort. Until recent times it would have been unthinkable for any individual…let alone public agency… to obstruct this vital work.

In those earlier times waterways were… and remain… very important to commerce and social mobility. Where natural waterways did not exist…most known civilizations has created them…so vital have they been.

In recent years the established priority in river management has been hijacked…and the safety of the public pushed down the list of concerns. This sacrifice of safety has been driven… in great part… by well intended but myopic individuals and groups emerging from the environmental movement.

These good folk are disciples of LARGE WOODY DEBRIS (LWD)…the placement of logs and stumps and other obstructions in our rivers. They also stridently oppose removal of natural wind-falls in streams as well. The practice has been to wait until there is some injury or other before any action is taken at a site. There is clear evidence that in some cases such information has been ignored or denied by those responsible.

Their “science” is increasingly in question…but their determination undiminished.

This “science” has seldom been seriously challenged by the agencies that should …from the mighty Corps of Engineers…right on to the local public safety officials who have primary responsibility. To this point the advocates have essentially cowed the others into quiet surrender in many instances.

It should be noted here that the danger of LWD increases in proportion to the size and social utilization of streams. Many creeks and small tributaries are well suited to habitat enhancement. It is the introduction or retention of LWD in streams that see substantial daytime recreational use…especially by youngsters…that we argue clearly demands reassessment. Likewise LWD in rivers prone to flooding and destruction of settled areas need scrutiny.

Though there is some obvious importance to logs and stumps and brush…as habitat in river systems… twenty plus years of virtually unfettered dangerous experimentation with this policy in streams where it clearly is not safe...has not produced significant improvement in fish populations. It also must be noted that large woody debris…installed or natural…for as much as it may have habitat value…can be located and maintained far more safely than has been the case in these “experiments”.

It is undisputed that danger to people….especially children…has been time and again demonstrated. Death and injury are regularly reported. Yet no effectively focused challenge has born on this matter. Around the region concerned individuals and groups have been allowed to “comment” on the matter…but …in venues controlled by the proponents for the most part. “Comment” has become a pacifier.

Only last year for instance…twenty plus years into the “experiment”… did the King County Council finally call for some safety standards in these operations. This…after years of frustrated complaints (comment) from the public…at endless hearings.

In point of fact this action was really one of meaningless redundancy. More pacification.

There have been laws and regulations to insure safe methodology in public works for over a century. Laws and regulations that were disregarded at will by the “proponents” of reckless LWD in our streams.

This has to change. The public must come to see the contradiction…and the cost…in this abandonment. Here the media and the body politic have scarcely spoken. Again pacification of the public…behind a screen of half-truths and misinformation… has been the common serving.

LOGJAMS…THE ORIGINS

Dangerous woody debris…from the occasional loose log to the massive and ever-growing jams that may finally stir the media to some note… has essentially two origins. Those LWD installations of habitat proponents… placed in streams by government agencies… and the natural storm-fall or bank-erosion loosened trees that occur with some frequency depending on natural events.

The accompanying pictures illustrate the creation…collapse…and ultimate catastrophe…
of one such agency-created failure on the Cedar River in King County, WA. This project was done in spite of at least one reported drowning…and many injuries to other youngsters…in the same reach of this river. These other recorded events all took place in similar LWD installations by King County.

The unnatural and haphazard nature of this project is immediately apparent in the pictures. Even agents of other agencies who promote LWD warned that this project was inherently dangerous and certain to fail. The attitude of the “designers” was time will tell. By accounts of neighbors and other King County employees…the danger was so obvious that one of the “design team” at least…refused to sign off on it. Yet this person did not muster the determination to report the matter with the observation at a public meeting that he felt…”time will tell”…as to the integrity of the project!

And indeed it did!