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!

River Safety: A Quick Bit of Background

To bring some continuity and a common banner to our sundry efforts we created an entity we call the KING COUNTY RURAL JUSTICE PROJECT KCRJP)…and we write and respond in this manner. You will find earlier essays, reports and commentaries headed KCRJP from time to time reflecting past or current work.

For over a century the rivers of our good land were managed with concern for the safety of the public uppermost. That began to change…dramatically and dangerously about 25 years ago. Blossoming environmental passions produced a cadre of well-intended but seriously inept individuals who used hysteria about the plight of migratory fish…in this case…to usurp control of river management.

They invaded river-related agencies at local…state…and federal levels to impose what they thought were fish-productive alterations to our rivers. In a word they opposed and prevented the removal of dangerous trees and such…(now colloquially referred to as Large Woody Debris) from our rivers with the argument that it is “new salmon habitat” and must remain in place in accordance with the Federal Endangered Species Act, among other emerging law and policy.

The other “jaw of the vise” is their pet program of “installing LWD” in these same rivers and streams. Never mind that both of these misguided efforts have produced death and injury, and exacerbated flooding damage…the zealots have clung to their “pets”with a subtle but real defiance. That is changing, but not fast enough, for instance, for young Russelle Yap. Russelle hopped into the Skykomish up near Sultan on sunny day in July.

Russelle was with several friends, without adequate flotation and safety gear. He was soon trapped in a logjam just downstream. As his friends struggled futilely to pull him out, young Russelle lost his life.

Yes, the kids were careless about their gear, but kids will do that sort of thing. Didn’t we all?? The hard fact of the matter is that Russelle was trapped in a logjam that Snohomish county public safety troops had sought for years to remove. It was not to be.

In spite of several other near death incidents there the Washington Department of Wildlife and the State Department of Natural Resources refused to permit the removal. New salmon habitat, they said!!

How many fish do you suppose they would trade one of their kids for???

The final absurdity: They have been at this for nearly a quarter century, and they are beginning to admit that the fish runs are not significantly improved!! But…never mind!

Following then are a two earlier reports on the subject that should intrigue and inform. And more to come.

Deadly Rivers: Trouble in King County

If the public awakened one morning to a headline announcing that King County had a new priority/policy, establishing river-bank landscaping as the prime task for the County Dept of Transportation crews…setting aside road safety/maintenance and other mundane tasks to get on with the more important installation of logs and stumps (so-called Large Woody Debris, or LWD) and exotic flora in and along our streams and ditches…little doubt what the typical public reaction would be.

If sidebar articles noted the death of members of the public here and there…trapped in some of these artificial installations or natural logjams that have been protected by the same policy…or accidents and deaths along rivers and ditches for want of necessary guardrails…again a predictable public response…someone would have to explain.

The incredulous reader would be shocked to consider…for instance…the tragic loss of the two youngsters whose vehicle tumbled into the Green River last week…in the context of so reckless a County policy…or maybe the plight of the Maple Valley woman who lay helpless and trapped in her vehicle in a ditch out there last year…long days before she was finally rescued…would come to mind. And again…all the grief for want of a guardrail…or any of the several other occurrences of the sort.

If the story went on to detail approval by the County Executive and the County Council of this policy…and the Sheriff was found looking away…there would be hell to pay. Such recklessness would seem unthinkable!

Unthinkable that these sworn public servants would approve this sort of madness? Unthinkable…indeed! But the de facto reality is that our worthy public servants have left certain County employees to operate in a vacuum of mismanagement and inattention …and that has as certainly created tragedy and danger to the public…as if they had directly approved it to begin with!

Money is being poured into failed and failing projects as described above, by one section of the County Department of Natural Resources, with no effective oversight has festooned even the seasonal puddles and dry ditches with what is at best to be called landscaping. Large logs and boulders placed in some areas where only seasonal waters accumulate. The cost of all this so troublesome in a County where so many critical budget items are falling to the axe is just remarkable.

Probably no more tragic and ironic an example of this is that site on the Green River Road where those two little lives were lost. There are long gaps in what little guardrail there is along that dangerous path. Where there is guardrail up the road a ways, it bears the scars of other more fortunate travelers who have struck it with their vehicles, preventing them from a similar fate…a tumble into the river. There is no doubt these little ones would have been saved if all that road were properly guarded!

And unnoticed by most who visited the site to pay respects, and assist where they could, is a nearby little rivulet called Olsen Creek. It empties into the river about 300 feet from the accident scene. This creek is about four feet wide and was running high the day in question, yet the water was not within 2 to 3 feet of certain large logs placed parallel to the flow along with several large boulders.

At a cost of tens of thousands of dollars at this site alone, King County had “landscaped” this freshet to “mitigate” some construction elsewhere…another site that could not possibly have benefited from this waste. Neighbors are clear that this creek supports a run of salmon, but it has never been burdened with or in apparent need of, the sort of “mitigation” as seen now. And the fish did just fine. Point of fact, the water will never reach these logs above as placed…no benefit to nature will ever accrue.

The cost however is now clear to all the brokenhearted who grieve the loss of children. How many feet of guardrail could have been installed with those wasted thousands of public dollars? And how many other wistful wasteful projects are carried out in the vacuum permitted by County leadership. The answer is in the hundreds. And at the very least they are costly…many are very dangerous as well.

Two other examples are worthy of inclusion…they really drive home the point of all this:

About four miles upstream from Renton a new “Elliott Bridge” across the Cedar River was completed just a few years back. Total project cost was in the area of eleven million dollars. A critical examination of the costs there reveals roughly two million in what is palpably waste. A costly ($165,000) box culvert was installed there on an adjoining creek. This culvert exceeds the potential maximum flow level of the creek by 1200 percent according to one County engineer who asked not to be named. This needless expense went to replace a perfectly functional 5-foot culvert at the site!

Landscaping alone on this project exceeded half a million dollars. Exotic plantings alone exceed $500,000! Among other plantings…$66,000 dollars for something called the “Nootka Rose”…which just happens to be a favored source of browse for the local deer herd! Planting an attraction for deer in what is an increasingly high traffic intersection again speaks volumes about priority here! This creek is also “landscaped” high on the bank with roughly 20 large logs which will also never see the water. These “enhance the salmon habitat”…we are told…at $1500 to $3000 apiece!

The most recent example of this misguided environmental zeal is found a couple miles upstream on the Cedar…if you are quick to observe that is…they may not survive another storm. Along a stretch of the river that is being “naturalized” by DNR, hundreds of thousands of dollars have been spent to place LWD on the shoreline. These logs with. root-wads still attached, were chained together and marginally anchored to large rocks. Their purpose is cited somewhere in the unreviewed annals of this particular project.

That these setups are inherently dangerous is absolutely not in question. Even the DNR employees who place them have admitted as much. Similar installations have caused additional debris to collect in rivers, causing near-drownings and property damage. But still they are promoted and placed for some questionable purpose or other. Never mind the safety of the public. The children.

And more irony??? Just last week…as reported by KING-5 TV…these “carefully engineered” and guaranteed safe installations began to “migrate”…that is loosen up and float away…in the first modest storm of the season. As neighbor Ron Burrus noted in the KING-5 report, at the very least this floating… publicly funded…debris represents a huge risk to the infrastructure down stream…especially the new multimillion dollar Elliott Bridge! Never mind the safety of the public! Next in line…the golf course.

The final scene of this little drama…KING 5 found the D.O.T. crews and the DNR engineer frantically trying to secure this mess with 3” chain to nearby trees…large unstable cottonwoods. What do you suppose will happen when a really big storm rolls through??? Most likely the whole mess, including the “newly recruited” cottonwoods on the bank will begin another voluntary journey…perhaps as far as the bridges in the City of Renton!

I have to say a thoughtful word here about the folks at DNR who plan and execute these projects. I am acquainted with many of them and they are decent folks…but their understanding of public safety issues is wanting. They have…at the very least a “conflict of interest”…in their situation…experimenting with the notion that somehow urban streams can be returned to their “natural state” as in 100 years or so ago.

This misbegotten notion could one day have them attempting to re-direct the Cedar into its old path…which just happened to be the heart of modern-day Renton…City Hall square in the path. Never mind the old “Black River” which shared a similar path…right through what is now the Renton Airport!

And to this point… just a year ago last July…as concern from public safety and river recreation groups reached a great level…the King County Council at last took what some hoped would be a level-headed look at this problem. Council members Reagan Dunn and Larry Philips penned a letter to County Exec Ron Sims requesting some accountability for public safety concerns.

With more “fanfare than fat”…an inquiry of sorts was conducted and predictably closed with assurances that all was well…and after all didn’t we all want the Salmon to recover??? This last point exposes the most common excuse used to shield these dangers from real scrutiny.

Here is the hard point of fact! The real science around “salmon recovery” is at best neutral when considering these LWD exercises! Media and “should be responsible” County government folks swallow “hook-line-and-sinker” the lame arguments that this danger is mandated by some Federal environmental plan or other. It would do the salmon (and Steelhead) a hell of a lot more good to just shoot…that’s right shoot…the burgeoning populations of Sea Lions that destroy whole or partial fish-runs when they gang up at dams and the Ballard Locks.

And finally the question for zealots who decry these questions. How many fish would you trade one of your kids for???

THE ABSURD FOOTNOTES ABOUND:

To illustrate the degree to which County Govt. itself is divided consider this: in these recent years of “back to nature” zealotry even public safety authorities have been thwarted in trying to maintain a public safety balance in these projects. You will not find a cop or firefighter who has anything positive to say about LWD. Likewise they deplore having to let natural debris or other dangerous conditions accumulate around our rivers, as DNR has argued they should.

In June 2006, the King County Marine safety Unit responded to a whole bevy of complaints about youngsters injured swinging from ropes (attached to trees along the bank) at the famous “Blue Hole” on the Snoqualmie River near North Bend. After several injuries and near death situations the Marine Safety Unit took matters in hand and cut down the two offending trees! End of problem! The neighbors cheered them on.

Reaction from elsewhere in County Govt??? A “Code Enforcement” officer from the DDES/DNR cited the cops for “logging and clearing in a sensitive area…without a permit!!!” This citation was recorded in DDES file # E05G0183…which file has mysteriously disappeared from the records at the Sheriff’s Office according to the staff there. Whatever the fate of the file and the cops in question……this sort of event was hardly a happy token between the two agencies. How does that bode for public safety. Probably just coincidence that this “file” disappeared the same month a local paper (P.I., July 2005) began an expose’ on such doings at the sheriff’s office!

WHAT SHOULD HAPPEN???

The responsible parties…the Sheriff…the County Council…the County Executive…should promptly review this program and place public safety in the forefront of all such efforts. A real hearing should be held to put the mater in focus…and the cops and firefighters should find the voices at last and weigh in publicly! If any of these good people see any task of Government as more important than public safety…especially that of children…they should be put out to seek other employment. The cynical excuse that some Federal, State or Local “environmental fiat” takes precedence over public safety should be seen for what it is worth…a violation of the first and most sacred purpose of Government…and promptly discarded! Let’s get on with it before other innocents are sacrificed! As I asked above…how many fish would you trade a child for???

Finally! This madness about fish infects the State as well!! Deaths are mounting all over the State as rivers are reduced to death traps by ardent but misguided “environmentalist bureaucrats! Take a look at the potentially deadly logjam in the middle of downtown Issaquah…courtesy of someone at the state Dept of Fish and Game. Questions have got to be asked about the safety of these “projects”…the public deserves some answers!

River Safety in the News

Some video clips to give an introduction to some of these issues:

Logs on Cedar River Raise Flooding Concerns

Salmon Recovery Project Falls Apart (KIRO)

County, Boaters Looking for Common Ground (KOMO)