The scale of the thing is completely different than the rivers I’m used to. The annual flow on the Elwha at McDonald Bridge, just upstream from Port Angeles, is greater than at Otowi on the Rio Grande in New Mexico.

Here’s a few seconds of video I shot yesterday afternoon of the Elwha’s outfall into the Strait of Juan de Fuca. At somewhere around 1,500 cubic feet per second, it was bigger than the current flow on the Rio Grande. But the weird thing was the color, a sort of ashen gray.

the former Lake Aldwell, Elwha River, by L. Heineman, May 2013

Over the last couple of years, an effort led by the National Park Service has been underway to remove a pair of dams on the Elwha built in the first part of the 20th century to generate hydro power for the region. The goal is to restore a salmon run in what folks seem to unequivocally describe as “the largest dam removal in the United States.” The first of the two dams is gone, and work is now underway on the second. But they’re running into hiccups.

Lynda Mapes, the Seattle Times reporter who has been documenting the process, explained in a piece last month the current difficulties. The problem, in a nutshell – downstream communities, especially Port Angeles and Nippon Paper Industries, a major employer, depend on Elwha water. With huge sediment loads expected following the removal of the dams, building a treatment plan to ensure continued flow of clean water was crucial to the project:

More than $162 million was spent on the Elwha water facilities, far more than on ecosystem restoration, at $27 million — including revegetating the former lake beds, fish rearing, restoration and monitoring combined. Dam removal, including taking down both dams, removing the power lines and decommissioning the lower plant, cost $35 million.

The water facilities seemed promising at the start, with the designer, URS Corporation of Denver, winning a prestigious national award from a national professional association. But somewhere between the lump crab and avocado salad at the black-tie awards gala last spring and the first slug of sediment served up by the Elwha as the rains began in the fall, something went wrong.

Eagles, Elwha delta, May 2013, by John Fleck

Nearly a century of sediment trapped behind the dam simply overwhelmed the best efforts of human engineering. And that’s primarily with just the first of the two dams gone. Removal of the second dam is underway, but according to Mapes only 18 percent of the anticipated sediment flow has come down the river so far. The rest is still trapped behind the second dam upstream.

What’s intriguing here is the difficulty in unwinding a complex human-nature system built up over the course of a century. Best laid plans, and all.

Upstream, Lissa and I walked down an old boat ramp into what would have been Lake Aldwell, past stumps that have been underwater for nearly a century, through a tangle of riparian growth that had in places already grown as tall as us. None of the formal revegetation work has begun yet. This stuff is happening on its own. As a friend once told me, “The life force is strong.”

Downstream, we watched bald eagles on a snag out on a newly formed sandbar, where the rush of sediment is building a rapidly expanding delta. It will be worth returning in a year, and two, and five, and ten, to see how this goes.

This post has been updated to correct the body of water into which the Elwha flows

Related posts:

1. Two-Mile Dam, Santa Fe, NM
2. The power of atmospheric rivers, as seen from space
3. The View of Mead From Upstream

update: Via Miriam Bobkoff, via Twitter – “More likely a river otter. His back feet similar in size to front, and he looks graceful on land…. We see them off Port Angeles shore, swimming in the Strait.” She links to this:

Sea otters rarely venture on land, where their movements are awkward and clumsy. In contrast, the agile river otter is frequently ashore. River otters maintain at least one permanent den on land, near the water, as well as several temporary shelters. While all otters consume fish and other aquatic animals, river otters also forage for food along the shore, and they prefer to eat on land rather than in the water.

What’s this critter? Victoria, BC, May 2013, by John Fleck

Related posts:

1. Stuff I wrote elsewhere: trouble on the Rio Grande
2. Stuff I wrote elsewhere: on the implications of a low snowpack on the Colorado
3. “insufficient water to meet needs”

Great blue heron, Victoria BC, May 2013, by John Fleck

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1. Great Blue Heron
2. Oystercatchers: “evolution, wtf?”
3. Observations on a brief visit to Canada

by L. Heineman

My particular view of the water world is constrained by scarcity. We don’t move a lot of cargo on the Rio Grande or the Colorado, the two rivers in my immediate field of view.

I forget, and our current trip to the Pacific Northwest has reminded me, of the magic of water in service of the movement of people and goods. Rivers and oceans provide smooth, low-friction roadways to move large quantities of stuff. (Steve Solomon’s Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization does a nice job of laying out the big picture here.)

This photograph is either the Willamette or the Columbia, taken by Lissa from the Amtrak as we crossed both in quick succession. In 2012, the Port of Portland shipped 4 million tons of wheat. (source: pdf) That’s enough for more than a pound of wheat for every human on the planet. In some small ways, as a young man I helped farmers out in eastern Washington to grow wheat. It most likely was shipped down the Columbia River, ending up at terminals at the Port of Portland, where the Willamette and Columbia meet upstream of the Pacific Ocean.

Portland and Seattle had a bit of a contest in the 19th century to become the Pacific Northwest’s dominant port. A lot of the struggle involved the usual 19th century scam of connecting up with a railroad, but in the end they both ended up with major ports and they both prospered.

This is all good for me to remember. They don’t ship a lot of wheat on the Rio Grande.

Related posts:

1. Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere
2. Water Fact of the Day
3. Stuff I Helped Write Elsewhere

Oystercatchers, Whidbey Island, May 2013, by John Fleck

To which Nora commented, “evolution, wtf?”

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Caspian tern, Whidbey Island, May 2013, by John Fleck

Later, when I was wandering the backwater nearby, I apparently got too close to the terns’ nesting area. The sent out the call, and five hovered around squawking while one repeatedly dive-bombed me. Never got close enough to poke my eyes out, but I got the message and left.

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“We’ve got lots,” the waitress said, pointing with a smile out the window to Elliott Bay. “Happy to share.”

Seattle wraps around Elliott Bay, both geographically and historically. I guess that makes sense. Geography always constrains history, but in ways that are particularly striking here. We splurged on a couple of nights in the city overlooking the water before heading out to see family on Whidbey Island, and as I write this I’m looking out on a pair of gulls (glaucous-winged I think) in the foreground, dancing lazily in the wind, and the Port of Seattle in the background.

As Matthew Klingle explains in his environmental history Emerald City, the “port” sits astride what used to be tidelands at the mouth of the Duwamish River, which became the “Duwamish Waterway” as port displaced salmon. Whoever wrote the Wikipedia entry called it an “industrialized estuary”, which seems about right.

Seattle, May 2013, by John Fleck

Klingle’s book is a fascinating tale of Seattle simultaneously embracing and strangling the water around it – the lakes, the salmon runs, Puget Sound. As is almost always the case (few major US cities don’t have some roots in “port-ness”), Seattle grew up around its role as the regional shipping hub, which means it grew up around Elliott Bay. But as a community, a place, Seattle also loves its water, so the embrace is a complicated one. Heavy commerce meets jogging path. I noticed signs on several downtown waterfront piers explaining that they are public places (they have benches), but that on occasion commerce can trump public purpose when a ship’s unloading. Klingle tells the sometimes hilarious early stories of the decision about where to draw the line between public water and private land, that which was freely available for all to use and that which could be owned. The uneasy dance around that line continues.

I don’t know enough about Seattle’s economy to explain the role of the port. There have been stories in the local papers documenting the port’s decline relative to rival Tacoma. Traffic is down the last couple of years, but there’s still a lot of cargo moving through the big terminals sitting astride what used to be the Duwamish. We watched a pair of tugboats shepherd two big container ships.

But the horizon looking south across Elliott Bay highlights the complex geography – shipping terminals, ballpark, ferris wheel, clam shack (ah, Ivar’s), ferry terminal and the downtown skyline all compete for the scarce real estate embracing the bay.

As Lissa and I were walking around this afternoon, we stumbled upon a great tragedy narrowly averted. A trucker, lost in downtown, tried to make a right turn on Pioneer Square but couldn’t quite make the corner. When we arrived, the truck was lodged hard against the square’s historic pergola. Another few feet and it would have come crashing down, and not for the first time. A clerk in a store across the way told Lissa this has happened before.

Much flashing of lights and huffing and puffing by a truly mighty tow truck dislodged him, and the Pioneer Square pergola was saved to continue its sacred role of sheltering Seattle’s homeless from the city’s relentless drizzle. A rainstorm blew through, Lissa and I ducked into a shop for coffee and pastries, which is what one does here. The tables around us were all laptops and earbuds and while we were drinking it, I kid you not, we heard Pearl Jam on the shop’s stereo.

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3. Bosque Diaries II