|
|
|
 |
|
Home / Washington Business - May/June 2004 / Dams are the Northwest's Flood Busters |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
Dams are the Northwest's Flood Busters |
|
|
|
Written On: May/June 2004 |
|
|
|
Written By: by Earl Roberge |
|
|
|
Earl Roberge is a Walla Walla freelance writer and photographer. His latest work is “Those Snake River Dams.”
On May 30, 1948, a levee on the flood-swollen Columbia River ruptured. Within a few hours a 10-foot high wall of water reduced Vanport, now North Portland, into a shattered, muddy ruin. At that time, Vanport was Oregon’s second largest city. The torrent took 16 lives and caused incalculable property damage.
President Harry S. Truman flew west to see the water-logged mess. In Truman’s view, this tragedy could have been averted if the Columbia, Snake and Willamette River dams were in place. He told a packed house in the Rose City that Congress must get off the dime and provide the funds for the Bureau of Reclamation to complete its flood control projects on the rivers.
Dams Were Used by Primitive Man
Dams have been with us since the very beginning of civilization. Primitive man frantically piled sand and boulders across the mouth of his cave to ward off a rapidly rising stream. He probably didn’t realize that he was practicing flood control in an admittedly primeval fashion.
It very well could be that this same caveman already found that he could change the course of a stream by piling boulders into it. Maybe he was simply trapping a few fish, but it also may have dawned on him that the impoundments could have other uses, such as supplying a reliable source of water for his crude irrigation system.
The early Washington pioneers didn’t do much flood control. They were too busy scratching out a living. The settlers’ mentality was such that floods were stoically endured as part of frontier living. They were part of the price one paid for living near a river and enjoying the benefits that came from this natural resource.
Present day environmental extremists who think that any dam is an unmitigated evil because it interferes with the natural flow of a stream, are pretty much of the same mind, and would be right at home in the 18th Century.
Fortunately, as pioneer thinking evolved, they saw that changes to a river’s natural flow would considerably enhance their lifestyle and provide more plentiful food supplies. One of these alterations was the flood-control dam.
Most flood-control dams have very large impoundment areas. For example, Grand Coulee Dam, often called the “Eighth Wonder of the World,” forms Lake Roosevelt which stretches from north central Washington almost into lower British Columbia. It is at the lower end of a network of dams which are computer-connected and coordinate the taming of the spring-time ravages of the upper Columbia and it’s Canadian, Idaho and Montana tributaries.
The system’s timely releases during traditionally low-flow periods keep the power-producing generators at downstream hydro projects humming along at an even keel making electricity for irrigation pumps, factories and homes. That excess water storage is diverted into the fields and orchards in central Washington.
Columbia and Snake River Dams Provide Other Benefits
While power generation and navigation were primary reasons for the lower Columbia and Snake river dams, flood control was an integral part of their design.
The lower Snake River dams must maintain a navigation pool with a difference of four feet between low and high water marks. That four-foot difference multiplied by a combined 100-mile long and half mile wide impoundment area easily absorbed the spring floods of 1996. By contrast that same year, the Touchet River, a tributary to the lower Snake with no flood-control dams, made a sodden ruin of downtown Waitsburg and Dayton.
Washington’s east side is in pretty good shape for flood control, and the disastrous floods in the Columbia flood plain are pretty much a thing of the past.
The Snake River is pretty much the same because the large lake behind Dworshak Dam, near Orofino, Idaho, plugs the North Fork of the Clearwater, the main culprit of the watery largess on the lower Snake. Dworshak made flooding in Lewiston and neighboring Clarkston a part of history.
Western Washington is another matter. There are no really large rivers on that side of the state, but there are a host of medium-size streams that on occasion become pretty nasty.
A stream doesn’t have to be large to cause a considerable amount of damage, as residents of Shelton found out in October 2003. Shelton Creek is an ordinarily unimpressive stream but when it was swollen by record-breaking rains, it took much concerted effort and half a million sandbags to save the homes and businesses in city center.
At the same time, the Skagit River, another notorious bad actor was largely controlled by controlled emissions from Ross Lake, a mammoth reservoir backing water clear into Canada.
Creating large lakes for flood control should be high on the list of improvements that would make life and property for citizens in western Washington more secure.
Besides, having a large and beautiful lake in your neighborhood has considerable recreational value. Just ask the people who have lakeside cottages at Lake Mayfield near Mossyrock.
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
