https://reasonstobecheerful.world/kwoneesum-dam-removal-river-rebirth/
"When someone at the Washington Department of Natural Resources told Pete
Barber about a derelict dam on the upper Washougal River, he was intrigued.
Barber, the Habitat Restoration Program Manager for the Cowlitz Indian Tribe,
had grown up near the Washougal, a tributary of the Columbia River, and had
heard tell of the Kwoneesum Dam.
“But I thought it was being used as a reservoir for the city of Camas,” he
says. “Come to find out that it was a relic from the Camp Fire Girls [an
outdoors-focused group for girls that preceded the Girl Scouts]. There was no
real purpose, and it hadn’t been in use since 1985.”
Barber’s discovery was correct. Once an outdoor swimming spot for the Camp Fire
Girls, the reservoir — and the dam that created it — had been tucked back in
the woods and mostly forgotten about for 40 years.
Yet the dam, like all dams, had an outsized negative impact on the fish
population, stopping the flow of steelhead and salmon upstream, meaning they
weren’t able to access their headwater spawning grounds.
As Barber, a fish biologist, explains: “Nothing is going to be jumping over a
55 foot dam.”
To make matters worse, the reservoir absorbed solar radiation in the
summertime, and the outlet for the dam created a 30-foot waterfall, causing hot
surface water to spill over, resulting in a deadly aquatic environment.
“We had temperatures of 75 degrees, which is lethal to salmonids,” Barber
explains, referring to the family of fish that salmon and steelhead belong to.
At the same time that Barber was learning more about the Kwoneesum Dam, the
Columbia Land Trust — an organization that helps conserve natural lands, waters
and wildlife along the Columbia River — had acquired an adjacent property.
Soon, they also began looking at the former Camp Fire Girls’ property, with an
eye towards dam removal.
Barber and key players at the Columbia Land Trust struck a deal. If the Land
Trust could find the grants to acquire the land, the Cowlitz tribe would find
the grants to remove the dam. In doing so, the former would be protecting a
piece of land from development, and the latter would be continuing its efforts
to recover the locally depressed fish populations upon which its people rely.
It took seven years, but in October 2024, the project was completed."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
