WatershedEvents

AS THE CROW FLIES...

During the four years J Harlen Bretz spent in Seattle, he managed to examine an amazing number of sites, the bluffs south of Alki Point included. He focused mostly on determining if those bluffs contained visible exposures of Admiralty till - which they apparently do not. I ventured in that direction the other day, mostly in order to reacquaint myself with the general area - it's been decades since my last visit. Traffic was hellish, especially along Beach Drive, so I bagged the idea of driving south along the shore, deciding instead to walk the beach along the north side of Alki Point. I hadn't gone far before I ran into the character above. He apparently wanted to fly from the wall to someplace almost directly behind my head, and - as crows everywhere are inclined to do - took the route presenting the shortest distance between those two points. Cheeky bastard. 

GLACIAL GIFTS

Scene from a quarry located eight miles south of Olympia and ten miles north of the terminal moraine of the Puget Lobe glaciation. This extensive deposit of gravel and sand was formed when several large glacial lakes to the north began to drain through the area. Think of it as part of the streambed of a river that was roughly 4 miles wide and 15 miles long. In his classic 1913 work (Glaciation of the Puget Sound Region), the legendary geologist, J Harlen Bretz, described it as the “Gate Pathway River.” For close to a thousand years, roughly 60% of the storm and glacial melt water that left the Puget Sound watershed on its way to the sea flowed through that pathway.

OPEN LETTER to the GREENWAY PARK ADVISORY COMMITTEE

South end of Greenway Park, February 2011. Fanno Creek (middle stream) is completely out of its banks. 

 A few days ago a member of the Tualatin Hills Park and Recreation District’s (THPRD) Greenway Advisory Committee reached out for input on the future of the park. The “open letter” that follows is my response. First, however, a little background on why I am involved at all:

My wife and I lived in the West Slope neighborhood for 16 years. We had a Portland address, but technically lived in unincorporated Washington County. Accordingly, our water bill came from Clean Water Services, and our property tax assessment included dollars for THPRD. In 2007, shortly after retirement, I developed an interest in Fanno Creek and its watershed issues. That interest ultimately led to a book on the subject (Up Fanno Creek), as well as service on a number of citizen advisory committees, including THPRD’s Natural Resources Advisory Committee. It also led to membership in the Tualatin Riverkeepers and a period of active advocacy for the Tualatin River, in general, and Fanno Creek in particular.

We moved to Olympia in 2014, but I still feel deeply connected to the Fanno Creek watershed. For over five years I lived and breathed the creek. Between 2007 and 2011, almost every day you could have found me out in the watershed, sometimes bushwhacking my way through some of its more forgotten and  neglected areas, other times visiting with one or more of its various managers and caretakers. There are others who know the creek and its history even more intimately than I do, and I hope they will present their views to the committee.

It’s been almost a decade since I first muddied my boots in the bottom of Fanno Creek. Much has changed since then, and I may not be fully qualified to comment on some of the more subtle issues faced by the watershed today. However, I believe my knowledge of the history of the Greenway Park/Koll Wetlands complex, and all that went into making it the environmental success story it is today, probably still maintains.

The advisory committee member who reached out to me last week knew of my background when he asked me to provide this feedback. I commend him for his open-mindedness, even though I suspect my response is not what he may have hoped for. His interests and background lean him in the direction of more development along the “active recreation” side of the coin, whereas mine lead me in the direction of less, or even none. I hope he will believe my opinion is not the byproduct of an environmentalist bias; it develops, instead, from an appreciation of the physical contribution the areas in question provide with respect to meeting the great water quality issues faced by all Tualatin Valley / Portland Basin residents. One way or the other, I thank him for his consideration.

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OPEN LETTER TO THPRD’S GREENWAY PARK ADVSIORY COMMITTEE

MANAGING DEVELOPMENT OF GREENWAY PARK / KOLL WETLANDS – A PERSPECTIVE

Three stream-miles north of Greenway Park, a large, windowless brick building squats along the eastern bank of Fanno Creek. It is roughly four times the size of the homes that lie on the opposite bank, thirty yards away. For decades, Portland’s Bureau of Environmental Services (BES)has been forced to pour a ton of rate-payer money into this building and the land upon which it sits. The costly installation exists solely in order to pump raw sewage uphill. Because pumps sometimes fail, and because the cost of keeping them serviceable is high, EVERYONE – BES, Clean Water Services, the cities of Portland and Beaverton, local environmental groups, and neighbors along the creek – wishes there was another choice.

Placing and/or maintaining ADA compliant concrete pathways in the lowest levels of the Greenway Park floodplain strikes me as being akin to BES’s efforts to pump sewage uphill – doomed to great expense and subject to repeated and sometimes significant failure. Happily, where Greenway Park is concerned, there is another choice, a much better one: remove those muddy pathways completely or at least replace them with soft surface trails. The same goes for maintaining the lawn areas that currently lie along those walkways – replace these with native vegetation suitable for wetland areas.

Flooded bridge near old Fanno Farm House a not uncommon sight. 

So far as the beaver are concerned, I think it is incumbent upon THPRD – working with its partners – to keep them in check. But it is important to remember that the lower elevations of Greenway Park flooded regularly, and often times significantly, well before the major channel improvements of 2008-2010 were created, and well before beavers were as significant an issue as they are today.

Roughly 75% of the Fanno Creek watershed’s total storm water flows through the Greenway-Koll lowlands. That’s roughly 24 square miles of storm water runoff. Given that the area lies at one of the lowest elevations in the basin, it is sure to flood on a pretty regular basis. (Stream distance from Greenway-Koll to the knick-point just south of the bridge at Durham Street is roughly six miles. The elevation change in that distance is about 50 feet, which means that, for all intents and purposes, the reach is flat as a pancake.)

Finally, as committee members work to advise THPRD regarding future development and maintenance strategies Greenway Park, I hope they will remember that over the last forty-five years, uncountable hours of volunteer sweat-equity and gobs of big money have been invested in pulling Fanno Creek back from the edge of destruction. Every step into the creek’s wetlands needs to be taken with that great legacy of proactive stewardship well in mind.

  Near Hall Boulevard, looking west. Fanno Creek (foreground) is completely out of its banks and the park's lowlands totally inundated.