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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2016
Wallacut: ‘Fish can move in as soon as it’s open’
Continued from Page 1A
Since breaking ground on
the project in early September,
land trust workers have re-con-
toured and restored the four
channels. They have breached
one channel, and will open the
other three to tidal lows within
the next few weeks, Sinks said.
Reconnecting a river
Almost 100 years ago,
farmers built a simple, but
effective push-up levee, and
installed dikes with tide gates
that let water low out, but not
in. Over the years, this low-ly-
ing marshy forestland was
drained and illed with sand.
“Sweeny,” as it came to be
known, supported a few farms,
orchards and a bit of cattle
grazing.
The levee did its job, but
it also totally cut off the river
from the land. Farmers loved
it, but the salmon would pay
the price.
“It disconnects all that hab-
itat for ish,” Sinks said.
Scientists and conserva-
tionists are now beginning to
understand the critical role
that estuaries play in the life
cycles of ish. Past resto-
ration efforts often focused on
spawning habitat, but research
now shows that the tidal zones,
where juvenile salmon spend
time maturing before head-
ing out to sea, are also very
important to their survival.
When a river is recon-
nected to its historic lood-
plain, the free movement of
water through tidal channels
provides refuge for juvenile
salmon. Cooler cleaner water
is one draw for ish, but the
buffet of organisms is another.
A host of delectable inverte-
brates and bugs await the hun-
gry swimmers.
“They come in. They feed.
They get out of high lows.
David Plechl/EO Media Group
Ian Sinks, a stewardship director with Columbia Land Trust,
meets with Caitlin Alcott, an ecologist with Inter-Fluve, the
firm that is providing the engineering and design for the Wal-
lacut River restoration project. Sinks is leading the $170,000
effort aimed at enhancing salmon rearing habitat at Lower
Columbia tributaries and their associated estuaries.
Damian Mulinix/For EO Media Group
The tannin-rich soil often makes the Wallacut River run a very dark color.
They get away from preda-
tors. They start to transition,
especially in this stretch of
the river, to the ocean,” Sinks
explained.
Sinks said that, once com-
plete, the restored habitat could
beneit stocks of ish from the
Columbia’s many tributaries,
including the Grays and Chi-
nook rivers. Coho, Chinook,
steelhead and, potentially,
chum salmon will all bene-
it, said Sinks. Sculpin, stick-
leback, starry lounder and
other ish also will seek out the
newly restored habitat.
“For a long time, the think-
ing was that the estuary was
just something the ish had to
get through,” Sinks said. Now,
that thinking has changed.
“The idea is to make more of
this habitat.”
Unlocking the past
The path from homestead
to salmon habitat has been a
long and winding one.
Dam: City is seeking
to take control of dam
Continued from Page 1A
risk. “The concerns aren’t just
liability,” she said. “The con-
cerns are that it is a lood haz-
ard for us. It causes looding
for us. My district, my con-
stituents are at the risk.”
The city’s ultimatum
comes after an agreement
between the city, the water
district and the Columbia
River Estuary Study Task-
force to remove the dam and
install a single-lane bridge for
emergency access fell apart
in May amid doubts about
the impact on lood control.
Questions about whether
Kurt Fritsch, the former city
manager, should have dis-
closed skeptical reviews by a
city consultant on the dam’s
removal to the City Commis-
sion led to Fritsch’s resigna-
tion in June.
A fact-inding report by
Blitz released Tuesday con-
cluded that the city owns the
dam because the water district
forfeited a 1962 city easement
for the project by raising and
eventually removing tide
gates over the past few years.
The city contends a 1938
Circuit Court ruling estab-
lished city title to the land.
In his letter Wednesday, Blitz
said the only other potential
claim might be asserted by the
Department of State Lands
for the land underneath the
structure, but he said the state
has not claimed an interest.
The water district has
operated and maintained the
dam since it was built with
help from the federal gov-
ernment in 1963. The federal
government said in 2014 that
the water district was free
to operate the dam and two
other lood control structures
on the river as the owner,
since the government’s inter-
est was complete after the
50-year useful lives of the
structures ended.
Ron Smith, the state con-
servation engineer for the
U.S. Department of Agri-
culture’s Natural Resources
Conservation Service in
Portland, said Wednesday
that the federal government
viewed the water district as
“the owner because they had
to obtain those land rights to
be able to install those struc-
tures and to successfully
operate and maintain those
for the service life of the
structures.
“So from our agency per-
spective, we look at them as
an owner of those structures.”
The ownership inter-
est, however, is based on the
water district’s city easement
for the project, which the city
now maintains the water dis-
trict forfeited by removing
the tide gates.
The city is seeking to take
control of the dam and either
operate it for lood control or
hold the structure as an asset
and remove it later to off-
set wetlands mitigation for a
future development project.
Committee: Supporters
pressed commissioners
to change their minds
Continued from Page 1A
During public testimony
Wednesday, a half dozen sup-
porters urged commission-
ers to change their minds.
They said the committee has
been meeting for the past four
decades, and is a local asset
that maintains the livability of
the community.
Theodore Lundy, chair-
man of the Arch Cape com-
mittee, said the group offers
a way for locals to voice their
concerns face-to-face.
Sinks said a cultural
archaeological review found
evidence of a historic Native
American presence in the
area, so land trust workers
will leave a few parts of the
property untouched, to pre-
vent an potential disturbance
of archaeologically sensitive
sites.
When homesteaders built
the levee, about 100 years
after Lewis and Clark passed
through, cattle grazed and
crops prospered sporadically.
As better lands were devel-
oped elsewhere, ranchers and
farmers gave up on Sweeny.
The forest quickly returned,
and the structures that dot-
ted the site crumbled and dis-
solved. By the time the land
trust bought the land, just one
decrepit house remained. It
was soon demolished.
“It’s like a family meeting
down there,” Lundy said.
Commissioner
Lianne
Thompson used Lundy’s
family analogy to point out
not all family members agree.
She said many residents felt
too vulnerable or at risk to
propose their building plans
to their neighbors.
“Sometimes those family
members had not wished to
appear on the record because
they have been concerned
about their neighbor’s negative
opinions,” Thompson said.
the site with conservation in
mind. The stars aligned when
Columbia Land Trust, a Van-
couver-based group with
about a dozen ongoing proj-
ects in Oregon and Washing-
ton, came looking for a project
that could meet their goal of
aiding salmon recovery. How-
ever, the project still probably
would not have been possible
without assistance from Bon-
neville Power Administration.
Under the Endangered Spe-
cies Act, BPA is required to
mitigate the environmental
impacts of hydropower devel-
opment by paying for salmon
recovery projects.
“Their objectives align with
ours,” Sinks said. “Were not in
business of mitigation, but we
are a private nonproit focused
on restoration.”
Boots on the ground
Funding the future
Sinks said the previ-
ous owner had purchased
In late September, Sinks
toured the site with Caitlin
Alcott, a hydrologist and ecol-
ogist with Inter-Fluve, the irm
that has provided the engineer-
ing and design for most of the
project.
Alcott led Sinks hundreds
of yards down the riverbank
past all four channels, each
just a few steps from comple-
tion. She explained how work
crews had used an excavator
to shave the roughly 4-to6-
feet tall levee down in most
places. Though the work-
ers followed the contour of
the land, and tried to avoid
trees and other vegetation,
most of the levee now resem-
bles a lat, muddy track. She
showed how the excavator
operator used a stump and
its attached rootwad like a
brush to smooth out the track
marks.
Henderson Construction is
doing the heavy lifting with
the help of Johnson and Son’s
from Naselle.
Farther down river, Alcott
showed Sinks one of the newly
restored channels. The old ill
sand had been removed, and
the channel now cuts a sin-
uous path through the shade
of alders. In the future, the
land trust plans to plant some
native spruce and evergreens
along the banks.
Rainwater had illed in the
restored channel and leaves
were falling in the water.
Bugs and birds were active
around its banks.
“Pretty nice huh? If you’re
a ish,” commented Alcott.
The two continued on to
a more heavily forested spot
where the irst of the four
channels was breached. Sev-
eral fallen trees had been art-
fully placed in the channel.
The logs will stabilize the
channel banks and provide
cover for juvenile ish, Alcott
said.
“Fish hotels,” she added.
“We call it rearing habitat.”
The water had already
swept in and was now creep-
ing its way back into the Wal-
lacut, carrying with it, leaves,
bugs and beetles.
“Fish can move in as soon
as it’s open,” Sinks said. “A
lot of the habitat functions
start as soon as you reconnect
land to water.”
Warrenton: Enrollment likely to grow more
Continued from Page 1A
is averaging 67 students per
grade this year, 72 per grade
in Warrenton Middle School
and 86 per student in the grade
school, according to an enroll-
ment report Jeffery gave the
board.
“Without another economic
upheaval, we’ll see that there’s
more likelihood of increase
than decrease,” he said.
He estimated the aver-
age class size through 2028-
29 would be 89. With cur-
rent enrollment at 1,000, the
district’s enrollment would
increase another 15 percent
over the next 12 years. The
grade school also hosts high-
risk children with behavioral
issues from around the county
as part of a special education
consortium. Jeffery said they,
too, need another classroom.
Creative remodeling
A storage room has been
remodeled into a classroom.
Closets have been turned into
work areas for teachers. The
library has been consolidated
to make room for a multipur-
pose activity room.
A few years ago, Warren-
ton became the irst school
district in the county to offer
preschool, in part to ill two
empty classrooms in the grade
school. Last year, the district
spent nearly $400,000 add-
ing two modular classrooms
to avoid increasing class sizes,
and is looking at more. On
Wednesday, potentially clos-
ing the preschool came up
as an option to free up two
classrooms.
Jeffery estimated that next
year, the district would need to
add another two teaching posi-
tions and remodel a patio out-
side the art room into an addi-
tional classroom, at a potential
price tag of $100,000. He esti-
mated that through 2021-22,
the district would need to add
three new positions and class-
rooms to avoid increasing
class sizes.
Jeffery said a 20-year full
faith and credit bond of $2
million would cost the district
about $135,000 a year. Busi-
ness Manager Mike Moha said
that’s similar to what the dis-
trict spends each year on facil-
ities maintenance.
The bond would allow the
district to remodel the patio
area, repair a leaky roof at the
high school, add modulars
Edward Stratton/The Daily Astorian
Warrenton-Hammond School Board Members took a tour of the short-term fixes staff
has made to fit new students into an overcrowded school. The tour included a library
consolidated to make way for a new multipurpose activity room.
‘My belief is, at best, we have five
years to have something in place that
will give us more capacity.’
Superintendent Mark Jeffery
at the grade school and add
another
behavioral-support
classroom. The district could
also have to try and purchase
adjacent property to meet the
additional parking require-
ments for new construction.
Bigger bond
Jeffery said the bond could
also allow the district to pre-
pare for a larger bond like
Seaside School District’s as
it decides whether to attempt
a larger remodel of its class-
rooms, build a new school or
try to build an entirely new
K-12 campus.
“My belief is, at best, we
have ive years to have some-
thing in place that will give us
more capacity,” Jeffery said.
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