Rescuing the valleys: a new approach to flooding, endangered salmon, and crumbling dams
A book by UW professors offers smarter ways to treat the rivers around which we have built civilization. Following their ideas might help assure our civilization, in a future where we work better with nature at less cost.
Michael Godfried
Floodplains are where the rubber hits the road, or more to the point, where the water hits the land. Whether it’s the Duwamish, Green River, Snoqualmie, Nisqually, or Skagit valleys, we all live near or around river valleys and their associated floodplains. Who would have thought that floodplains would be the site of an innovative new approach to infrastructure dealing with everything from environmental restoration and salmon recovery to healthier Orcas in the Puget Sound, water quality, and the Howard Hanson Dam?
This cutting edge approach is detailed in a brilliant book with a boring title, Floodplain Management: A New Approach for a New Era, by a diverse team of mostly University of Washington professors. Authors Robert Freitag, Susan Bolton, Frank Westerlund, and J.L.S. Clark bring together their individual expertise in hazard mitigation planning, forestry, urban design, and geology to provide a book that is eminently practical. Weighing in at less than 250 pages, the book is full of fascinating real life case studies and a method to help communities make the best plans for watershed stewardship and infrastructure planning.
This book is part of a deep tradition in ecological regional and city planning. In 1969, the renowned planner and landscape architect Ian McHarg wrote the seminal classic Design with Nature. McHarg sought to propose healthful land-use patterns based upon understanding the unique geology, topography, natural, and cultural features of a given landscape. What McHarg painted in broad brushstrokes, the authors have rendered in fine detail in a book that would have surely won his praise.
The book offers important new ways of dealing with issues that face Seattle, the Puget Sound region, and the state of Washington. Most of the questions, like flooding, drought, and salmon recovery are heightened by climate change. The book's advice has wide relevance for many questions, including the costs of infrastructure repairs or replacements for aging fixtures like the Howard Hanson Dam on the Green River.
Before diving into the book, it is important to get sufficiently "hydrated" about why one should give a damn (not "dam") about floodplains in the first place. This is best achieved by showing how floodplains have been the cradle of civilization as well as a marvelous system of "natural" infrastructure.
Infrastructure is where nature and civilization meet; nowhere is this more evident than in the floodplain. Human civilization grew up in the river valleys along the Tigris and Euphrates in Mesopotamia (literally the land between the rivers), the Indus River in India, the Yellow River in China, and the Nile River in Egypt. Floodplains are flat and occasionally flooded over by rivers that fertilize the soil with alluvial deposits, making an ideal place for the birth of agriculture. The first large infrastructure projects were for irrigation to trap and distribute flood waters.
The agricultural bounty secured by irrigation systems allowed for the development of wealthy civilizations with flourishing cultural centers. River systems also provided drinking water and abundant fish stocks and served as the main transportation corridors before railroads and highways.
To this day, most cities are located on or near a river. Seattle is located at the mouth of the Duwamish River, Portland is bisected by the Willamette River, and Vancouver is located at the mouth of the Fraser River. Agriculture is still tied to rivers as shown by the wheat fields and orchards of Eastern Washington fed by the Columbia River.
Civilization arose from the floodplain because it is the heart of a vital circulatory system composed of rivers and fed by glaciers and rain. The watershed is truly the "body" of this entire system and to understand its importance one must follow the journey of what author Timothy Egan called the "good rain."
In a pristine watershed, most water is absorbed into the ground and replenishes rivers, aquifers, and groundwater. Rivers transport glacial grindings that fertilize valleys and build up beaches. An untamed river runs like a sinuous ribbon across the landscape, constantly doubling back on itself — this meandering shape slows the water down, provides valuable habitat and spreads water over the land. Of America’s 3.5 million miles of river, only 2 percent are in this relatively undisturbed state.
Floodplains can be viewed as both a giant sponge and a filter — as sponge they can store tremendous amounts of groundwater, as filter they cleanse a wide variety of pollutants. In an undeveloped valley only 10 percent of the water is surface runoff, the rest is absorbed into the ground or evaporated. In a highly developed valley, 55 percent of the water is surface runoff. This excess runoff would cause major flooding if not channeled by a vast human-made network of drains and pipes to the nearest water-body or sewage treatment plant.
The treatment plant is important because stormwater is more polluted than toilet water. Rain water flowing over roads, driveways, and lawns picks up motor oil, chemicals, and fertilizers to form a toxic cocktail only an Orca must drink. The undisturbed riverine system truly has an amazing ability to filter and cleanse most of this pollution. But many rivers have been caged behind levees and dams, routed in Cartesian concrete channels and pipes, and many floodplains have been covered over in asphalt.
Climate change makes life on the floodplain even more complicated. Snow pack that once stayed frozen is now flooding rivers during the winter months with correspondingly smaller summer melts when water is needed most. The shrinking and future disappearance of the Himalayan glaciers due to climate change impacts major river systems in both China and India. Societies are only beginning to grapple with the stresses to communities, businesses, farms, forestland, and wilderness.
It is from this deep understanding of the floodplain that the authors of Floodplain Management propose solutions the work with nature and evolve beyond the "one size fits all" approach of the past century. As they write, “Where the 20th century was the age of big projects like dams and levees, the 21st may see a dismantling of many of these projects to use the natural advantages of riverine processes.”
Most Americans got a front-seat at the clash between big infrastructure and nature when Hurricane Katrina touched down in New Orleans. For more than a century, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has fought to tame the mighty Mississippi River by impounding it in channels behind ever rising levees. Development sprawls behind the false safety of these levees. The sprawl increases runoff and makes the river fiercer during flood season while putting more people in harm’s way. This is the design-against-nature method and requires a veritable army of Tom Thumbs.
The continual heaping up of levees means that when failure does occur, it is catastrophic and unimaginably expensive both in human and ecological costs. The Central Valley in California is another tale of aging levees and unwise land-use practices. In 1997, levees ruptured, inundating 300 square miles of land; 48 counties were declared disasters areas, 148,000 people evacuated, and $7 billion in damages resulted. Those levees are still failing and the potential threat posed to the Sacramento area alone could be upwards of $25 billion in direct damages.
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Comments:
Posted Thu, Apr 7, 11:01 a.m. Inappropriate
Thanks for this excellent and thoughtful review. All of us benefit when academics use their expertise to assist government in making innovative public policy. Seattle and King County have taken a number of steps that sound like they are consistent with these ideas, such as implementing natural drainage infrastructure and allowing farm pads to replace diking on flood prone rivers. I am going to put this book on order right away and look for new recommendations that Seattle might be able to implement.
Posted Thu, Apr 7, 11:10 a.m. Inappropriate
"All of us benefit when academics use their expertise to assist government in making innovative public policy."
Would you consider David Dicks (son of Norm) an academic? Having failed, miserably, at the Democratic PAC that is the Puget Sound Partnership, his Party Bosses transferred him to the UW College of the Environment. Where - I am sure - he will use his "expertise" to assist government in making innovative public policy (i.e. ensure UW "science" supports the Democratic Party's regulatory agenda).
Posted Thu, Apr 7, 1:48 p.m. Inappropriate
Forty years ago a K-12 educator colleague and I lamented the steady loss of truck farms in the Green River Valley as warehouses sprung up. He, a biology teacher, was concerned about the diminished proximate food source for a growing metropolitan area. I saw the capping of fertile farmland that provided produce my family sought on Sunday outings from urban Seattle. I hope this book will also identify strategies to maintain valuable commerce in suitable places while we reap the benefits and address the challenges that mark a flood plain.
Posted Thu, Apr 7, 1:50 p.m. Inappropriate
Even if BlueLights examples are credible, and I have no knowledge of that one way or the other, I nevertheless do not think the presence few allegedly rotten apples means most barrels of apples are necessarily spoiled.
I believe Mr. Conlin's central premise has signal merit: the quality of public policy decisions, more often than not, rises or falls on the quality of information and knowledge available to the decision-makers. While not all academics nor academic departments are created equal, both categories offer potentially rich resources for valuable, relevant data on pressing public policy issues. Thoughtful, discerning reliance by legislators and other decision makers on academics and academic departments is, I believe, a reasonable approach to getting just a little closer to robust and innovative solutions to complex public policy issues.
Posted Thu, Apr 7, 2:12 p.m. Inappropriate
No one knows how much piss is in the whiskey, Lisa. It might be just a little, it might be a lot. Whatever, we are past the point that the unwashed masses should trust Academia as honest brokers in social debates.
Posted Thu, Apr 7, 2:33 p.m. Inappropriate
Good thing I don't drink.
Posted Thu, Apr 7, 3:05 p.m. Inappropriate
We all drink this, Lisa.
Posted Thu, Apr 7, 6:25 p.m. Inappropriate
Well for sure we can't trust commentators (including myself) for unbiased complaints. But in this particular case we don't have the alleged non expert weighing in on this particular topic.
We do have a number of agenda comments which could be implied to mean that regulations by themselves unwarranted. But with no actual facts to back that up.
In the case of building on flood plains, what is it about "flood plain" don't banks and developers get? Perhaps its the low cost flood insurance which keep them from worrying about loses of their property due to flooding? Perhaps its that flat land is easy to build on and thus has a higher value than as food production land. Of course as energy costs rise we may wish we hadn't paved over our nearby farm lands that also happen to exist in flood plains.
Posted Fri, Apr 8, 6:22 a.m. Inappropriate
Go ahead and stop building anything in Flood plains and Flood ways and Channel Migration Zones. Make sure you have piles of money to relocate and remove Billions of Dollars worth of homes, businesses and infrastructure ( Including Transit and Roads).
Perhaps if Cities like Seattle and Bellevue would stop diverting Flood protection money for pet projects, the necessary improvement and protections could be built. Seattle wants to have flood protection money spent on a Seawall rebuild.
If you are willing to have rivers flood naturally and remove dikes and dams, shouldn't you also be willing to have Sound reclaim some of it's natural estuary? Start pulling out those docks and seawalls, please be consistent.
Posted Fri, Apr 8, 9:20 a.m. Inappropriate
Why no mention of the Puyallup River, one of the most populated flood plains in the state, and a place where the tension between progress (levee setbacks and floodplain restoration) and development is perhaps the highest in the state?
Posted Fri, Apr 8, 9:33 a.m. Inappropriate
"willing to have Sound reclaim some of it's natural estuary"
Sure, the Nisqually river delta was just recently restored and we are already seeing it being re-habitated by salmon.... salmon you know that cash crop we eat.
It's not all loses when you restore rivers and river valleys.
Posted Fri, Apr 8, 10:16 a.m. Inappropriate
So you are for removing the Seattle waterfront and the locks and all of the artifical structure on the shoreline of the Elliot Bay and the Sound.
"Sure, the Nisqually river delta was just recently restored and we are already seeing it being re-habitated by salmon.... salmon you know that cash crop we eat."
When certain interests agree to stop bank to bank netting, perhaps we will see some true salmon recovery. Not much of a cash crop around here other than sport fishery.
Posted Sat, Apr 9, 10:45 a.m. Inappropriate
Hey Cameron,
Why is everything all or nothing, black or white with you?
With river fishing, those who take all the fish will have none in 4 years. At least there is a direct correlation to taking of fish and future fish. With open water ocean fishing there is no direct correlation. You can't really tell which fish came from which ecosystem/river. Hence a group of people who restore a river & delta and fish only there, see a direct benefit from that work/expense. So if you want to see a true salmon recovery you would eliminate all open ocean fishing. You could open/close selective rivers as you are working on recovering local stocks.
Second, the state hasn't held up its end of the salmon restoration projects by failing to fix all of the blocking culverts. Many miles of spawning grounds are currently blocked by roads, because we were too cheap to install proper culverts for salmon passage.
Posted Sat, Apr 9, 4:21 p.m. Inappropriate
Super, farm fish it is. 50% of the harvestable fish will be 0 for the bank to bank netters. Think of the hundreds of millions that can be saved.
Posted Mon, Apr 11, 7:35 a.m. Inappropriate
"fish harming it is"
Not so fast. Large scale fish farming is like raising cattle in feed lots. The close packing of the fish helps spread diseases, the waste stream is too localized and pollutes the water, and the fish are fed a ground fish meal that is netted in the open ocean. It only looks good on paper. In practice it's not sustainable.
Far less expensive is to not build on a flood plain. No insurance claims to pay out, no loss of property/time, enhanced fish habitat, close farms to the city for lower cost transportation of the food.
It's a win all the way around, unless you were stupid enough to not understand what the words "flood plain" means and built a house/office park there. But long term, those structures will all be removed either by floods or their owners.
Posted Tue, Apr 12, 3:37 p.m. Inappropriate
It's already built out, you can only save what hasn't been developed yet and you will have to pay for a regulatory taking. Best of luck, you will need it.
Say speaking of stupid enough to build a house or an office park there...where is the King County Elections office located again? Who was it again that allowed the redevelopement of the Green River Valley?
Posted Tue, Apr 12, 4:34 p.m. Inappropriate
“Questions, like flooding, drought, and salmon recovery are heightened by climate change.” The probable three foot sea level rise by mid century caused by our excessive use of fossil fuel certainly will ‘heighten’ flooding, so it’s nice to know that floodplains is being studied. I am curious about how a natural floodplain is different from a floodplain that used to be a business park like those up the Duwamish/Green River valley, or a retail complex, like that between Queen Anne and Magnolia, or a port or a tunnel entrance.
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