When the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) enforced a court-ordered drawdown of the water levels at two Willamette Valley reservoirs in October, it got more than it expected.
As water was released from Green Peter and Lookout Point Reservoir, it returned to its lowest levels since the dams were built nearly 70 years ago.
When the water returned to its river channels, it flushed more than 60 years of built-up sediment downstream into the South Santiam, Middle Fork Willamette, and main stem Willamette rivers.
In a matter of days, the rivers were choked with mud.
Many rural residential wells dried up. The sediment quickly degraded the water quality in the small downstream towns of Lebanon, Sweet Home, and Lowell.
Sweet Home’s tourism economy came to a grinding halt.
Thousands of Kokanee salmon were killed.
The impact of the release is expected to last until mid-December, and these drastic drawdowns will be repeated each fall into the foreseeable future.
Though the Corps anticipated muddy water would be an issue during the drawdowns and warned cities in advance, it underestimated the severity of the problem.
“I don’t think there was real understanding about the magnitude and duration of the turbidity [muddy water],” said Greg Taylor, supervisory fish biologist for the Corps in the Willamette Valley.
“We knew there would be issues and informed the court of such, but these are more extensive than we expected,” Jeffrey Henon, senior public affairs specialist for the Corps told The Epoch Times.
U.S. District Judge Marco Hernandez ordered the drawdown in 2021 in response to a lawsuit by three environmental groups—Northwest Environmental Defense Center, Wildearth Guardians, and the Native Fish Society.
The goal was to improve passage through the dams for Endangered Species Act-listed Upper Willamette River wild spring Chinook salmon and winter steelhead.
Green Peter and Lookout Point are part of a system of 13 dams built in the Willamette Valley with the primary purpose of flood control.
Their additional purposes include hydropower, recreation, irrigation, municipal and industrial water supply, and fish and wildlife habitat.
Collectively, this system of dams is referred to as the Willamette Valley Project.
Executed for the first time since the court order, the drawdowns dropped reservoir levels throughout the summer which fell to historically low territory by August.
Treating the Water
Now Greg Springman, public works director for the city of Sweet Home, is struggling to provide healthy water for his city of 10,000 people.“We get the city’s drinking water from Foster Reservoir,” which is downstream from Green Peter, Mr. Springman told The Epoch Times.
But now when that water comes into the city water treatment plant, it looks like chocolate milk and contains more than 14 times the normal amount of sediment.
“Our team has been working through the night. We’re all hands on deck,” Mr. Springman said. “Normally we have the purest, best-tasting drinking water in the state. Now we’re working around the clock just to keep it within state parameters.”
In Lebanon, Public Works Director Jason Williams said they may need to replace all their filters because of how much sediment is in the water—more than 10 times the amount of turbidity experienced during the heaviest winter storm.
That could cost ratepayers in the city of 19,000 about $4 million.
“We have a membrane filtration plant and the way we’re pushing it is hard on the system,” Mr. Williams told The Epoch Times. “We’re taking years of life off the system. And we don’t know how much longer this will go on.”
To deliver safe water, the cities are forced to use additional chemicals, including chlorine and sodium hypochlorite, while taxing their filters.
Residents still report discolored and odd-smelling water.
Kokanee Kill
Another consequence of the deep drawdown is the thousands of Kokanee salmon that were killed.
“We knew going into this that there was a potential for a Kokanee die-off, but we had to follow the court mandate,” said Mr. Henon. “We were surprised by how extensive it was.”The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) determined that the fish died from barotrauma, a condition caused by a rapid pressure reduction as fish pass from deep below the surface on one side of the dam to the other side near the surface level.
Among divers, this decompression effect is known as “the bends.”
The fish on the reservoir side of the dam are typically under about 100 feet of water, Mr. Henon explained.
“When they get to the downstream side of the dam, they’re on the surface level. So they go from having 100 feet of water pressure on top of them to essentially none.”
Kokanee salmon, which are not endangered, are particularly sensitive to the pressure change.
“We typically see dead Kokanee every year when the Corps draws reservoir levels down in the fall,” said Mr. Taylor.
“However, we’re seeing greater Kokanee losses this year due to operational changes required by a court injunction.”
At this time of year, fish would historically pass through the dam using a higher-elevation outlet called a penstock, but the 2021 court injunction outlined operations for moving fish through a lower-elevation regulating outlet this fall.
The goal of this change was to improve passage through the dams for Endangered Species Act-listed salmon.
“Salmon are surface-oriented fish, so we’re hoping they’ll key into the increased surface outflows from the reservoir [during the drawdown] and swim downstream, where they need to go,” said Kathryn Tackley, a physical scientist at the Portland District who is working to implement injunction measures.
“The purpose of these operational changes to the dams is to benefit an endangered species, so while there is a die-off of Kokanee, we are hopefully benefiting the endangered salmon species as part of the court mandate that is designed to improve the habitat for and fish passage,” Mr. Henon added.
The Kokanee are essentially a victim of circumstance.
“They’re just exchanging one fish for another,” Sweet Home city counselor Angelita Sanchez told The Epoch Times.
Economic Impact
Sweet Home’s rural economy has been hit hard by out-of-town environmental groups for decades, according to Ms. Sanchez.“We once had 11 operational sawmills that created good paying jobs,” she said. But when the Spotted Owl lawsuits began in the 1980s, they decimated the local timber industry.
“Now only three mills remain.”
So the town pivoted.
“Since we lost the mills, we’ve turned to tourism to sustain our town’s economy,” Ms. Sanchez continued. “We’ve worked hard to attract people out to recreate on our beautiful rivers, lakes, and trails and use our guide services.”
With the drawdown, business revenues in the town are down by 10 percent, she said.
“It’s like a ghost town now,” Sanchez explained. “There’s nowhere for visitors to go. The water is so low that people can’t get to the boat launches to put their boats in the water.”
Rural residents are afraid, she said.
“We’ve already lost so much and now we’re worried we’re going to lose this too.”
