"Removing dams is one thing, but thousands of levees also restrict rivers in the United States — and they’re not working as intended."
"A female duck rests in the water where Gibbons Creek meets the Columbia River in southwest Washington. The common merganser grooms her rust-colored head in a site that, until recently, didn’t flow freely. But now the fish ladder that blocked salmon from spawning for decades is gone, and so is the levee that had held the Columbia back from spilling onto its historic floodplain since 1966.
In the largest restoration project on the lower Columbia River, crews spent nearly two years removing 2.2 miles of levee, reconfiguring Gibbons Creek, and realigning two new levees at Steigerwald Lake National Wildlife Refuge. The new levees — which total 1.6 miles and serve as public trails — reconnect the river to 965 acres of floodplain. They sit perpendicular to the Columbia, rather than lining its banks, giving the river and Gibbons Creek room to flow messily across the refuge, which is located just east of Vancouver and northeast of Portland.
This May visitors started exploring the newly reopened U.S. Fish and Wildlife refuge, considered the gateway to the Columbia River Gorge, after its intermittent two-year closure. Tractor tire imprints covered the muddied former levee. Hundreds of newly planted willows, cottonwoods and wapato grew nearby."
Josephine Woolington reports for The Revelator June 21, 2022.
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