Corps: No EIS for Toutle River spillway project

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will proceed with a plan to raise its Toutle River sediment retaining dam 10 feet this summer and will not do a full environmental impact study of the project, the agency announced Friday.

Fish advocates, including the Cowlitz Indian Tribe and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, had asked the corps to conduct a study and to consider other alternatives to control the flow of silt in the river. Significantly, however, the tribe said it would not file any legal challenge to the project.

«We believe the (ecological impacts of this project are not significant. We recognize that the tribal nations have a different perspective on this, and we will continue to work with them as we work toward a long-term solution» to the Mount St. Helens sediment problem, said Diana Fredlund, spokeswoman for the corps’ Portland District.

The corps needed to decide by Friday whether to put the project out to bid or put it off for a year. Bids for the project are due to be out within a month.

Raising the spillway of the 125-foot high dam will restore its ability to trap volcanic sediment, which the Toutle continues to disgorge even through 32 years have passed since the eruption of Mount St. Helens dumped billions of cubic yards of debris into the upper valley.

The corps says the project is a stopgap measure to prevent silt from accumulating in the Cowlitz River. If unchecked, the corps projects that debris will clog the river so badly that flood protection levels in Castle Rock and Lexington would fall to perilously low levels within a few years.

Although the tribe still has reservations about the work, the Cowlitz don’t want to stand in the way of flood control work, said tribal biologist Shannon Wills.

«The tribe wants to work with the corps. We will support the corps in any obligation to provide emergency measures to prevent flooding. This was never about flooding people out of their homes. They (the corps say this is an emergency measure that has to be done,» Wills said.

She said the corps and tribal officials agreed to work more closely as the corps develops a long term sediment-control strategy «to make sure that the watershed stays healthy and viable.»

The corps built the 125-foot tall sediment retaining dam in the mid-1980s to slow the river and force it to drop the millions of tons of volcanic debris that annually wash out of the upper valley. The structure has trapped about 115 million cubic yards of silt but, because its storage area is largely full, most of the silt now passes downstream unchecked.

Even though the Toutle River’s north fork is a muddy, meandering waterway, several of its tributaries have good fish habitat. Champions of rehabilitating steelhead and salmon runs want that goal put on equal footing with flood control, said Bob Brown, a retired biologist from Vancouver who owns land along Pullen Creek, one of the north Toutle’s tributaries.

«Ecosystem restoration should have equal standing» with flood control, he said.

He and others, including the Department of Fisheries, contend that raising the spillway 10 feet, and eventually as much as 30 feet, will cause silt backup that will inundate the lower portions of streams that remain in good shape.

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