The Elwha River drains a portion of Olympic National Park near a place called Port Angeles. This is one of those city names that indicate it’s on the water. In fact Port Angeles is an actual port where ships dock. On a clear day you can see Canada.
There are two dams on the Elwha and they produce about enough electricity to power a couple of cell phones. That’s because in they were built before cell phones were invented. The Elwha Dam was built in 1913 and the Glines Canyon Dam was built in 1927. That was before Port Angeles had ever heard of the Grand Coulee Dam. People who lived there thought the world ended at the Hood Canal. Some people call it “Hood’s Canal” for some unknown reason.
In any case the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State used to be kind of a world of its own. The National Park was established in 1938 while everyone back east was distracted by issues such as the Dust Bowl and the Depression. They wanted a nice big park with big green trees and plenty of water.
Well, these two dams are really suffering from the ravages of time. They leak and they also block the salmon that we treasure so much. So the all powerful high potentates (me and the guvment) in 1992 decided to tear down the dams and restore the river so salmon could spawn.
Well, guess what? Work has begun. Bulldozers are clearing out the delta above the lake in order to… something something. Who knows why?
The complaint is that the trees that colonized the delta, which sits on the opposite end of the lake behind the Glines Canyon Dam, are bad. We need to remove those so we can restore that delta. That way in 30 years the salmon will be able to spawn there.
The real reason to remove the dams is they aren’t making that clean solid color electricity required to charge modern computers and iPods. They make plaid and paisley electricity only when they feel like it. Sometimes it has an Art Deco motif which interferes with the internet in some way. Port Angeles and the rest of the northern Olympic Peninsula need red, blue, yellow and sometimes green electricity. If you don’t believe me just cut a hole in your wall and look at the wires. See?
Another cool aspect of removing these two dams is that the demolition team will recycle the cement. True. They’ll haul it off to some grinding facility and turn it into gravel and dust. Then they can mix it with fresh cement and some of that newly released water to make biscuits or roads or something. Who knows what you make with recycled concrete?
Once they empty the lakes in an orderly fashion and complete the dam removal the old Elwha River will spend a few years washing lake sediment into the Samish Sea. It’s also supposed to help bolster something called Ediz Hook. That’s a sand spit that acts as a breakwater for Port Angeles. So besides lots of new cement biscuits and salmon the port gets more spit. Oh joy.
There are some other reasons to remove the dams. For one thing the upper lake, called Lake Mills Reservoir, is within the Olympic National Park. The rangers are against having that kind of municipal hydro facility in their park. They don’t like the plaid and paisley electricity running through their trees.
A fairly large reason is safety. See, back when the dams were built it was a different century. The problem is some people are a little concerned one or the other might lose its motivation and stop being so dam obstructionist. The resulting flood would be a disaster. So you can see this is right up there with the SR 520 floating bridge and Alaska Way Viaduct in urgency. Something we have to take care of immediately.
Which brings us to yet another interesting twist. Removal of these two dams was approved by congress in 1992. Official removal begins in 2012. Get out the calculator. If yours doesn’t have a decimal point don’t worry, the answer is in even numbers.
Don’t look for protest marches and enigmatic speeches by Seattle’s mayor. This deal looks like it’s actually going to happen. The river will be free flowing long before the final route decisions on light rail in Bellevue. Count on it.
Salmon have been hovering off the northern coast of Washington for 18 years waiting to spawn in Olympic National Park. They’ll soon qualify for the Golden Age Pass. It’ll all work out.
Al
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Friday, September 17, 2010
Floating A Supreme Court
Here’s what’s going’s on in Bellevue.
Kemper’s law suit has been submitted to the State Supreme Court on Olympia. Sounds all “Temple of the Gods” right? Anyway, that’s where the state government hangs out.
The main gist of the suit is that laying tracks on Interstate 90 is unconstitutional. That’s the favorite position when people don’t want something – claim it’s unconstitutional.
Let me outline the situation because I like to do outlines and this one is kind of fun. Streetcars came to Seattle over 100 years ago when the city was growing and people worked farther from home. It became difficult to ride the family mule to work every day. Roads were horrid and nobody could afford a car yet. So modern thinkers laid rails and put streetcars on them. People could hike down to the streetcar stop and ride to work.
Over the years the system was modernized and upgraded. Streets were improved and the public transportation system was reliable and kept getting faster. The whole experience was not that bad. They had newsboys at the stops so you could get the morning paper to read on the way to work. No TV so that’s how they got the news.
Things were changing, however. After WWII Americans could actually get cars that were reliable enough to drive every day. You had to be a part time mechanic to keep the older ones going. In addition many streets and roads had been paved. Cities had long since banned mules and horses from streets and had instituted such conveniences as signs and lights at intersections. People could drive to work, even in the big city.
Seattle was much larger after WWII because of a big wartime manufacturing establishment. A great many of the workers imported from rural America remained in the city where they could work and own a house and a car. Result: riding the streetcar got to be a bother. Ridership dropped and the city found other uses for the space taken up by the tracks. Eventually all city rail transit was removed. They still had busses that used those same paved roads as the cars.
OK, as time went on we got the Interstate Highway System. The great thinkers decided it was a good idea to run I-5 right through Seattle. Cool. They also added I-405 as a bypass on the east side of that big lake. I-90 came from Boston and finally banged right into I-5. Ribbons were cut and bands played.
Then came something that only a few people had foreseen; the oil crisis. “Gosh, what if we can’t get to work,” people began to say. So we passed some transportation proposals and we got stuff like Metro and Sound Transit.
Then came the big one: light rail. This was supposed to relieve traffic in every direction as far as the eye could see. Some people pointed out that we had a rail transit system in the past and we tore it up. Well this is better, it’s “light” rail so you won’t gain weight. Clever.
They drew big maps of where all the tracks would go and said it would take millions of cars off the roads. Great, everyone thought, I’ll have the roads to myself. So we voted YES and built the first line from the center of Seattle to the airport.
Now we’ve also started work on a line to the University north of the city and to Bellevue east of the city. The grand plan is to have a spider web of light rail eliminating the need for automobiles. Hooray, no more oil crisis.
But, wait, how do we get tracks across that big lake. It’s not a river that can be crossed by ordinary bridges. It’s very wide. It’s also very deep so you can’t build a causeway by dumping dirt into it. That’s how we got Mercer Island and as you can plainly see it didn’t work. The most feasible way to get over the lake is a floating bridge. It’s made up of a number of cement pontoons that are anchored to the bottom and hooked together with super glue.
That way you can have one pontoon that moves to let a big boat through, if you want to. Or you can just say “No big boats” and let it go at that.
But the point is we have this floating bridge with 6 general purpose lanes and 2 HOV lanes over the lake. Nobody wants to add another floating span next to it for light rail. So the plan is to use the HOV lanes for the light rail into Bellevue. Then add an extra lane to each direction and make it the HOV lane.
Kemper, who has come out against the light rail plan from the beginning, says the State Constitution won’t allow the rails on the roadway. He says the bridge was built with gas tax money and the constitution says you can’t use gas tax money for anything but roads. So it’s gone to the Supreme Court for a decision.
That should be an interesting decision. Based on some of the past decisions from this group we could be looking at almost anything. They could say yes you can build tracks on the bridge but you have to remove them every night.
Al
Kemper’s law suit has been submitted to the State Supreme Court on Olympia. Sounds all “Temple of the Gods” right? Anyway, that’s where the state government hangs out.
The main gist of the suit is that laying tracks on Interstate 90 is unconstitutional. That’s the favorite position when people don’t want something – claim it’s unconstitutional.
Let me outline the situation because I like to do outlines and this one is kind of fun. Streetcars came to Seattle over 100 years ago when the city was growing and people worked farther from home. It became difficult to ride the family mule to work every day. Roads were horrid and nobody could afford a car yet. So modern thinkers laid rails and put streetcars on them. People could hike down to the streetcar stop and ride to work.
Over the years the system was modernized and upgraded. Streets were improved and the public transportation system was reliable and kept getting faster. The whole experience was not that bad. They had newsboys at the stops so you could get the morning paper to read on the way to work. No TV so that’s how they got the news.
Things were changing, however. After WWII Americans could actually get cars that were reliable enough to drive every day. You had to be a part time mechanic to keep the older ones going. In addition many streets and roads had been paved. Cities had long since banned mules and horses from streets and had instituted such conveniences as signs and lights at intersections. People could drive to work, even in the big city.
Seattle was much larger after WWII because of a big wartime manufacturing establishment. A great many of the workers imported from rural America remained in the city where they could work and own a house and a car. Result: riding the streetcar got to be a bother. Ridership dropped and the city found other uses for the space taken up by the tracks. Eventually all city rail transit was removed. They still had busses that used those same paved roads as the cars.
OK, as time went on we got the Interstate Highway System. The great thinkers decided it was a good idea to run I-5 right through Seattle. Cool. They also added I-405 as a bypass on the east side of that big lake. I-90 came from Boston and finally banged right into I-5. Ribbons were cut and bands played.
Then came something that only a few people had foreseen; the oil crisis. “Gosh, what if we can’t get to work,” people began to say. So we passed some transportation proposals and we got stuff like Metro and Sound Transit.
Then came the big one: light rail. This was supposed to relieve traffic in every direction as far as the eye could see. Some people pointed out that we had a rail transit system in the past and we tore it up. Well this is better, it’s “light” rail so you won’t gain weight. Clever.
They drew big maps of where all the tracks would go and said it would take millions of cars off the roads. Great, everyone thought, I’ll have the roads to myself. So we voted YES and built the first line from the center of Seattle to the airport.
Now we’ve also started work on a line to the University north of the city and to Bellevue east of the city. The grand plan is to have a spider web of light rail eliminating the need for automobiles. Hooray, no more oil crisis.
But, wait, how do we get tracks across that big lake. It’s not a river that can be crossed by ordinary bridges. It’s very wide. It’s also very deep so you can’t build a causeway by dumping dirt into it. That’s how we got Mercer Island and as you can plainly see it didn’t work. The most feasible way to get over the lake is a floating bridge. It’s made up of a number of cement pontoons that are anchored to the bottom and hooked together with super glue.
That way you can have one pontoon that moves to let a big boat through, if you want to. Or you can just say “No big boats” and let it go at that.
But the point is we have this floating bridge with 6 general purpose lanes and 2 HOV lanes over the lake. Nobody wants to add another floating span next to it for light rail. So the plan is to use the HOV lanes for the light rail into Bellevue. Then add an extra lane to each direction and make it the HOV lane.
 |
| I-90 Floating Bridge with Link Light Rail and HOV Lanes |
Kemper, who has come out against the light rail plan from the beginning, says the State Constitution won’t allow the rails on the roadway. He says the bridge was built with gas tax money and the constitution says you can’t use gas tax money for anything but roads. So it’s gone to the Supreme Court for a decision.
That should be an interesting decision. Based on some of the past decisions from this group we could be looking at almost anything. They could say yes you can build tracks on the bridge but you have to remove them every night.
Al
Getting Older and Losing Parts
Once you reach a certain age, mine, it begins to dawn on you that the old machine needs more maintenance than seems reasonable. There are lots of pills and lots of “you shouldn’t be doing that anymore” advice.
One of the biggies is people seem to want to cut you. They say stuff like, “that has to be removed.” You wonder why and they say well if you let it go it will only get worse. Worse than what? Worse than spending an afternoon completely unconscious? Seems like a decent trade.
What usually follows is a thing called a “Pre-Op” visit with the doc. This is where they explain everything they plan to do and then tell you all the things that can go wrong. If it’s a lady doctor (a lot of them are) you don’t want to get caught whimpering as the “things that could go wrong” list grows.
Of course your first question is, “Is this going to hurt?” My doc said, “Well once I stuck myself with the needle but usually I don’t get hurt at all, thanks for asking.” Ha ha, old doc joke.
Next you visit the pharmacy to pick up a bag of post-op pain pills. These are controlled substances so (depending on what state you live in) have to sign something indicating you understand it’s illegal to share. Dang. But wait, I thought as soon as the bad thingy was removed I’d be fine. Why do I need 40 pounds of pain pills???
Recovery period! OK, let’s do it. That recovery period sounds kind of fun. Lay around day and night watching TV and popping illegal pills. Just how long do I get to do that?
Anyway, it’s over until the next time my doc needs a new car.
Speaking of medical insurance: the program I got shuffled into when I turned 65 is not as much fun as before. It’s now a “supplemental” program. What does that mean? It doubles the number of papers I get in the mail after each medical care event. But don’t even try to understand what they say. Just pay the $2.01 beside the big red “PAY THIS AMOUNT” line.
Oh, and I don’t write checks anymore. It’s cool. A few years ago I jumped on this online banking service. I just log on and fill in amounts beside the names of billers and the bank electronically transfers the money under my account number. It’s safe and a lot cheaper than buying stamps. You probably do that too.
However some of the places where I have accounts have instituted their own online payment systems. They email me a bill and want me to log onto their web site and pay it there. I won’t do that. Because the next step is “Well, Al, since you pay online why don’t you set an automatic withdrawal so we can just snatch money from your bank without bothering you?”
I silently say “Why don’t you forget it?” and then hit the “No thanks” key. I don’t know how everyone else does it. I know a lot of people still write checks and buy stamps. Some people even put outgoing payments in their mailboxes on the street. Not a good idea.
One thing I need to say: I know I’m not the only one ever to have stuff removed. Everyone gets to do that as a reward for living. I got excellent care and now I have plenty of popcorn left over (I used it for ice bags). I expect to be back walking and biking shortly. Except the rain has started again. There must be a surgery for that. Oh, yeah, I could wear a raincoat.
Anyway, to everyone who endures the indignity of having stuff chopped out of the body my hat is off. Whoops, my doc says I have to keep my hat on or she’ll cut me for a completely different reason. They just don’t let it go do they?
Al
One of the biggies is people seem to want to cut you. They say stuff like, “that has to be removed.” You wonder why and they say well if you let it go it will only get worse. Worse than what? Worse than spending an afternoon completely unconscious? Seems like a decent trade.
What usually follows is a thing called a “Pre-Op” visit with the doc. This is where they explain everything they plan to do and then tell you all the things that can go wrong. If it’s a lady doctor (a lot of them are) you don’t want to get caught whimpering as the “things that could go wrong” list grows.
Of course your first question is, “Is this going to hurt?” My doc said, “Well once I stuck myself with the needle but usually I don’t get hurt at all, thanks for asking.” Ha ha, old doc joke.
Next you visit the pharmacy to pick up a bag of post-op pain pills. These are controlled substances so (depending on what state you live in) have to sign something indicating you understand it’s illegal to share. Dang. But wait, I thought as soon as the bad thingy was removed I’d be fine. Why do I need 40 pounds of pain pills???
Recovery period! OK, let’s do it. That recovery period sounds kind of fun. Lay around day and night watching TV and popping illegal pills. Just how long do I get to do that?
Anyway, it’s over until the next time my doc needs a new car.
Speaking of medical insurance: the program I got shuffled into when I turned 65 is not as much fun as before. It’s now a “supplemental” program. What does that mean? It doubles the number of papers I get in the mail after each medical care event. But don’t even try to understand what they say. Just pay the $2.01 beside the big red “PAY THIS AMOUNT” line.
Oh, and I don’t write checks anymore. It’s cool. A few years ago I jumped on this online banking service. I just log on and fill in amounts beside the names of billers and the bank electronically transfers the money under my account number. It’s safe and a lot cheaper than buying stamps. You probably do that too.
However some of the places where I have accounts have instituted their own online payment systems. They email me a bill and want me to log onto their web site and pay it there. I won’t do that. Because the next step is “Well, Al, since you pay online why don’t you set an automatic withdrawal so we can just snatch money from your bank without bothering you?”
I silently say “Why don’t you forget it?” and then hit the “No thanks” key. I don’t know how everyone else does it. I know a lot of people still write checks and buy stamps. Some people even put outgoing payments in their mailboxes on the street. Not a good idea.
One thing I need to say: I know I’m not the only one ever to have stuff removed. Everyone gets to do that as a reward for living. I got excellent care and now I have plenty of popcorn left over (I used it for ice bags). I expect to be back walking and biking shortly. Except the rain has started again. There must be a surgery for that. Oh, yeah, I could wear a raincoat.
Anyway, to everyone who endures the indignity of having stuff chopped out of the body my hat is off. Whoops, my doc says I have to keep my hat on or she’ll cut me for a completely different reason. They just don’t let it go do they?
Al
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