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NewsBF responds to readers' questions: How are
river projects holding up in recent storms? |
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December 23, 2015 |
As reported previously in NewsBF, the Kootenai
Tribe of Idaho has been working on ongoing
projects to restore the habitat of the Kootenai
River to improve the environment for fish,
wildlife, and vegetation, including the burbot
and the endangered white sturgeon the Tribe has
been working to restore to the river. Millions
of dollars and much time and effort have been
spent on these projects. (You can read the full
story about the Kootenai River Habitat
Restoration Project here:
http://www.newsbf.com/news/201510/14riverprn.html).
In recent weeks, we have had readers contact us
here at NewsBF, wondering about the effects of
the big November 17 windstorm that swept through
the area, and the heavy rains and ongoing snow
we have had since then. Have the wind, the
storms, and the precipitation, along with the
rise in the river, adversely affected those
restoration projects? Our readers want to know.
To help answer the inquisitive concerns of these
Boundary County citizen observers, we contacted
Susan Ireland, Fish and Wildlife Department
Director for the Kootenai Tribe of Idaho.
"The river restoration projects performed as we
hoped they would during these recent storms,"
Ms. Ireland advised us. "Rivers are naturally
'dynamic' systems, and all of the habitat
restoration projects are designed to perform
through a range of different flow conditions
including the predictable range of managed flows
as well as the occasional bigger events like
those we experienced recently."
Ms. Ireland went on to point out that in one of
our recent heavier storms, "there was a large
amount of wood that came down the river from
upstream tributaries and lots of sediment input
from upstream tributaries. We were pleased to
see that the large wood structures upstream
captured some of that wood that was floating in
the river. This is a natural function that helps
provide more complex habitat, and over time will
help trap sediment. The pools were swirling just
like you’d expect them to do and some of the
floating wood was also pulled into the pool and
then deposited on the bank of the island.
"Each of the projects are designed to be
'stable' for the less frequent high flows, while
at the same time supporting vegetation and
habitat conditions at the more common lower
flows," said Ms. Ireland. "Plants on the islands
were chosen specifically because they can
survive being flooded periodically; in fact, we
are pleased to see the island soils being
saturated with water so soon after the project
was completed.
"We’ve talked about this idea of dynamic
stability before; what we mean is that the
projects will continue to adjust over time, but
the major project elements, such as the islands,
will remain in place. Each of the designs were
based on analysis of river hydraulics and other
data.
"We are continuing to monitor the projects to
learn more about the nuances of river process
and how those process influence the habitat
structures and in-river aquatic conditions. So
far, it’s looking really good. We’ll be able to
say more about how the projects are adjusting
and working with the river as time goes on."
NewsBF thanks Ms. Ireland for her
always-informative responses, and thanks our
inquisitive readers for bringing up this
question.
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