Water Resources People and Issues
Rivers and Harbors Reports Section, Seattle, Washington
I asked for a transfer into the River and Harbor Reports Section, and began
work there with another old-time Corps hand, George Krutilla who eventually
came back to Washington and worked at the Board of Engineers for Rivers and
Harbors.
At that time, we were preparing survey report on Grays Harbor. The entrance
jetties were originally built in the 1890s and had been rebuilt about 1930. But
they had been almost demolished by the Pacific waves, and the peninsula north
of the south jetty was washing away. There was a fishing boat harbor just
inside the entrance, protected by a sand spit that was in danger of being
breached. I had the job of preparing the report on a project that included the
jetty rehabilitation and improving the fishing boat harbor. Local interests
wanted to dredge the fishing boat harbor and protect it, but it was very obvious
to me that the fishing boat harbor was in the wrong place; it was north of the
south jetty in a location subject to erosion, and it appeared that the whole
peninsula was going to wash away before anything could be done.
In a few days of field study I located what I thought was a better site for the
fishing boat harbor inside the bay but south of the jetty where it would be
protected. We sent the whole problem back to a group then called the Shore
Protection Board that dealt with the shore problems of government projects just
as the Beach Erosion Board was dealing with general problems of shore
protection. The Shore Protection Board made a report on the problem, and
agreed that the fishing harbor shouldn't be in the position it was, north of the
south jetty, and that when the jetty was rebuilt it would be even more
vulnerable because the sand spit that protected it would be subjected to more
erosion as the littoral drift was cut off by the new jetty. The board agreed with
the proposed new site for the fishing boat harbor, which-I hate to think of it
now-was in a marsh area, which could be easily dredged out. We had to
dredge the fishing boat harbor, anyway, and we could have made a fishing boat
harbor that would have been only a half a mile farther from the entrance and
it would have been on the safe side of the jetty. At that time there was little
awareness of the ecological consequences of dredging wetlands.
When our draft report proposing location of the fishing boat harbor got up to
the district engineer and he discussed it with the local people, he rejected the
Shore Protection Board's advice, and the final report was prepared containing
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