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Eerie view from the bottom Grim future for Lake Tapps?
Eijiro Kawada; The News Tribune 2/14/03
Scary. Eerie. Like a post-apocalyptic disaster.
Not the usual words people use to describe Lake Tapps, where boaters flock in
the summer and cruise around some of Pierce County's most expensive houses on
the shores.
But residents and visitors at the lake these days speak of its spookiness
after Puget Sound Energy recently drained the large reservoir for maintenance
work.
"I was pretty amazed," said Rob Metz, who took a stroll along the
lake near his house. "We've been here for 13 years, and this is the lowest
it's ever been."
The water level is nearly 40 feet below normal, the lowest since 1911 when
the Pacific Coast Power Company built the White River hydroelectric project,
which created Lake Tapps as a reservoir.
Four natural lakes have re-emerged at the bottom of the reservoir: Lake
Tapps, Lake Kirtley, Crawford Lake and Church Lake. They were covered with water
when the reservoir and its dikes were built 92 years ago.
Covered with mud and tree stumps, however, the rest of the lake bottom
challenges its visitors' imagination in visualizing the time before the
reservoir. Exposed at the bottom are railroad trestles, five vehicles, a kitchen
sink and an old newsstand, among many other things lost for decades.
Rather than nostalgia, the sight reveals a grim glimpse of what the lake
could look like in the future if it's not saved.
The federal government may shut down the hydro project, saying the reservoir
takes too much water from the salmon-bearing White River.
If that happens, the reservoir could dry up in a couple of years.
"I'd hate to lose the lake," Metz said.
The idea behind the hydro project is to draw water from the White River to
the edge of the Enumclaw plateau, which has enough drop for a hydro power plant
down below in Sumner.
Puget diverts the White River water at a dam near Buckley and draws it to
Lake Tapps. From the 2,700-acre reservoir, water exits through an intake and
rushes down to the power plant on East Valley Highway in Sumner. Then, the water
flows back into the White River.
The power plant generates enough electricity to provide for about 28,000
households on average.
Puget began draining the reservoir late last month so that it can clean
debris at the intake to the power plant. The intake is 30 feet wide and 90 feet
high.
The power company also will reinforce dikes around the lake to meet new
earthquake standards.
The water is expected to remain low until mid-April, said Roger Thompson, a
Puget spokesman. The company plans to bring back the water level gradually
through May and hopes to have a full lake by the Memorial Day weekend.
What's at the bottom
Anybody who plans to take a head-first dive from a boat in Lake Tapps may
want to see where tree stumps are.
Not all trees are cut at the base of their trunks; some of them are quite
tall.
"I think they flooded the area and cut down the trees later," said
Micha Goo, a Puget maintenance planner.
That way, workers didn't have to drag the trees on the ground, Goo
speculates. Instead, they pulled trees on the surface of the lake to the shores.
Portions of wooden railroad trestles also reemerged at the bottom. Workers
brought in dirt on the railroad and dumped it to build dikes for the reservoir.
Another man-made structure from that time is a gigantic wooden tunnel
underneath the Sumner-Tapps Highway bridge.
"We kind of had an idea that something was here, but we didn't know
exactly what it is or what the condition was," said Goo, who has seen
construction pictures and blueprints of the project.
That tunnel, which Goo thinks has been filled with silt, connects the
reservoir and the intake at the edge of the lake through a narrow channel
between hillsides. The tunnel was installed to prevent the channel from getting
buried if the hillsides collapsed.
Pedestrians on the bridge can see only portions of the tunnel, but it is 32
feet wide, 8 feet tall and about 2,000 feet long.
On the flume underneath the bridge are things people have tossed over the
bridge over the years.
One of the vehicles discovered was a minivan stolen in 1998, said Ed Troyer,
spokesman for the Pierce County Sheriff's department.
"Others are older cars and probably have been there for years," he
said.
A large safe with its door apparently pried open, professionally-cut car
parts, a boat, bicycles and many other items also lie under the bridge.
Uncertain future
Lake Tapps' future became murky in 1997 when the Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission issued a license for Puget to continue the hydro project, which
wasn't required in 1911.
The license with modern standards would force Puget to spend between $15
million and $50 million more in the next 20 years to generate power at the
project than Puget would spend on purchasing the same amount of electricity on
the open market.
While FERC granted a stay of license conditions until the end of June this
year, high-stakes negotiations to save the lake began, involving local
residents, Puget, and local, state, and federal government officials.
"The lake keeps our property value up," said Metz, the stroller at
the lake. "That was one of the reasons to buy this property."
About 2,000 homes stand on the lakeside.
The National Marine Fisheries Service issued a devastating report last
October, saying the hydro project kills too many chinook salmon in the White
River.
The fish are protected under the federal Endangered Species Act.
Unless NMFS is convinced that the hydro project and fish can co-exist, the
project likely won't survive. The agency says in a preliminary report that the
hydro project doesn't leave enough water in the river for fish to survive.
Residents, Puget and state and local government officials formed a task force
in 1999 to try to save the lake.
The task force faces an uphill battle since its power practically is limited
to lobbying congressional delegates and federal agencies.
"It's not a pretty sight right now. When it's foggy, it's scary
looking," said Lake Tapps resident Karen Buckley of the reservoir, with a
few laughs.
But when asked about the future of the lake, her voice turned serious.
"Our stand is that the lake as a body of water should fall under the
protected body of water (designation) under the county Shoreline Master
Plan," said the co-founder of the 2-year-old Friends of Lake Tapps, which
has several hundred members interested in saving the lake.
Buckley represents the residents group on the task force.
Sometime before the end of June, NMFS is expected to issue a final biological
report that could determine the future of the lake.
"I hold out a hope that the agencies would come to a decision that is
good for everybody," Buckley said.
Eijiro Kawada: 253-597-8633
eijiro.kawada@mail.tribnet.com
(Published 12:30AM, February 14th, 2003)
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