A crater-sized effort.

Just about a hundred years ago in Bellevue, Washington, settler Henry Thode decided to farm a parcel of wetland. That simple decision caused repercussions that are still being felt - and dealt with - today.

Thode's future farmland was created by 40-acre fresh water Phantom Lake, which at the time emptied into Lake Washington a few miles to the west. To dry out his land, Thode dynamited a channel on the other side of Phantom Lake and redirected its flow a half-mile to the east into Lake Sammamish, Washington's sixth-largest lake.

Thode's farm has long since disappeared beneath Bellevue's sprawl, but his drainage channel has endured - thrived, even - carving out layers and layers of glacial till (loosely packed clay, sand, and gravel). At one point last summer, the "ditch" became a veritable canyon 45 feet deep and 120 feet wide.

Thode's channel not only threatened to undermine roads and subdivisions, but it also pumped phosphorous-rich silt into Lake Sammamish. Those actions triggered blooms of toxic blue-green algae and endangered swimmers as well as the lake's populations of bass, trout, and salmon.

"I doubt that Mr. Thode ever thought the action he took to control Mother Nature could have resulted in this type of a scene a hundred years later," says Dan DeWald, the Bellevue Parks Department natural resource manager charged with undoing Thode's handiwork. "The whole design we used to correct the problem was based on how Mother Nature heals its own wounds."

The city's remediation plan called for dissipating the water's energy with boulders and logs. The plan focused on the channel's 1,000-foot-long end point, a spectacularly eroded chasm that drops nearly 300 feet in elevation as it cuts through the middle of Weowna Park, an 80-acre tract of second-growth forest on the western shore of Lake Sammamish. The only machine capable of moving Volkswagen-sized boulders and mature felled trees up and down such unstable and steep terrain is a swing yarder, a mammoth crane normally used for clearcutting operations.

In June a crew of Washington loggers set up their yarder and began building a series of 16 "x-weirs": half-buried crisscrossed logs that act as funnels, slowing the water and directing it away from the channel's banks. The mouth of the canyon, created by a 22-foot-waterfall, was lined with a foot-thick layer of reinforced concrete, plus a cosmetic layer embedded with stream debris and blended to match the striated glacial till.

To absorb the shock of churning water, workers piled boulders up to four feet in diameter at the base of the waterfall and at another waterfall in a ravine farther down the channel. Finally, they constructed a sedimentation pond to trap silt. That pond will gradually backfill the channel, reversing the destruction wrought by Thode once and for all.

The irony of relying on clearcutting machinery and loggers to restore an ecosystem was not lost on DeWald, who notes that all the loggers returned to bask in their accomplishment after the project was completed in October.

"They're proud of their work and they should be," DeWald says. "It wasn't a job they had ever thought about doing before. I'm anxious to see if they'll take on more projects like this."

Editor's Note: The "Forest in the City" tour during AMERICAN FORESTS" 1999 National Urban Forest Conference will include a stop at the Weowna "ditch."

GREEN ACRES

Last winter the Northeast's Northern Forest saw "green" instead of white. Conservation groups bought thousands of acres of forest from paper companies, pledging to preserve the lands for recreation, habitat, and logging. Two big purchases:

* The Nature Conservancy purchased 185,000 acres of unbroken forest in Maine from International Paper for $35.1 million. The lands include a 40-mile stretch of the Upper St. John River, the longest free-flowing river east of the Mississippi. Spokesperson Bruce Kidman said the Conservancy will manage the land for multiple uses because "the very best use to surround a piece of protected land is a working forest." Moose, bear, and the Furbish lousewort, an endangered plant found only along the Upper St. John, will benefit.

* The Conservation Fund bought 300,000 acres of forestland in New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire from Champion International Corporation. The $76.2 million sale was supported by private investors, public agencies, nonprofit conservation groups, and foundations. The New Hampshire purchase includes Blue Mountain and 12 other peaks higher than 3,000 feet, and 143,000 acres in New York, including tracts in and near Adirondack Park.

RELATED ARTICLE: WASHINGTON OUTLOOK

Two major new environmental initiatives announced by President Clinton in his State of the Union address are receiving support from AMERICAN FORESTS. The President credited Vice President Gore for both the "Lands Legacy" and "Livability" initiatives, which would each provide $1 billion for an array of complementary programs administered by federal agencies.

These initiatives offer increased attention and funding to help communities deal with growth, sprawl, and open space as well as maintain the economic viability of traditional land uses, such as farms and nonindustrial private forests.

AMERICAN FORESTS supports initiatives that help urban and rural communities identify, understand, and respond to ecological issues related to restoring and maintaining trees and forests for the valuable ecological, economic, and social services they provide.

The "Lands Legacy" initiative seeks to protect America's land resources. Two proposals call for much more funding for Forest Service programs that are high on our priority list, and we're delighted to see the Administration matching requests AMERICAN FORESTS made last year in our appropriations testimony to Congress:

* $50 million for the Forest Legacy Program - up more than six-fold from last year - for matching grants to states so they can acquire conservation easements to protect private forestland from development pressure. This important program helps maintain working forests and protects environmental values in landscapes around growing urban areas.

* $40 million for Urban and Community Forestry - up 30 percent from last year - for matching grants to states and communities to establish, maintain, and expand urban and community forests and green spaces. This would help our efforts to promote ecological links between urban and rural communities.

The "Livability" initiative seeks to strengthen the federal government's role as a partner in state and local efforts to preserve green space, ease traffic congestion, and pursue regional "smart growth" strategies. Two proposals that could help communities understand and address adverse ecological trends are:

* $40 million for a new "community-federal information partnership" to provide grants for easy-to-use information tools to develop strategies for future growth. AMERICAN FORESTS' CITYgreen GIS software application is an example of one such tool.

* $700 million in tax credits over five years to support "Better America Bonds," which can be used to preserve green space, create or restore urban parks, protect water quality, and clean up brownfields (abandoned industrial sites).

These initiatives are encouraging signs for AMERICAN FORESTS' national policy agenda on ecosystem restoration and maintenance. We look for ward to a continued dialogue as we further develop our policy objectives in concert with other conservation organizations and community-based partners. - Gerry Gray