Harrisburg boat landing to remain closed.Byline: Karen McCowan The Register-Guard HARRISBURG - This city founded as a Willamette River Willamette River River, northwestern Oregon, U.S. It flows north for 300 mi (485 km) into the Columbia River near Portland. Oregon's most populous cities are in its valley. The Fremont Bridge, a steel arch with a main span of 1,225 ft (373 m), crosses the river at Portland. port will have to go at least another year without a boat ramp. "The project to reopen the Harrisburg boat landing has been canceled for this year and possibly permanently," City Administrator Bruce Cleeton said after meeting with officials from the Oregon State Marine Board. City boaters have been landlocked landlocked adj. referring to a parcel of real property which has no access or egress (entry or exit) to a public street and cannot be reached except by crossing another's property. since the winter of 2006, when floodwaters deposited tons of river rock in front of the longtime boat ramp launch site at Riverfront riv·er·front n. The land or property along a river. Park. After two years of planning and securing permits, the city set out this summer to dredge a channel across the 40-foot wide, 150-foot long gravel bar Gravel bars are hydrogeologic sediments that are prone to continuous erosion and migration due to meandering bodies of water. One example is Oodaaq, which is often argued to be the Northernmost point in the world. , which has itself become a popular recreation site dubbed dub 1 tr.v. dubbed, dub·bing, dubs 1. To tap lightly on the shoulder by way of conferring knighthood. 2. To honor with a new title or description. 3. "The Harrisburg Beach" by some residents. But strong currents sabotaged silt screens that would have allowed the work to proceed without harming fish habitat. And an alternative plan devised by a group of city, state and national officials last month proved unworkable, as well. Several problems doomed a plan to instead deepen an existing, natural channel that runs between the bank and the gravel bar, Cleeton said. The biggest concern: a consultant's prediction that there was a 20 percent chance that any deepened channel would refill refill noun A second allotment of a prescription agent obtained from a pharmacy, which is allowed by the original prescription verb Pharmacology To obtain more of a particular drug, after the initially prescribed amount of the agent has been used or with gravel during high water this winter. That possibility led the marine board to question whether the dredging dredging, process of excavating materials underwater. It is used to deepen waterways, harbors, and docks and for mining alluvial mineral deposits, including tin, gold, and diamonds. would be a wise use of public funds See Fund, 3. See also: Public . Officials also worried that it could be dangerous for boaters to try to use the channel during winter months, when the gravel bar is submerged. Such a channel would also make it harder for pedestrians to get to the gravel bar, which canoeists, kayakers - even jet boaters - have used to successfully launch their craft into the river. "For now, we will have to concentrate on trying to enjoy the Harrisburg Beach," Cleeton said. The decision most likely means the city will lose a $250,000 marine board grant to improve its boat ramp, awarded just before fall 2005 and winter 2006 floods resulted in river rock blocking the ramp for the first time in at least 50 years. Cleeton said the city will reevaluate the situation next spring, "to see if something has happened over the winter that makes it feasible to do a boat ramp project." "There is apparently a likelihood that the river will move the bar further on down the river, so that the problem takes care of itself," he said. "That's expected to take at least five to 10 years, but it could happen in one, depending on the size of the storm." The city may eventually be able build a boat ramp at another site: 100 acres of riverfront land just south of town that it has tentatively agreed to purchase from Knife River Knife River A river, about 265 km (165 mi) long, of west-central North Dakota flowing east to the Missouri River. as a future regional park. The property has almost a mile of river frontage, so it has "the potential to be a good spot for a boat landing," Cleeton said. "But it hasn't been evaluated yet for that purpose." Also, under terms of the tentative deal, the city would not take possession of the land until Knife River finishes planned gravel mining operations there in an estimated seven years. Cleeton praised the marine board, as well as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Department of State Lands, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, the National Marine Fisheries fisheries. From earliest times and in practically all countries, fisheries have been of industrial and commercial importance. In the large N Atlantic fishing grounds off Newfoundland and Labrador, for example, European and North American fishing fleets have long and the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife for "trying to make this project happen." |
|
||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion