Short sails
Corps of Engineers to raise Toutle sediment dam; keeping tabs on Longview City Council votes; playing God in salmon/sea lion dilemma
For the first time in more than a decade, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will raise the height of the sediment-retaining dam on the north fork of the Toutle River to restore its ability to protect Cowlitz River communities from flooding.
Raising the spillway 10 feet will restore the silt-trapping efficiency of the 125-foot-tall structure. The Corps built the earth and rock dam 40 years ago to check the flow of Mount St. Helens debris into the Cowlitz River, where it can increase flood risks by clogging and raising the riverbed.
The spillway project is out for bid. A contract is expected to be awarded in the early spring, with work to start in early summer, John Morgan, a spokesman for the Corps’ Portland District, said Friday.
The Corps “last raised the dam’s spillway crest 7 feet in 2012, and this modification effectively trapped sediment … for over 10 years. We anticipate that the next spillway raise will be just as effective,” Col. Larry Craswell Jr., commander of the agency’s Portland District, wrote to 17 local city, county legislative officials on December 1.
Craswell was responding to an October 10 letter from those local leaders expressing concern about sand bars in and diminished flood protection levels along the lower Cowlitz River. Sediment has been passing relatively freely downstream because accumulated sediment has filled the storage area behind the dam.
The dam, located about 20 miles downstream from the volcano, does not impound a lot of water. It slows the river’s current so that it drops sediment behind the structure. Blocking and trapping the silt upriver is far less costly than having to dredge it out of the Cowlitz.
Despite shoaling of the lower river, flood protection levels remain at authorized levels in Castle Rock, Lexington, Kelso and Longview, Craswell said in his letter.
The corps built the $65 million, 2,300 foot-long structure to address the world’s biggest sedimentation problem over a 50-year period. The eruption of Mount St. Helens on May 18,1980, dumped 3.3 billion cubic yards of debris into the upper Toutle Valley — enough to fill 1 million Olympic-sized swimming pools. As thye Toutle River’s north fork re-establishes a channel through the debris, it continues to flush millions of tons of silt downriver annually.
And just think, critics at the time the dam was built insisted it would not be necessary…
Just how did the Longview City council vote?
If you’ve attended a Longview City Council meeting in person or online, you’ve likely found questioning the outcome of ‘yea’ or ‘nay’ voice votes.
The poor quality of the sound system in council chambers and the transmission fed into the KLTV local access channel makes it difficult to discern how each councilmember voted — at least on closely divided results, such as 4-3 and 5-2.
Voting procedure also is problematic, with council members simultaneously calling out their votes. This is especially difficult when a councilor attends and votes remotely.
I admit to being hard of hearing, but I know other listeners have been frustrated by this problem. The difficulty could easily be rectified by a roll-call vote, at least on major or controversial matters. The new council should consider it when it takes office in January.
Help may be on the way. According to city spokeswoman Angela Abel, “one of (City Manger) Jen Wills’ goals for 2026 is to work with the council on operating procedures, including voting procedures, with the goal of having them adopted into the council’s protocol manual.
In addition, Abel said, the city is considering upgrading technology in Council Chambers at City Hall, possibly using remaining COVID relief funds or seeking a state appropriation.
“Modernizing the equipment would significantly reduce the current voting confusion without requiring any procedural changes. It is not yet scheduled, but staff remains hopeful,” Abel said in an email.
Let hope their optimism is well founded.
The cost of removing a single salmon-chomping sea lion? Congresswoman MGP estimates $38,000
Southwest Washington Congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez recently called federal wildlife officials to account for the slow pace of sea lion removal to help protect endangered Columbia River salmon and steelhead runs.
“When Congress amended the Marine Mammal Protection Act to expand lethal removal authorities, it provided that eligible managers along the Columbia River could remove up to 450 California Sea Lions and 176 Steller Sea Lions during the five-year life of the take permit. We haven’t even seen them come close to reaching these levels,” Rep. Gluesenkamp Perez told the House Committee on Natural Resources.
“In 2024 only 27 California and 21 Steller Sea Lions were removed at Bonneville Dam. As of July this year only 26 and 11 have been removed. Ask yourself, why? Why are these numbers so small?” MGP asked, according to a transcript from her office.
She blamed the “arduous” process of identifying problem sea lions, trapping them and eventually killing them through lethal injection. Her office estimates the process costs more than $38,000 per removal from the Columbia River. “That’s roughly $203 per salmon saved in state and taxpayer federal dollars.”
From October 2020 to July 2025, 124 California sea lions were lethally removed at Bonneville Dam and Willamette Falls. An additional 114 Steller sea lions have been lethally removed during the same time frame, according to the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife.
The agency estimates the actions have saved 50,000 adult salmon at Bonneville Dam and Willamette Falls. Sea lion removals have “substantially reduced the probability of extinction for winter steelhead runs” on the Willamette River, according to WDFW.
Still, there are thousands of sea lions in the Columbia system. Non-lethal means, such as moving them or scaring them off, have not worked. Hundreds periodically swarm at the mouth of the Cowlitz River and have taken over wharfs and docks.
State Sen. Jeff Wilson., R-Longview, reported last March that sea lions were spotted at the Cowlitz River barrier dam, 70 miles up river from the Columbia.
Sea lions, of course, have always been part of the ecosystem around here. Their numbers have exploded due to protections under the Marine Mammal Protection Act and bottlenecks to fish passage that make them more vulnerable to predators. They’re smart. They learn and teach their offspring where the hunting is good.
The ethics of killing one species to save another is complex and emotionally fraught. Humans, after all, have driven salmon to near extinction through overfishing and destruction and poisoning of their habitat. And it’s not like sea lions are an invasive species, which would make culling their numbers more palatable.
On the other hand, sea lions have become a menace to salmon survival. Alternatives to controlling them have not worked. Much has been done to restore salmon runs and much more could be done. But humans have changed and disrupted Columbia River salmon ecology in countless ways, and it is politically or economically unacceptable to reverse them by drastic means — such as breaching the lower Snake River dams.
So we’re left in a dilemma that forces us to play God.
Humans are not very good at playing God. We are the major factor in upsetting "natures balance". Our harvest of salmon and our habitat destruction are the basis of the "problem". Sometime God needs to look in the mirror.
Raising the sediment dam delays the inevitable movement of silt into the Cowlitz River which will be an issue (?human problem?) for many decades to come. The Corps can't just continue to raise the dam and they will have to eventually dredge the Cowlitz if they want to maintain its current course and capacity to manage flooding events. The Cowlitz Board of County Commissioners hosted an excellent discussion about the scope of the issue and what has been done so far on 23 SEP 25 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npSN5ohDNuU). This will be an ongoing issue that will get more and more expensive to address as time goes on.
We definitely need a better system for the Longview City Clerk to capture votes at City Council meetings. I would support publishing those votes in the minutes of meetings. That would seem to reflect the councilors' stated desire for transparency.
If they could, I'm sure the sea lions would thank us for building the dams/salmon buffets and then placing them in a protected status. They are smart and know a good deal when they see it.