Ross Freeman, American Rivers

Ross Freeman is staff scientist at the Northwest regional office of American Rivers, a conservation organization that restores and protects river systems nationwide.

You can't go very far in the Northwest without encountering water in one form or another. And I'm not just referring to the continuous eight-month rainstorm that seems to engulf the region every winter like a murky gray blanket. No, people do not rust here, but park your car long enough and it might grow a little moss. When I was growing up here, I just thought that's how everywhere must be.

Water shows up as heavy wet snow in the high mountains; cold, clear alpine creeks; lowland rivers; and saltwater estuaries, not to mention the hundreds of miles of marine coastline. Washington's rainfall is indeed legendary, reaching upwards of 180 inches per year in the coastal rainforest along the west face of the Olympic Range. Seattle averages about 37 inches per year, but you may be surprised to find out that large expanses of semi-desert to the east see as little as three inches annually. What I'm getting at here is that we have a diverse climate, tremendously varied topography, and therefore rivers that historically have exhibited very unruly annual fluctuations.

Occasional winter rain-on-snow events can produce major floods, while the spring melt typically raises river levels for weeks. By late summer, river flows often rely on groundwater entering the channel, until autumn storms begin to recharge the system. But with over 1,000 large dams clogging Washington's waterways, we don't see the results of these events in the river anymore. A century of tinkering has seriously affected annual flow patterns, smoothing out the peaks and troughs, and removing the natural variability that fish and wildlife evolved with.

For almost a year now, I've been working with a colleague at the Washington Environmental Council to write a toolkit that addresses this problem. Water is often diverted for uses like irrigation, industry, and the drinking water supply. The amount of water retained in the river for fish, wildlife, recreation, and ecological processes is called an "instream flow." Unfortunately, in many of Washington's 62 large watersheds, there is no instream flow at all, suggesting that all water is available for extraction. Clearly, fish might be upset about this. In those rare cases where there are established instream flows, it is often a flatline minimum across the entire year; anything above that minimum is up for grabs. But much like a patient's vital signs, a flatline indicates that the heart has stopped.

Public watershed councils across the state are charged with setting these flows in such a way as to meet all the competing needs. These councils need help. Our toolkit will educate citizens so they can advocate for annual flows that vary based on ecological needs and indicators, rather than flows that will just barely keep the patient alive. The reputed environmental leanings of the general public here in Washington are currently well offset by a conservative state legislature; frequent explosions of bad water-related legislation have caused us a few delays in finishing the toolkit.

I had another conference call this morning with members of our staff in Washington, D.C., this time about stormwater drain systems. The subject may sound a little obscure, but, once again, rivers bear the brunt of the problem. Many municipalities across the country are facing great challenges in how to treat rainfall once it has run off from roads and buildings. As we continue to pave over our urban landscape, less water can soak into the soil, so more water ends up in overflow pipes that empty directly into rivers. Pollutants, oil spills, sediment, and fertilizers all come along for the ride. It's a tough issue, because so much of the problem involves the very way that we build our cities.

We decided that some data we need can be gathered by interns, and I'm reminded of just how much work the environmental community derives from these diligent unpaid staff. In fact, this afternoon, I'll be meeting with a prospective Northwest office intern; she may collect data on Puget Sound dams and rewrite Snake River campaign reference material. Much like many of my friends in this field, I started with a couple of internships at environmental education institutes, parlayed one into a seasonal job, and never looked back. Of course, I stalled out and spent seven years thoroughly exploring that seasonal job phase, but every position helped me see the breadth of environmental work available and clarified my desire to attend graduate school.

In my spare hours over the past few months, I've been making digital maps of dam locations for various regions of the country. These will be employed by our Running Rivers campaign, which negotiates changes in dam operations to achieve restoration goals. Private hydropower dams are regulated under 30 to 50 year licenses issued by the federal government, and in the next 10 years, over 400 will come up for renewal. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to seek better fish passage, spills based on ecological needs, and improvements in water quality and temperature.

Later today, I'll be calling a media and communications company that specializes in environmental and social justice work, since we're in the market for some educational video production. We're also in the midst of refining our individual workplans, and if there's any time free, I will once again turn to that task. Finally, I need to email friends and colleagues and point them to this Grist diary series so they can finally understand the work I do!