Fishhawk Lake Project Solutions Team Summit with Powerhouse People!
Several people have been working behind the scenes to prepare for this day as it has been in the planning stages for months. We just got the community center (i.e., the "clubhouse") repainted Monday (it used to have a barracks ugly green on the walls)
and I got to hang a small smattering of photos I have of Fishhawk Lake, mostly on canvas print to at least give a little bit of pop to the blank walls before the Summit was held today here. (More to come once I get more printed!)
What was this summit trying to accomplish?
We had many representatives here at Fishhawk Lake to share ideas about improving our current fishladder/fish passage
and the spillway (otherwise known to the locals as the "Glory Hole").
This has been a volunteer effort amongst a group of us called the Project Solutions Team and today the people that attended represented many areas that are state and county mandated. These agencies were: Department of State Lands, Department of Fish and Wildlife, a state dam safety expert from the Oregon Dept. of Water Resources, a District Conservationist from the US Department of Agriculture and the executive director for Upper Nehalem Watershed Council. Lots of brains at work!
We had a flood in 2007 and that became the impetus, years ago, for us to start gathering information about our beloved Fishhawk Lake so that we can possibly alleviate concerns should a future potential flood come to pass here. Several of us have been working on this for years, trying to pin down alternatives for safe fish passage, better lake quality and alternatives to the sediment issues that we currently experience. We even got a Portland State University (PSU) team of environmental engineers to take us on as their graduation project to give us some creative ideas on improving our current infrastructure!
Because we are "home" to many aquatic species, both adult and juvenile salmon, cutthroat trout, Coho Salmon, Lamprey and Steelhead, the fish passage program is uppermost in the minds of some of these experts who attended today. We are looking for viable solutions, potential grant monies and a sustainable future that meets with everyone's approval, including homeowners at and on Fishhawk Lake!
No small task.
This was a congenial meeting with much information and discussion imparted in a low-key and friendly manner. We had a presentation that showed some potential solutions brought about by the PSU students' final project as well as a past potential solution by a professional engineering company whom we hired soon after the flood.
(Greg Apke, Fish Passage Coordinator with Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife explaining PSU's design for a new fishladder)
We had several outside attendees of the Lake membership as well as 6 of the volunteers of the Project Solution Team (which included me) along with the experts in these different arenas that all play a part in our future decisions.
This is ongoing, as we discover what we can do ourselves, what we need to do to achieve the goals of some of the state and federal agencies, as well as pleasing our general community here at Fishhawk Lake. This seemed to be a great step towards a coalition of collaboration!
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