It was a picture-perfect weekend to enjoy the peak of the cherry blossoms at the University of Washington.
Seems like all Seattleites came out of their dark homes to enjoy the blue skies, yellow sun, and pink and white flowers. Backs were twisted, dogs lifted, and families gathered to get the perfect shot.
Check out the slideshow above for a glimpse of the action, including the guy with a 40-foot monopod who sent his SLR skyward.
Tons and tons of sediment, built up behind Elwha and Glines Canyon dams over a century, have been sluiced away by the Elwha River so far, forming a widening sand spit at the river’s mouth, where it meets the Strait of Juan de Fuca. What the river is carrying away — mud, sand, gravel, cobbles, trees, tree stumps and branches — is staggering in its scope.
At one point, the build-up behind the dams was estimated at 18 million cubic yards, but scientists now say it’s more like 34 million: “enough to cover a football field with a 5.5 -mile-deep layer of silt, sand, gravel and cobbles.” The water today is just as gray and murky as it was almost a year ago (“Elwha River Gone Wild“), but gulls are now happily colonizing an extension of the peninsula that’s about one-third of a mile long.
You can learn more about the Elwha River Restoration project online, or by visiting the Klondike Gold Rush Museum (before the end of April, when the temporary exhibit closes). Follow along at home on webcam.
The Glines Canyon Dam’s removal has been delayed, thanks to the choking silt set free. As the Seattle Times reported:
Dam removal was put on hold last October until contractors make more than $1.4 million in emergency retrofits to the new $71.5 million Elwha Water Facilities plant. It was built as part of the dam-removal project, to clean sediment from the water supply to an industrial pulp and paper plant, a fish-rearing channel and a hatchery. But the plant failed during the first fall rains last October, when fish screens and pumps became clogged with leaves, twigs, branches and sediment.
The silt-charged water has been bad news for light-seeking kelp, but researchers think that the silt-and-sand mix will bring a crop of sea grass, which salmon like, and provide a spawning ground for other fish.
Upriver, in the areas behind the reservoirs, the Elwha revegetation crew in March sowed 1,400 pounds of native plant seeds (eight different native plants) in the sediment left behind. Downriver, the Elwha’s mouth — already a minor tourist attraction for birders and whale-watchers — is a vantage point for fans of newborn sand spits as well.
By mid-2014 — when two temporary funding sources expire — King County Metro will be facing a shortfall of $75 million per year. Metro chief Kevin Desmond said this morning that, without replacement funding, this could mean the termination of up to 30 percent of Metro routes (65 routes of its 217 total), with reductions in service to another 40 percent. Frustrated with a reliance of volatile sales tax revenue, Desmond is making a push for the Legislature to allow Metro a more resilient revenue mix.
On the chopping block are the worst-performing routes, based on metrics of riders-per-hour and riders-per-mile:
Routes at risk for deletion (65 routes): 7EX, 19, 21EX, 22, 25, 27, 30, 37, 48NEX, 57, 61, 76, 77EX, 82, 83, 84, 99, 110, 113, 114, 118EX, 119, 119EX, 123EX, 139, 152, 154, 157, 159, 161, 173, 179, 190, 192, 197, 200, 201, 203, 205EX, 210, 211EX, 213, 215, 216, 237, 243, 244EX, 250, 257, 260, 265, 268, 277, 280, 304, 308, 601EX, 907DART, 910DART, 913DART, 914DART, 919DART, 927DART, 930DART and 935DART.
Routes at risk for reductions and revisions (86 routes): 1, 2S, 2N, 3S, 3N, 4S, 4N, 5, 5EX, 7, 8, 9EX, 10, 11, 12, 14S, 16, 21, 24, 26, 26EX, 28, 28EX, 29, 31, 36, 41, 43, 47, 48N, 60, 65, 66EX, 67, 68, 70, 71, 72, 73, 106, 107, 116EX, 118, 121, 122, 125, 148, 156, 177, 181, 182, 186, 187, 193EX, 202, 204, 209, 214, 221, 224, 226, 232, 234, 235, 236, 238, 241, 245, 246, 248, 249, 255, 269, 271, 309EX, 311, 312EX, 331, 355EX, 372EX, 373EX, 901DART, 903DART, 908DART, 909DART and 931DART.
Cuts may seem perverse, since Metro’s ridership continues to increase: Two-thirds of Seattle’s 200,000 commuters don’t drive. If funding expires without replacement, two-thirds of Metro’s system would be disrupted. (Metro was granted a temporary $20 car tab fee to help it cope with recessionary impacts on its sales tax revenue, and has been receiving extra “construction mitigation” money from WSDOT as part of the deep-bore tunnel project, though that funding ends long before construction does.) With just a 17 percent reduction in service, Metro estimates an extra 20,000 to 30,000 cars will flood the roads.
The situation would actually be much worse, except that between 2009 and now, King Country Metro has made cost-cutting changes that it says totaled $726 million:
