BW

It wouldn't take as long as you might think to ride a basin of slit! You need to look no further then the Toutle River. The only reason that the Toutle is silted in now is BECAUSE of the "slit retaining dam" that the COE put in after the mountain blew! It's the "retaining dam" that keeps releasing the slit into the Toutle each year. If the river was left alone, and allowed to cut back down through the silt, it would clear up very quickly. And if the dam was removed completely and the banks were reseeded with alders, fir trees, and grass seed, in my opinion, it would be back to producing natural spawning fish in less then a decade.

The silt that ends up going down our rivers end up in places like the Columbia River, and form natural sand bars and Islands. It's all part of the natural occurring events in mother nature's scheme. It's been going on like that for eons. And fish have managed to do well. Its man and his man made structures that screw up "nature's natural scheme ".


Cowlitzfisherman