You’re looking at the Albany Santiam Canal as it emerges from the culvert under Queen Avenue and Pacific Boulevard in Albany Saturday afternoon.
Once again this fall, we’re seeing one result of the deep drawdown of Green Peter Reservoir: Very turbid water in the Albany Santiam Canal.
I hadn’t paid much attention, but on a bike ride Saturday afternoon I noticed the plainly brown water in the canal from Queen Avenue. The photo above shows what I noticed.
And here’s a chart showing a Saturday spike in turbidity — or the cloudiness of the water — in the South Santiam below Green Peter and Foster dams, in this case at Waterloo.
This graph from the Corps of Engineers’ “Willamette Injunction Website” shows turbidity in the South Santiam from Nov. 10 through 16, 2024.
The Albany Santiam Canal takes water from the South Santiam above Lebanon and takes it 18 miles to Albany’s Vine Street water treatment plant on the Calapooia River.
Last year was the first time the Corps of Engineers was forced by a federal court injunction to draw down the lake behind Green Peter Dam to the lowest level since the dam was completed in 1968. The Corps did the same thing at Lookout Point Dam.
The drawdown is intended to help juvenile salmon — spring chinook and winter steelhead, both listed as threatened — find their way through the dam on their life’s journey down the Willamette and Columbia rivers to the ocean.
Those fish live near the surface of the water column, and in the winter they can’t find their way through the lowest passage in the dam, the safest way, unless the reservoir is drawn way down.
Last year, the deep drawdown caused trouble and expense for the Sweet Home and Lebanon city water systems, and to a less extent to Albany’s system as well.
I never noticed any difference in Albany water quality last year, and I have noticed no difference this year either. Albany takes water from the canal and also directly from the Santiam River. The Santiam intake is below the confluence of the North and South Santiam, so any murkiness in the South water would be diluted.
At a public forum last month, the Corps said it would hold more water in Green Peter longer than last fall and then do a faster drawdown. Its time window for the drawdown was Nov. 15 to Dec. 1, when the lake level would reach 780 feet below minimum pool. The level would stay low for about 30 days and then go up again.
From what I heard when I listened to the forum online, the Corps is studying how much all of this is helping the survival rate of those migrating fish. The final answer apparently is not yet in. (hh)
Thanks for the info. Very important to know.
I thought that they couldn’t dredge the Columbia because the silt would kill fish. Was that bull or are they killing most of the salmon smolts with these drawdowns. I fished Foster Resavour this summer and we caught 1 fish. Where did the rest go.
A lot of fish have died because of this effort to supposedly help save native salmon. Hmm..maybe this is an effort to keep native salmon on the endangered list? As the canal is also Albanys water source, how much more is this costing to clean this huge influx of thick sediment?
Love that muddy water. Its a Boston thing. LOL
Has nothing to do with the rain? Okay…
Massive costs to water filtration systems in Sweet Home, Lebanon and Albany ($$$ millions). This has killed off most Kokanee in Green Peter and wiped out many other species of food for all fish. It also may have killed off huge amounts of salmon smolts, the very fish they are trying to save. Costs is in the millions. Corp of Engineers could have built a state of the art fish ladder to solve this problem, but being a slow moving govt entity, it did not happen. This is a travesty. Currently there are law suits filed by these cities to recoup a portion of their costs. Please be aware and voice your opinions to area leaders to get a better resolution to this issue.
All of this to save salmon that would not have existed if not for the interference of those terrible awful white men. In the journals of the Lewis and Clark expedition there was a mention of all the rivers teaming with salmon except for the river that was later named the Willamette. The fish could not get over Willamette Falls, it wasn’t until 1873 that a channel was created and a few salmon could go upstream, a fish ladder was blasted out in 1913 making it easier for fish to pass. but it wasn’t until the dams went in the system did we get a fall run of Salmon. I wonder if the federal judge was told this by the environmental groups before he made the ruling ruining the recreational possibilities, causing millions in damages and killing hundreds of thousands of fish.