Final channel deepening funds secured

Dredging on 103 miles of the Columbia River has been progressing since 2005. (Files/The Columbian)

A $26.6 million infusion of federal economic stimulus cash will enable workers to blast one last stubborn mile of river bottom, completing a long-sought project to deepen the Columbia River to 43 feet to accommodate bigger modern ships.

U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., announced Wednesday that she had convinced the Obama administration to include the money. "We are now on the verge of ensuring the Columbia River remains the economic engine of the Northwest," she said in a statement.

The announcement culminated two decades of planning, one presidential visit and countless hours of lobbying by advocates such as John Fratt.

Fratt hatched the plan during a lunch in Portland with other Columbia River port directors in 1986.

As director of the Port of Kalama, Fratt had just seen through the completion of a new grain terminal. He said it soon became apparent that the 40-foot-deep shipping channel, completed in 1976, was not ideal. Over lunch, he said, colleagues with Portland and Longview agreed.

"We knew the ships that were coming in were bigger and drawing a deeper draft," Fratt said. "In order to keep that (business) on a year-round basis, we needed to get a deeper channel."

The wheels were set in motion.

Now retired and living in Vancouver, Fratt couldn’t constrain his enthusiasm when he learned about the last piece of the $190 million project. He was attending a Washington Public Ports Association conference in Pasco with Port of Vancouver executive director Larry Paulson.

"I jumped up and gave a high-five to Mr. Paulson, who told me about it," Fratt said. "It’s just tremendous."

Supporters argue that deepening is necessary to maintain a deep-draft shipping industry that supports thousands of jobs and carries billions of dollars worth of imports and exports. Northwest Environmental Advocates, which unsuccessfully sued to block the project, challenged the proposal as an economic boondoggle that will further degrade imperiled salmon runs.

In 2003, then-President George W. Bush personally endorsed the project during a visit to Terminal 6 at the Port of Portland.

Now, Obama has effectively done the same.

Washington had not yet achieved statehood when the channel was first deepened, to 20 feet in 1878. As ships grew bigger over the decades, so did the Columbia’s shipping channel. By 1976, after a project that lasted 12 years, the channel reached its current dimensions of 600 feet wide and 40 feet deep.

Since 2005, work has been progressing year by year on the 103 miles between Portland-Vancouver and the ocean.

The last mile — near the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge — figures to be the toughest and the most expensive.

A total of about 20 acres of basalt rock will have to be blasted with liquid explosives beginning as soon as November.

Laura Hicks, project manager for the Army Corps of Engineers, said the area around Warrior Rock will require a contractor to drill holes 10 feet deep into the ancient lava flow at the river bottom. Working from the deck of a barge, she said, the contractor will lower long plastic pipes into the drill holes. Liquid explosives then will be poured in and triggered with an electronic charge during daylight hours.

Hicks said the idea is to send a shock wave into the rock, causing it to fracture.

"I think it’s going to be a nonevent," she said. "We might see a little ripple of water on the river surface."

A standard clamshell dredge will then scoop the shattered rock and haul it away. Hicks said the basalt may have commercial value to the contractor who wins the bid, which should help contain costs to the government.

The blasting will occur during a "fish window," running from Nov. 1 through the end of February, to minimize disruption to aquatic life. Although most salmon aren’t migrating at that time, the project will still require state and federal regulators to sign off.