The Columbian | Serving Clark County, Washington

This has been a good week for Salmon Creek.

Two projects, miles apart, share a unifying goal to improve habitat and conserve water flowing through the creek snaking through Vancouver suburbs.

Clark Public Utilities is involved in both.

Excavators this week began laying down 30-inch-thick logs and boulders the size of filing cabinets in an effort to stabilize a badly eroding stretch of creek west of Klineline Pond. The $171,000 project, underwritten by a grant from the state Department of Ecology, is intended to shore up 300 feet of eroding river bank while improving salmon habitat.

Across town, in the Fruit Valley neighborhood southeast of Vancouver Lake, a major new well began pulling drinking water from a massive regional aquifer 415 feet below ground.

Both projects directly benefit Salmon Creek.

In dedicating the $10 million South Lake Well Field on Tuesday, the utility began weaning itself from a string of 34 smaller wells scattered across Clark County — many along Salmon Creek.

“The water that we drink basically comes from waters that are recharged in streams and wetland areas,” said Jeff Wittler, the utility’s environmental services manager.

The far-flung network of wells means customers are never very far from the source of their water supply, which minimizes the cost of pumping water over great distances. But it has had negative repercussions for aquatic life: Wells located near the creek can draw down the groundwater that also feeds surface water flowing in the creek.

The new South Lake Well Field taps a much larger source of groundwater below the Columbia River. Capable of delivering 10 million gallons of water per day to the utility’s 30,000 water customers, the new well field initially will produce 3.6 million gallons — water that won’t be drawn out of the wells near Salmon Creek.

“This is huge,” said Joel Rupley, endangered species coordinator for Clark County.

Doug Quinn, the utility’s water services director, said Clark now has the ability to ease off using wells along the upper reaches of Salmon Creek when the stream flow dwindles in the late summer.

“If Salmon Creek hits a critical flow, we can minimize water use there,” he said.

The utility’s Wittler is doing his best to conserve the natural environment along the creek.

The current erosion-control project, visible just off the greenway trail adjacent to a series of softball fields, anchors the bank with a series of 70-foot-long logs complete with root wads. The crosshatch of logs is designed to absorb the stream’s energy over time, carving out deep pools while collecting more wood debris that drifts in with the current.

“Hopefully, we’re going to slow the water down,” he said.

Wittler said the pools will provide refuge for fish looking to escape floods in the winter and heat in the summer. The root wads provide space for juvenile salmon to hide from predators. All the while, the reduced erosion removes silt that would otherwise cover spawning gravel and damage gills.

“It’s like smog in the water,” Wittler said.

Once the excavators cover the bank, Wittler will focus on planting native trees such as willow and red osier dogwood.

Since beginning its watershed enhancement program in 1992, the utility has planted more than 630,000 trees along Salmon Creek. The utility is trying to reverse the loss of forests and wetlands, which strips the landscape’s natural ability to capture rainwater over the winter and slowly release it through the summer.

Erik Robinson: 360-735-4551, or erik.robinson@columbian.com.

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