Sandbar "Health" & Clean-up

[Swellride]

When the water rises most valuable property is high and dry.

Think before you remove the features that PREVENT the sand from eroding. Help nature BUILD the sandbar HIGHER by stopping wind and water erosion.

Think Snow fence not scrape and burn.
Large logs should be buried to create substrate footing for wind breaks. Instead of denuding the beach it is wise to situate large logs to remain buried under drifted sand. Granted, shoveling of sand onto the logs is not as fun as a 4x4’s, tow straps, chain saws, beer and fire arms,

Since the last Hood River Flood wind and water erosion has drastically reduced the size of the sand bar. Notice the REMAINING outline of the sandbar has “for some magical reason” a floor plan secured by prominent natural anchoring features. These natural anchors are large buried root balls and logs that snagged round otherwise rolling rocks.

Let’s take a hint from nature.
Calculus Not Required

[isobars]

Nature, Schnature. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in conjunction with several other federal agencies such as the BIA and Fish & Game, determines what we can and can't do to and on the Columbia River and its shorelines. You'd be stunned at some of the restraints we deal with every time we do ANYTHING at any spot along the river. For one of many examples, USACE rangers have threatened citizens with arrest for as much as disturbing a spoonful of sand or a pebble anywhere in or near the river, whether we're an official Corps/CGWA work party member, a park user, a windsurfer self-rescuing at an unapproved spot, or a homeowner or city who owns riverfront property. This includes million-year-old rock strata, natural seasonal sandbars, sand/pebble beaches dumped there by the Corps, and rocks kids threw into the river yesterday. We can legally WALK on Corps (or RR) property only at explicitly authorized spots; breaking the surface plane of the ground is not only unauthorized but forbidden, with enforcement, in most places even in the middle of nowhere way out east. I've been working with the Corps at local, regional, and national levels in the Gorge for over a decade; they have very little leeway what they can do and much less leeway with what WE can do here. I abandoned my purchase of a waterfront home on the river when I learned that I could and likely would be ticketed or arrested for stepping from my lawn into the river out in the desert way east of Roosevelt.

Suggest all the ideas you can come up with, but get express authorization from uniformed USACE personnel before scuffing your toe in the sand.

Mike \m/

[cgoudie1]

Nature is hinting to me (by putting new land in the river) to put condos on that sand bar. I'd be happy to take your order for one now. ;*)

-Craig

[mcterry65]

Hey Markek, don't be a control freak.
Sandbars happen..... Let it be. bro