About three weeks ago I posted about Oregon's only salt lake, Lake Abert. What spurred me to do so after a hiatus of seven years was the excellent piece by Rob Davis (who wrote the one I blogged on in 2014) on the front page of The Oregonian. He wrote another piece, Lawmakers weigh how to protect dry Lake Abert which hit the front page on 26 January 2022.
Here is a Beat Check podcast by Andrew Theen with reporter Rob Davis. This goes far beyond Lake Abert. It touches on Oregon's reluctance to enforce the natural resource laws, especially on the eastern side of the Cascade Range. The podcast is a mostly sad tale about some environmental shenanigans over yonder. Give it a listen.
Back to the most recent Davis article: it's proof that something on the front page has the potential to motivate people. Some legislators promised some hearings when the legislature convened on 1 February. Rep. Mark Owens, from the Burns area, is vice chairman of the House Water Committee, is in a position to do something. But it's a short session this year so I am not holding my breath.
One thing I would love to see is the determination of the steady-state size (volume, area and bathymetry) and salinity of the lake. By 'steady-state size' I mean devoid of any diversions. This would not be a 'true' steady-state size but a 'mean steady-state size' around which the lake size would fluctuate (I am deferring to Elaine Hanford's comment) due to natural variations in precipitation, ET and runoff. We know Lake Abert and Summer Lake used to be included in the much larger Lake Chewaucan, which began desiccating about 15,000 years ago, leaving only Summer Lake and Lake Abert. Maybe that is what Amy Simpson was working on. But steady-state size in times of climate change and non-stationarity is pretty much a fiction.
I did find a little gem of a 12-page article by Douglas W. Larson and Ron Larson on Lake Abert in the Winter 2011 issue of LakeLine from the North American Lake Management Society:
All the graphics are from this article.
Enjoy!
"The article raises a number of questions and raises the bar on the agencies to provide that certainty." - Sen. Michael Dembrow (D-Portland), quoted in the 26 January article
Lawmakers need to understand that it was government officials who were greedy and partly responsible for actions in the early 1900s that led to the human-induced, more rapid desiccation of Lake Abert. To expect lawmakers to propose a viable solution is like waiting for Santa Claus to put the winning Lotto ticket in your stocking.
"Steady-state" conditions do not exist...the lake is continuing to adjust to changing long- and short-term environmental conditions. It is human hubris that believes that humans can "save" the lake and thatconditions should be static.
Posted by: EJ Hanford | Monday, 07 February 2022 at 08:34 AM