Editorial By Marianne Lincoln

Surface water can be annoying. The rain douses roads and properties. It seems like no one’s friend, but actually, all that water has always had a purpose; it goes back into the aquifer and creates the streams that flow and brings life to the ecosystem.

Water has always had it place in the Clover Creek system. the portion of the watershed from Hidden Valley Transfer station to I-5 at McChord Field is really a complex surface to underground flow of water. That water pops up in Clover Creek and flushes the mud from the rock and historically allowed salmon to spawn there.

Then, the settlers arrived. They moved channels, built bridges, and excavated and dammed areas for ponds. They built roads, then stores and parking lots. They rechanneled flow for convenience.

My mind started racing in those early wake up hours about the various construction projects over the years in Spanaway and Frederickson and how, although a few miles south and east, they impacted the underground water flow over the years. Now the section of Clover Creek from Chesney Road to Spanaway Loop is dry most of the year. The projects relate as you can see from the dated map.

In the late 1980’s, Pierce County Surface Water Management started laying pipe, building dry ponds for water overflow, and doing their best to capture the water overflowing the roads in Parkland and Spanaway. There was one major flaw to their plan, those were not the locations the water used to infiltrate the aquifer to the creek flow.

I remember the swampy corner at 22nd Avenue and 192nd Street. It was drained and Tacoma Public Utilities build a substation on the NW corner. Now there is a obvious dry creek bed from there north down the hill that ends in the back yard of a house in a development. On a rainy day in 2023, I observed water coming up from underground behind a house next door to that substation and flowing down that old creek channel and also the edge of 22nd Avenue. The water really wants to go back to the underground channels.

Later, the length of 22nd Avenue from 200th to 187th was filled with houses. Ponds line the avenue and the channel of water that flowed was interrupted and sent in pipes to Stony Lake. But, Stony Lake was also disrupted because it used to pond from 182nd Street to Military Road. Historically, there was not a 176th Street through to Frederickson because of the lake.

Pipes have been placed from 208th Street at 31st Avenue to capture stream flow that now channel to a series of pond that are not groundwater connected at 38th Avenue and 200th Street.

The bottom line is, if you dig a new pond that is not connected to the current groundwater system, that water is not going to feed traditional waterways. You are holding water back off roads and properties, but not enhancing the ecosystem. In my book this is now and epic fail.

And, I take photos of these projects, before, during, and after. I should say, if I was alive since it happened, that is. These messed up project ideas have been occurring since 1833 when Fort Nisqually and its out stations moved here. We have not had the technology to realize the impacts that were coming. Now, we have the impacts and are trying to trace backward to see which of these we can fix.

After looking at the map and finding dates that things were built, it is more obvious how the progressing of issues have appeared. Groundwater feeds the creek mostly from southeast to northwest. In some cases, like McChord Field, there were ponds all over that are that were filled in by the dozer operators I spoke with, John Thun and Clarence Byerley. Thos ponds held water that kept the Parkland section of the creek from going dry. That is the same way beaver dams work, which are unfortunately keeping places like Bob Trapp’s property wet.

There has always been much speculation that the creek was somehow drained into the aquifer around 1938, when that is not how the aquifer’s hydraulics work. But the government officials would not want to tell you their shiny new airport was responsible for stopping the salmon and drying out the creek. It wasn’t the culverts, it was filling the ponds that changed the balance of the water availabilty.

Of course, activities like the Port of Tacoma and major housing developments have also changed the flow and placed water into fenced, dry ponds dotted all over the landscape. They claim to put the water back into the aquifer, but possibly not in a place it can find a way tot he creek.

And then there are sewers. Those 4 foot round pipes with 6 foot trunk lines take one gigantic amount of fresh water out to Chambers Bay and Puget Sound, water that should stay underground.

So, the bottom line is, how much of the development around Clover Creek has brought on the loss of segments of the creek. If McChord was a part of the problem in 1938, maybe the beavers are just in the wrong place. Is it possible to back flow into the creek from downstream so it can hold water? Maybe we should think a bit like beavers and hold water where it is needed.

Of course, there is the sewer system stealing fresh water that can be returned as well. I will keep saying “purple pipe” until you automatically know I mean reclaimed water when I say it. The orca don’t need that fresh water, the salmon do. And the orca need the salmon.

A couple more terms you should know. Some lakes have inflow and outflow (Spanaway Lake, Steilacoom Lake, American Lake). These fall under DNR as navigable waters because they flow to the sea. Other lakes have rising and falling ground water (i.e. Stony Lake, Gravelly Lake, Carp Lake, Waughop Lake) These are regulated by DOE and the Shoreline Management Act.

We are capable of doing this better. Remember how it was and keeping record of what has historically been causing the crux of the problem should be kept as tools to do better as we go forward.