Ballard Locks: Seattle Rearranges Its Water
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Transcript
Seattle is surrounded by water, but the waters did not always connect the way they do now.
The Lake Washington Ship Canal project linked freshwater Lake Washington and Lake Union with Puget Sound.
The Hiram M. Chittenden Locks at Ballard opened as part of that system in the 1910s.
The engineering solved commercial problems.
Boats could move between inland lakes and salt water.
Water levels could be controlled.
Industrial sites around Lake Union and the canal gained direct marine access.
The locks lift and lower vessels while a dam regulates freshwater flow.
A fish ladder was added to help migrating salmon pass the barrier.
But large water engineering always has consequences.
Opening the canal lowered Lake Washington's level by several feet.
Wetlands changed.
The Black River, once the lake's natural outlet, largely disappeared.
Shorelines shifted.
Indigenous fishing and travel landscapes were altered by a project designed around industrial navigation.
The fish ladder symbolizes a later phase of engineering culture.
First, build infrastructure to transform a watershed.
Then, as ecological understanding and environmental law develop, add systems intended to reduce damage.
Mitigation matters.
It does not return the landscape to its previous condition.
For locals, watching boats move through the locks is ordinary recreation.
For visitors, it is one of the best places to see Seattle's central theme:
water is not a backdrop.
The city continually modifies water to make commerce, neighborhoods and transportation possible.
The result is useful, beautiful and ecologically complicated at the same time.