Search this Chehalis River Council site!Friday, February 18, 2005
By Brian Mittge bmittge@chronline.com
Centralia is home to the oldest human artifacts ever found in a flood plain in Western Washington, a representative of the Chehalis Indian Tribe told visibly shocked members of the county's top flood control group Thursday.
The site, now reburied among pipes under the city's old sewage treatment plant, could be eligible for the National Register of Historic Places.
That announcement came on the same day as an unrelated acknowledgement within the flood control group that shrinking federal budgets mean Lewis County almost certainly will not be able to build its long-planned $100 million system of dam improvements and levees.
The result was a sort of existential crisis for the elected and appointed officials in the Chehalis River Flood Reduction Project Executive Committee.
"We want to make sure we have a prudent project that can actually be achieved," Lewis County Chief of Staff Larry Keeton said at the group's monthly meeting in Chehalis.
The county has sharply limited the amount of work its consultant, Pacific International Engineering, may do on the flood project, in recognition that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers doesn't have the money even to review the plan, let alone build it.
PIE will only work on planning a floodwall along Airport Road and a possible underground tunnel at the Skookumchuck Dam, along with the possibility of buying the dam from TransAlta.
For now, and perhaps permanently, the idea of building a flood bypass through a narrow choke point at the Mellen Street Bridge appears dead, thanks to the discovery in 2003 that the site offers evidence of human occupation from 7,200 to 1,100 years ago.
The archaeological research was first publicly discussed Thursday, but a February 2004 report says the ground 14 feet under the old Centralia wastewater treatment plant contains a bounty of information about the prairie-dwelling native people who had a seasonal camp near the Chehalis and Skookumchuck rivers.
"The site appears to be eligible to the National Register of Historic Places for its capacity to yield data useful for addressing chronology, paleoenvironments, and prehistoric resource usage patterns for an interval of at least 6,000 years of prehistory," the report by Cascadia Archaeology says.
No human remains were found, but bits of charcoal, including pieces of roasted camas bulbs, are the most fascinating, according to Randall Schalk, founder of the Seattle archaeology firm.
Normally, floods and erosion wash away such remnants of old prairies, he said. For some reason — possibly the very flood-causing fact that the river is so narrow, shallow and sluggish in this spot — an unusually ancient set of artifacts has been preserved, he said.
It's the first time scientists have found a specimen of red huckleberry in ancient camps in Washington, according to the report.
The site is also home to a handful of stone tools, including sharpened rocks used on throwing sticks, called atlatls by the Aztecs, that had deadly accuracy over hundreds of feet before the use of bows and arrows.
"It's an important spot," Schalk told The Chronicle.
Richard Bellon, a non-tribal member who is general manager for the Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Indian Reservation, said tribal leaders voted this week that they want to see the ancient sites left undisturbed.
The tribe sees itself as co-manager of 2,000 miles of rivers and streams in the Chehalis River basin, and wants to remain open for discussion, he said.
Still, the tribe worries that opening the flood choke point in the same area could mean more water downstream at its reservation between Rochester and Oakville.
"It sounds like you're saying you'd be strongly opposed to any project in that area of any type," Centralia City Council member Ted Shannon said.
Bellon was noncommittal.
"It depends on the project," he said. "It's probably too early to say where we're at with all of it." For the Washington Department of Transportation, which has encountered multi-million dollar problems in a Port Angeles work yard built on top of an ancient native village, the discovery of relics a stone's throw from Interstate 5 has many ramifications.
The state eventually wants to use augers to drill deep holes as it expands I-5 to eight lanes in the same area, and to build new bridges over both the Chehalis and Skookumchuck rivers.
"We don't want to revisit some of our past issues," said Bart Gernhart, regional DOT project development engineer for Southwest Washington. "It's pretty clear we'll need to work out a game plan."
Brian Mittge covers politics, the environment and Lewis County government for The Chronicle. He may be reached by e-mail at bmittge@chronline.com, or by telephoning 807-8237.
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