Partners and advocates of a proposed Dungeness River reservoir that aims to help salmon, provide irrigation water and create a new county park detailed initial designs and answered concerns about the project from a standing-room-only crowd on Dec. 6 in Sequim.
Proponents of the Dungeness Off-Channel Reservoir, a project about a decade in the planning, described what’s called a 30-percent design at the Dungeness River Nature Center, with about 135 people in attendance.
The 42-acre reservoir — targeted for land just east of the river near River Road, property currently owned by the Washington State Department of Natural Resources — would take water from the Dungeness River during the winter and spring months and disperse it in the late summer months, when the river flows are lowest and irrigation water demand at its highest.
“I think we all understand there are a lot of demands on the Dungeness River, figuring out balance of salmon and irrigation water,” Clallam County commissioner Mark Ozias said at the meeting.
“This reservoir is a piece of that puzzle.”
Sequim Gazette photo by Michael Dashiell Dave Rice, a principal water resources engineer with Anchor QEA — the lead engineering company for the Dungeness Off-Channel Reservoir project — gives an overview of the project to the audience at an open house at the Dungeness River Nature Center on Dec. 6.
Supporters of the project say it will improve salmon restoration, provide irrigation water at key times for local farmers, protect city stormwater infrastructure and establish a 400-acre county park.
“We really struggle over the years with low flows in the river,” Ben Smith, president of the Dungeness Water Users Association, told the crowd.
“We feel this is the next step to having consistent water supply, even in the dry years” and not affect the salmon, he said.
“Even internally, there are a lot of details to figure out,” Smith said.
Carol Creasey, Clallam County project manager and hydro-geologist, took a few questions attendees submitted prior to the presentation, before turning the program over to an open house-style meeting, with representatives addressing project components — preliminary design, agriculture/irrigation viability, aquifer recharge, permitting/safety/operations, and streamflow restoration and salmon — at five separate stations.
Creasey said comments and questions would be collected, and a frequently-asked questions (FAQ) page would be posted on the project web page (see clallamcountywa.gov/188/Dungeness-Off-Channel-Reservoir).
Creasey also said there is still plenty of funding needed before the Dungeness Off-Channel Reservoir becomes a reality. With about $12.8 million secured, the project of construction alone is about $36 million, she said.
Design of the reservoir could be completed by 2023 but it would take another two years to construct the project, she said.
Sequim Gazette photo by Michael Dashiell Clallam County commissioner Mark Ozias introduces the Dungeness Off-Channel Reservoir project’s initial design to a crowded conference room at the Dungeness River Nature Center conference room on Dec. 6.
“We have quite a ways to go,” Creasey said.
Those interested can provide comments at the web page above, by email (web_reservoir@clallamcountywa.gov) or by contacting Creasey (carol.creasey@clallamcountywa.gov).
Sign up for project update emails at code tinyurl.com/38krbzsy.
Initial designs
Dave Rice, a principal water resources engineer with Anchor QEA — the lead engineering company for the reservoir project — said that this isn’t the first time the idea has been floated to capture and disperse river water during the drier months of the year.
But holding water below ground level meant pumping it out, and that was too expensive a proposition for some, Rice said.
Instead, the current design would use gravity and irrigation pipes already in use to fill the reservoir of about 1,600 acre-feet of water.
The reservoir would fill up through June, then be drained out in August through mid-September, project managers said.
Because the reservoir’s water will flow in and out of the reservoir using gravity rather than pumps, that necessitates a certain volume of water to be above ground level for part of the year, said Bob Montgomery, also a principal water resources engineer with Anchor QEA.
The reservoir would have to meet what Rice called a “very stringent” set of requirements from Washington State Department of Ecology’s Dam Safety Office, the entity providing oversight for projects like the Dungeness Off-Channel Reservoir, to protect lives and property downstream.
Sequim Gazette photo by Michael Dashiell More than 130 people pack the Dungeness River Nature Center conference room on Dec. 6 to hear about preliminary designs of the Dungeness Off-Channel Reservoir project.
“[Safety] is always at the forefront of our minds,” Rice said.
Residents’ concerns
Paul Moore, who attended the meeting with a large posterboard with a cross-section of the proposed reservoir design, said he became concerned about the project when he heard from a neighbor that a dam would be build near his home on Kane Lane.
Moore, who said he walks daily along trails in the area, said he’d like to see the dam much lower than the 30 percent design proposal.
The project’s earthen embankment is detailed to rise 30 feet above ground level.
“A lot of people assume it’s going to be a ground-level lake,” he said.
“I’m not trying to stand in the way of the project,” Moore said, but said he wants to see a design that reduces the earthen structure holding in water reduced from 30-plus feet to something closer to 10 feet.
He said project organizers’ comments that “a few tweaks” are still to be made doesn’t help him feel safer or part of the process.
“To me that’s not listening to us,” Moore said. “A few tweaks doesn’t give me comfort.”
David Jensen, who also lives on Kane Lane and has lived in the area for 35 years, said he has similar concerns.
The proposed reservoir boundary would be about 900 feet from his home, he said.
Jensen’s concerns stem from the possibility of an earthquake that he said could lead to a failure of the dam and threaten lives of nearby residents.
“We’re due for that earthquake,” said Jensen.
“I’m going to be a graveyard, and all those people in Dungeness Meadows, if all of that lets go,” he said.
A reservoir reduced in size and less of a threat to neighbors would be better, Jensen said.
“I’m not against the project — it’s the design that’s totally faulty,” he said. “Everything was positive [at that meeting], and I know better.”
Bob Montgomery, a principal water resources engineer with Anchor QEA — the lead engineering company for the Dungeness Off-Channel Reservoir project — talks about dam safety at an open house at the Dungeness River Nature Center on Dec. 6. The project is being designed at a Step 8 level, requiring the “most conservative design assumptions” and designed for the “maximum credible earthquake,” Montgomery noted.
Some audience members asked for a new design group that includes the stakeholders.
Creasey said there is more field work to complete as project officials figure out details of the design.
She told the crowd there are other future open house meetings in line to update those interested in the progress of the reservoir.
Find more information about the Dungeness Off-Channel Reservoir at clallamcountywa.gov/188/Dungeness-Off-Channel-Reservoir. Or, contact Creasey at carol.creasey@clallamcountywa.gov.
More about the project
In the past 20 years, irrigators and others have invested considerable resources to conserve and enhance the flow of the Dungeness, home to four species of salmon and steelhead listed in the Endangered Species Act.
The Dungeness River suffered through droughts in 2015, 2019 and 2021, and what’s dubbed an “extreme low flow year” in 2016, project supporters note.
In low snowpack years, there is still not enough flow in the river to support salmon and also meet out-of-stream water needs, they said. Their solution is an off-channel reservoir to store water during winter and spring when flows are plentiful, saving this water for later in the year when river flow is low.
To address these and other issues, the Dungeness Off-Channel Reservoir project was created more than 10 years ago by the Dungeness Reservoir Work Group — a coalition of partners that including Clallam County, City of Sequim, Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, Clallam Conservation District, Washington Department of Ecology, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Washington Water Trust and the Dungeness Water Users Association, a collective of seven irrigation districts and companies.
Sequim Gazette photo by Michael Dashiell Clallam County commissioner Mark Ozias talks about aspects of the Dungeness Off-Channel Reservoir to attendees of an open house at the Dungeness River Nature Center on Dec. 6.
Clallam County officials say they have investigated the site of the reservoir, located on a parcel 1 mile south of U.S. Highway 101 on River Road, including geotechnical, environmental hazards, land surveying, cultural resources and wetland surveys.
By using the reservoir instead of the river for irrigation, the streamflow can be increased as much as 50 percent in the late season, allowing salmon to migrate and thrive.
Reservoir water will also be used to support groundwater infiltration/aquifer recharge sites to offset new groundwater well use, officials said.
The flow restoration benefits from reduced agricultural diversions will improve the health of the Dungeness watershed, project supporters said. The project would also alleviate flooding on roads and properties in county and City of Sequim by intercepting storm flows before they reach infrastructure and pollution-generating urban areas.
The new public park would include hiking, biking, wildlife viewing and river access opportunities, they said.
Creasey said that oversight of the new park would fall to the Clallam County Parks, Fair and facilities department.
It would not be open to any kind of recreation on the reservoir water for liability and water quality issues. Additionally, she said, the reservoir would only be full about two-and-a-half months out of the year.
