The Fisher Slough Flood Gate Debacle

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The Fisher Slough Flood Gate Debacle By Jeffrey Juel, PE

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In 2009 an article was published in the Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce regarding the Fisher Slough

Freshwater Tidal Marsh Restoration Project in Washington State. According to the story, this project was

funded using 5.2 million dollars2 courtesy President Obama, congress, and their Recovery Act economic

stimulus funding.3

Sixty acres of some of the most fertile and productive farm land in the state were taken out of production

and converted to habitat for endangered Chinook salmon4. Based on recent field surveys performed by

NOAA and The Skagit River System Cooperative, it appears that Chinook salmon will not benefit from this

multi-million dollar debacle.

1 PE = Professional Engineer.

2 The current estimate for the project as of April 2012 is $7.7 million.

3 Per the Recovery.Gov web site (which tracks stimulus spending) the total award amount was $5,766,100 – not

$5.2 million. 4 In 1999, Chinook salmon were listed under the Endangered Species Act.

2

Consider the caption beneath the photo and imagine the incredible amount of manpower that was required

by the unfortunate people who had to tie these gates open in the summer. It is not mentioned in the story,

but these people also had to untie the gates in the fall. (What a logistical nightmare!)

The operation of the new flood gates is orders of magnitude more complicated than the old gates.

The new gates at Fisher Slough – “Muted Tidal Regulators” - are held open by a complicated mechanism with a

massive float. The gates gradually creep closed as the water level rises.

The primary objective of this restoration project was to create habitat for juvenile Chinook salmon upstream

from the flood gates. The existing levees were removed and set-back producing inter-tidal fresh-water

wetlands. After the old gates were replaced with a Muted Tidal Regulator, NOAA and the Skagit River System

Cooperative performed fish surveys and documented that the original tied-open gates were better for

passing juvenile Chinook salmon than the complicated new flood gates that are the key feature of this multi-

million dollar stimulus project.

Another key feature of this project is the re-routing of the Big Ditch and the construction of a new siphon

beneath Fisher Slough. Technically, this is an inverted siphon - not a siphon. In addition, the Fisher Slough

Flood Gates are also misnamed. They are actually tide gates.

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The photo below shows the condition of the water in the new Big Ditch at the upstream / north end of the

inverted siphon. The photo was taken on 1 June 2012.

The trash rack is completely plugged with debris and the water (agricultural runoff) is covered in a thick layer

of decomposing algae and scum. The scum layer extends about 100 feet upstream from the trash rack.

When the trash rack is eventually cleared and the water is allowed to pass downstream, it will ultimately

discharge into the Skagit River Delta. The water is putrid and the stench is awful. Cleaning the trash rack will

be a horrible job.

4

The cover page for the Estuary & Salmon Restoration Program Tide Gate Report is shown below:

Note that the Skagit River System Cooperative

was involved in the preparation of this report

5

The excerpt below is from page 14 of this report:

(Note: SRT = Self Regulating Tide Gate; BACI = before-after-control-impact)

In summary, this multi-million dollar habitat restoration project replaced simple flood gates - that worked for

fish passage - with very complicated flood gates that have resulted in:

a significant reduction in the presence of juvenile Chinook salmon upstream from the flood gates.

The primary justification for this project was to provide critical habitat for juvenile Chinook salmon. However,

with the new flood gates, juvenile Chinook salmon are now 80% less likely to access the restored wetland

habitat upstream from the new flood gates.

To be fair, the new flood tide gates are an amazingly complicated device and they were built by very skilled

craftsmen. Unfortunately, the basic design is flawed and a remarkably simple alternative could have been

used.

The photo to the right shows the six-man

crew that deploys a net to capture and

count sticklebacks - along with an

occasional juvenile salmon at the Fisher

Slough site. They do this every two

weeks.

It is possible that by spending money and

time performing more fish surveys and

by tinkering with the Muted Tidal

Regulator, The Skagit River System

Cooperative and TNC will eventually

proclaim that juvenile Chinook salmon

are getting past the new flood gate and

accessing the new habitat in large numbers.

The NOAA report will then be amended, retracted, discredited or simply ignored. The project will be heralded

as a wonderful success… or maybe they will document that juvenile Chinook salmon are simply not getting

past the new $144,441 flood gate.

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Something Doesn’t Add Up

The $5.8 million award amount is not accounted for in the amounts listed on the Recovery.gov web site listed

below:

The present project cost is $7.7 million, so

there is another $2 million in addition to

the $1,312,383 from the Stimulus Award

Amount that is not accounted for in the

award amounts listed on the Recovery.gov

web site.

Is it possible that the award amount

included $1.3 million dollars for

contingency costs? That works out to a

30% contingency5!

The engineering cost for the project (Tetra Tech + Shannon & Wilson + Equinox + Herrera) is just under one

million dollars. This amounts to 22% of the listed Vendor Transactions. With this level of engineering design

effort there should be very little need for contingency funds.

The graphic below is for Recovery spending for the state of Washington:

5 $1,312,383 / $4,463,717 = 0.29

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The total stimulus/recovery spending for environmental projects in the State of Washington as of

12/31/2011 was over $101 million dollars.

$3.3 million unaccounted for in a $7.7 million project out of $101 million is not chump change.

On the other hand, total recovery spending for the State of

Washington for all categories is over $8.3 billion. In the big scheme

of things, the Fisher Slough fiasco is irrelevant. At least it created

some desperately-needed jobs…

Note that $8.3 billion divided by the 5,188 jobs saved works out to

$1.6 million per job.

(I sure wish I had one of those jobs.)

I wonder if the US Government will pay attention to a report of “potential fraud, waste and abuse?” I

humored my government and I played along. I posted a comment offering to send them a copy of this

document. They responded and asked me to send them a copy – which I provided.

I am not holding my breath…

How Could this Possibly Have Happened?

The short answer is poor engineering… the long answer requires 46 pages.

In a sense, the Fisher Slough flood gate project began in the year 1998 when Skagit County Surface Water

Management authorized a sole source procurement for a 48” Waterman-Nekton SRT (self-regulating tide

gate) for the tide gate on Edison Slough in the town of Edison Washington. This is where the state and Skagit

County first attempted to install a fish-friendly tide gate. A number of other tide gate projects were

attempted in Skagit County after the initial tide gate project at Edison Slough.

How these projects played out is a complicated and unbelievable series of missteps involving:

• The marginally effective and erratic ”Self-Regulating Tide Gate” (The Waterman-Nekton SRT) at

Edison Slough

• The Aberdeen tide gate

• Delusions of grandeur, gross engineering incompetence, greed and fraud.

Since 1998, nearly ten million dollars of taxpayer’s money has been wasted on a number of tide gate

projects in San Juan County and Skagit County. These projects culminated in the Fisher Slough Freshwater

Tidal Marsh Restoration Project.

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I am an accomplished award-winning civil engineer and I was reprimanded and nearly fired over

recommendations I made regarding the selection of the new Fisher Slough flood gates back in 2008.

This is my story, my tragedy, my Oedipus Rex6 …

The Nature Conservancy (TNC) is the organization that

managed the Fisher Slough Freshwater Tidal Marsh

Restoration project beginning in 2004. TNC hired an

engineering firm named Tetra Tech to perform the

design work for the project. Tetra Tech is a large

engineering firm with 330 offices world-wide. Tetra

Tech’s Surface Water Group from their Seattle Office

worked on the Fisher Slough project with a hydraulics

engineer named Mr. David Cline7 acting as the Project

Manager.

Based on my personal engineering experience

spanning over 25 years, very few engineers know

much about tide gates (or flood gates8) and the topic

demands expertise in a large number of subjects in

addition to hydraulics.9

I am an unusual engineer in a number of respects

including my knowledge of tide gates. Around 1990,

while working for the US Army Corps of Engineers, I

first learned about tide gates and I designed a novel

fish-friendly tide gate for a flood control project in

Aberdeen Washington. (That’s my tide gate design

and me –Jeffrey Juel, PE - in the top center of the

photo to the right.)

Tide gates are an obscure engineering topic, however

they are integral for flood control and their ecological

impacts are significant and multifaceted. It is hard to

explain why they receive so little attention from engineers.

6 Over the centuries, Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex (written in 429 BCE) has come to be regarded by many as the Greek

tragedy par excellence. What has transpired surrounding my Aberdeen tide gate design is tragic – with a plot as

complicated as Oedipus Rex. (References to this Greek Tragedy are in purple.) 7 Mr. Cline ultimately had a falling out with Tetra Tech. In January 2010, he left and began working as a Project Manager

for the engineering firm Shannon and Wilson Incorporated. Fortunately for Tetra Tech, he took the Fisher Slough project

with him. 8 BY 2008, tide gates had become very controversial in Skagit County. As a result, the gates at Fisher Slough were

referred to as “flood gates” – even though they are tide gates. 9Civil, structural, mechanical, geotechnical, hydraulic, hydrologic, coastal, groundwater & environmental engineering as

well as agronomy - just to name a few of the required technical disciplines. (“Tide gates” are complicated.)

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By restricting the natural flow of water, traditional tide gates impact wetlands and watercourses degrading

habitats for wetland plants as well as fish, amphibians, and waterfowl. They result in stagnant partially de-

watered weed-choked channels and drainage ditches. To function for drainage, these ditches and channels

require herbicides or mechanical cleaning at regular intervals.

Traditional tide gates lower the groundwater level and accelerate the decomposition of organic material in

the soil which reduces the soil’s fertility. This process produces substantial quantities of CO2 and results in an

increased rate of land subsidence. Traditional tide gates also produce substantial amounts of shallow

stagnant fresh water which may be used by mosquito larvae and snails. In many locations species of

mosquitoes and freshwater snails10 are vectors for a number of serious and life-threatening diseases.

I have been thinking about tide gates in great detail for many years and I probably know more about tide

gates than any person on the planet. For example: I believe that the invention of tide gates was crucial to the

rise of human civilization. Tide gates had to have been used with levees many thousands of years ago on the

flood plains of the Fertile Crescent, the Nile Delta, the Yellow River, and anywhere else where ancient human

civilizations relied on large scale agriculture on a flood plain. Flood control - including tide gates – has always

been important for mankind and human civilization. I doubt that more than a handful of engineers have ever

considered this proposition.

In the spring of 2008, Tetra Tech was directed to include me as a sub-consultant for the Fisher Slough tide

gate project. The advisors for the Fisher Slough project included a pair of frustrated “tide gate experts” from

Skagit County: Mr. Steve Hinton, director of the Skagit River System Cooperative; and Mr. Tom Slocum, a

licensed professional civil engineer from the Skagit County Conservation District.

Someone (most likely Steve Hinton) recommended that I be brought on as a consultant for the project. Over

a period of about three years, both Tom and Steve attempted to make copies of my Aberdeen tide gate

design without my help. Their projects had not gone well for them. If the promotional literature can be taken

seriously, three years and an impressive $275,000 was wasted on Tom Slocum’s tide gate project at Port

Stanley on Lopez Island.

Tom had many problems with the Port Stanley tide gate and by June of 2011 his creation had degenerated

into a complete and unmitigated failure. The tide gate at Port Stanley had a multitude of design-defects and

it was removed after it failed catastrophically11 less than six years after it was installed.

Edison Slough

Beginning in 1998, on the order of one million dollars was spent on drainage improvements for Edison Slough

in Skagit County. These improvements included two attempts at fish-friendly tide gates. The second

attempt12 was a $191,000 project to install a knock-off copy of my Aberdeen tide gate design produced by

Golden Harvest13 of Burlington Washington. This tide gate closed on the first flood tide and then never

opened (without help) after that. It was stuck shut from December 2006 until January 2009. I suspect that

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Schistosomiasis “Snail Fever” is the second most socioeconomically devastating parasitic disease after malaria. 11

The tide gate actually fell off the wall of the vault it was installed in. 12

This was not long after the Port Stanley tide gate was installed. 13

In my opinion, “Golden Harvest” is the perfect name for a greedy company. Great visual: harvesting gold.

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Tom Slocum may have had a hand in this since: 1) he is the Conservation District’s Engineer for the area; 2)

Tom claims to be an authority on the subject of tide gates; and 3) the second tide gate at Edison Slough was

installed just a few months after his Port Stanley tide gate was installed in May 2006.

In January of 2009, I retrofitted the “stuck shut” tide gate at Edison Slough with the ingenious control

mechanism that I came up with and was nearly fired over while working on the Fisher Slough project. I was

paid $7,500 for the design, fabrication, installation, and a lifetime warranty of my control mechanism.14 The

Edison Slough tide gate has been working flawlessly ever since. I salvaged Skagit County’s ten year long, one

million dollar Edison Slough escapade, and I did it for 0.75% of what they had spent at the point in time when

they gave up on tidal exchange and fish passage. (Imagine the embarrassment.)

I thought that I had done something wonderful and amazing, but Skagit County apparently was so humbled

that they could not even acknowledge what I had accomplished15 by thanking me. To their credit, they did

pay me.

Fornsby Creek

Steve Hinton’s organization – The Skagit River System Cooperative – spent at least a half million dollars on

tide gate projects on the west side of the Swinomish Channel (“the Smokehouse Floodplain”) at what is

known as Fornsby Creek. Three flawed copies of my Aberdeen tide gate design were installed on two massive

new concrete box-culverts over a period of three years. The first tide gate installed at Fornsby Creek failed

catastrophically less than a year after it was installed. It was then removed and replaced with a second copy

of my Aberdeen tide gate produced by another local fabricator- again without my help.

The tide gates at Fornsby Creek worked to some degree, but they had a multitude of problems. I foolishly

retrofitted two of them with my control mechanism in the summer of 2008. Unfortunately their problems

extended beyond what I could easily repair.

The Port Stanley tide gate in San Juan County and a collection of troubled tide gate projects in Skagit County

produced two very frustrated “tide gate experts”. The work of these “experts” and project manager

Mr. David Cline culminated in the Fisher Slough flood gates which were installed in 2010/2011. It is likely that

Mr. Cline had less knowledge of tide gates than his tide gate experts.

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I do not have fantasies about harvesting gold. 15

No man should be considered fortunate until he is dead. (A common Greek maxim used in Oedipus Rex.)

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The Story of the Aberdeen Tide Gate Design

I graduated from the University of Washington

with a Master’s of Science Degree in Civil

Engineering (MSCE) in 1986. After graduation, I

went to work for the Seattle District US Army

Corps of Engineers. I worked on my first flood

control project – The Chehalis River at South

Aberdeen & Cosmopolis - around 1989. The

Corps had been investigating a flood control

project for the city of Aberdeen on the south

side of the Chehalis River since the 1940’s. In

time I was named the “lead designer” and I was

intimately involved in the design of every

feature of this project.

I came up with the concept for the Aberdeen

tide gate around 1990. Like virtually every

coastal flood control project, this project

required a number of tide gates. A levee

surrounding a low-lying area without a pump

station or a tide gate/flood gate (a flap-gated

culvert) eventually results in a lake.

In 1994, I met with Mr. Bob Burkle of the

Montesano Office of the Washington State

Department of Fish & Wildlife and I briefed him

on my flood control project. Bob explained the

very significant impacts on fish as well as the

multitude of environmental problems caused by

tide gates. He stated that he would not issue a

permit for the project unless we came up with a

tide gate design that fish could pass. He also

insisted on tide gates that allowed some amount

of tidal exchange.

When I relayed his requirements to the people in Hydraulics & Hydrology (H&H) Branch at the Corps office,

they explained that there were no tide gates that operated like what Mr. Burkle required. I detected an aura

of relief. Since we would not be getting a permit from the Department of Fish and Wildlife, they would not

have to work on this perpetually hopeless flood control project that had been resurrected over and over

again for the past 40 years. Maybe this project would die and stay dead for a change.

Within a few days, I came up with a design for a tide gate that met Bob’s requirements.16 I discussed my

concept for the design with an engineer named Mr. Edwin T. Zapel, PE of Hydraulics &Hydrology Branch. I did

16

This was a bit like Oedipus solving the riddle of the Sphinx. (What has four legs in the morning…)

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not know Ed from Adam at the time17 and I only had a rough idea about what it was that they did in H&H

Branch.

Ed liked my concept and he suggested that the gate leaf would open more easily if it had a low buoyant

weight. He recommended that I use a composite steel, foam, and fiberglass panel similar to the panels that a

fabricator named Plasti-Fab manufactured for use with their sluice gates. To his credit, this was a great

suggestion.

Ed’s enthusiastic support for my tide gate idea made me think that he was a competent engineer. That was a

monumental and tragic error on my part.18

A few days later, I produced a very detailed 3-D CAD model of my design. The chief of H&H Branch (Mr. Larry

Merkel, PE19) thought that my design had value so he wrote a memo to Portland Division telling them about

my design and recommending that we use it for the Aberdeen flood control project. Portland Division

allowed us to proceed on the condition that the City Engineer for Aberdeen would agree to operate and

maintain the tide gates. A few days later, I briefed Mr. Ron Merila on my design. Ron thought that my tide

gate design would work. Aberdeen has dozens of traditional flap gates / tide gate and they are a major

maintenance burden. Convincing Ron that my unusual tide gates were not going to be a problem for him was

a coup.20

Around this time, the voters in the City of Aberdeen passed a local bond measure for their portion of the

project’s cost sharing agreement. We had a project that was actually going to happen! It was the largest

flood control project for the Seattle District USACE in several decades, I was the lead designer, and my tide

gates were going to be built.

At the time I did not understand exactly why, but the Chief of Mechanical Section (Sven Lie) wanted no part

of the tide gate design that Ed was promoting. I definitely understand now. I told the Chief of Design Branch

that I didn’t need Mechanical Section’s help, so I researched and developed the design for the hydraulics

myself. I had done H&H Branch’s job when I conceived of this unusual tide gate. I decided that I could do the

Mechanical Designer’s job too – and I did!

To Sven’s credit, he reviewed my design and suggested that the culvert should be vented to prevent water

hammer. This was a good catch. Being the hydraulic engineer, Ed should have come up with this – but he

didn’t. I should have taken note.

The detail and schematic on the following page show the mechanical design I produced for my tide gate.

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I am a lousy poker player, a lousy judge of character, and I intrinsically trust people. 18

People are willing to look past glaring flaws, to NOT SEE what is right in front of them. (An Oedipus Rex theme.) 19

Years later I learned from Larry that he was nearly fired over this memo. The memo was sent to Portland Division

without Colonel Wynn’s signature since the commander was out of town at the time. My tide gate design must be

jinxed. 20

To this day, the city of Aberdeen loves my tide gates. They rarely have problems or require any maintenance.

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As the plans and specs were being developed, Ed insisted that backup sluice gates be installed for each of the

tide gates. He also insisted on using expensive nitronic nuts21 and he contributed a detail for a stainless steel

piano-hinged door in the wall of the float well.

The hinged door on the float

well was particularly

impractical and I never liked it.

The door would be difficult to

access and the rivets would

protrude into the float well and

interfere with the movement

of the float. I logged a review

comment with my concern

about the rivets. Ed’s solution

(I’m not making this up) was to

add text “MOVEMENT OF

FLOAT IS NOT TO BE HINDERED

BY RIVETS AND HASP”. I will

forever refer to this sort of

unresponsive circular logic

when responding to a review

comment as “doing a Zapel”.

In no time the hinge and hasp would become

encrusted with barnacles and marine organisms. I

thought that it was patently ridiculous to think

that a person would be able to open Ed’s door

after the first year in operation. I should have

come up with a better alternative, but instead I

focused my attention on getting rid of a two

hundred thousand dollars’ worth of unnecessary

backup sluice gates.

Unfortunately, I was unable to convince Ed that

the backup sluice gates were a waste. We were

under a deadline so Ed’s piano-hinged door detail

was included in the final plans and specs.

Plasti-fab was the gate fabricator that was

subcontracted by the General Contractor (Quigg

Brothers). The nitronic nuts and his piano-hinged

door were deleted during the development of the

21

Nitronic nuts resist galling. This is not relevant since after the nuts are torqued, it is unlikely that they will ever need to

be removed. If the nuts need to be removed for some reason, they can be removed with a cutting torch if necessary.

Replacing the stainless steel nuts and bolts ten times would be less expensive than using nitronic nuts.

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shop drawings by Plasti-fab.

As a result of his dubious contributions, the

project manager apparently felt that Ed had a

hand in the design of my tide gates. Bob Burkle

planted the seed, I came up with the concept, I did

the mechanical design, I made the CAD model, I

made the CAD drawings, I helped write the specs, I

reviewed and approved the shop drawings, and I

was on site overseeing the installation and testing

of the tide gates. But Ed and I were the both

credited as the “flood gate designers”. (And his

name got first billing in the caption!!!!)

When the Project Manager asked me to pose with

Ed for the photo to the right for a story about the

Aberdeen tide gates I nearly objected and refused.

I bit my lip, swallowed my pride, and took a bullet for the team. I smiled for the camera. In time, I would pay

dearly for this indiscretion.22

Thinking back, I recall having an ominous feeling23 about my tide gate design when I was making the CAD

model. Would the Corps actually build it? (yes) Would it actually work?24 (yes) Would I get the credit for

coming up with it? (sort-of) Would the fabricator for the Aberdeen project take over my design and make a

fortune off of my brain-child?25 (no) Would the Corps propagate my design to other flood control projects?

(no)

The photo incident reinforced my fear that something ominous was going to happen as a result of my tide

gate design. The way that things turned out, my fear was warranted… however I was being overly optimistic.

Things turned out far worse than I imagined was possible.

Delusions of Grandeur

Years later in 2005, Ed had delusions of grandeur and forgot that he was merely a hydraulics engineer and

hydrologist. He actually believed the caption in the photograph above. He decided that he could be the

design engineer for Mr. Tom Slocum and his Port Stanley tidal lagoon tide gate project. Apparently he didn’t

consider that he had no significant experience as a design engineer. He also must have thought that I

invested my time marketing my tide gate design with him as a personal favor to advance his engineering

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In Corinth, the people believed that Oepidus was the child of its king and queen, Polybus and Merope. At the Seattle

District USACE, the readers of Flagship thought that the Aberdeen tide gate was the brainchild of Ed Zapel and Jeff Juel.

This had unfortunate consequences in both tragedies. 23

Apollo may have telepathically warned me regarding what lay ahead for me and my tide gate design. 24

The tide gates in Aberdeen work reasonably well (but not as good as my new design) and they have been in operation

for over 15 years now. 25

Plasti-fab did not, but Golden Harvest did take over my design. They then attempted to price-gouge the Portland

District USACE to the tune of $100,000 on a sole-source contract for tide gates at the Julia Butler Hansen Wildlife

Refuge.

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career. I provided him with a golden opportunity do Engineering Design for a change instead of doing

hydrologic analysis and flow calculations. All he had to do was reproduce my design and put his name on the

drawings.

Since he had no involvement whatsoever in the South Aberdeen project during the construction phase, Ed

was unaware that (thankfully) most of the ideas that he contributed to “our” tide gate design were not

actually implemented in the fabricated tide gates.

There was one significant contribution that Ed made to my Aberdeen tide gate design:

“Use Plasti-fab’s composite steel and fiberglass panel for the gate leaf.”

It defies explanation, but Ed did not use Plasti-fab for the Port Stanley tide gate design. Had he contacted

Plasti-fab, they could have gotten a few key dimensions from him, revised the shop drawings from the

Aberdeen tide gates, and then fabricated and delivered a working tide gate that would have lasted for 50-100

years. Ed wouldn’t have had to make a fool of himself (and discredited me by association) with his attempt to

produce an engineered design for the Port Stanley tide gate.

I did not know what Ed’s drawings looked like when I first learned about the Port Stanley project. Ed wasn’t

proud of them and he never did show them to me. In 2011, Jess Knutzen thought I should see them so he

provided me with the drawings26. They were far far worse than I could have ever imagined.

The drawings that Jess gave me were marked “DRAFT” and they were, by far, the poorest excuse for

engineering drawings that I had ever seen. I assumed that the final drawings had to be a vast improvement

on the DRAFT drawings. My curiosity got the better of me and eventually I requested a set of the final

drawings from the SJCCD. Surprisingly, Tom and SJCCD sent me a copy of the drawings.27

One detail in the draft set that caught my eye

was the piano-hinged door for the float well

shown to the right. I remember that this was

Ed’s idea from the Aberdeen design and he

reproduced it exactly as I drew it in the

Aberdeen drawings based on the sketch that

Ed made in 1995.

Note that the scale (1”=10’) suggests that the

float well was roughly 10 feet in diameter. It’s

actually a 4 inch diameter pipe. ETZ and RAB

did not understand the concept of an

engineer scale or a scaled drawing.

Ed must have made a trip to Aberdeen to see

the tide gates for the first time in his life sometime after he made the DRAFT drawings. When he saw the tide

26

Including the envelope that Tom Slocum used to mail them to him. This was a wonderful clue for unraveling this

complicated debacle. Jess providing me with these drawings was like Oedipus learning the truth about his past from

Creon and Tiresias. 27

If I were Tom, I would never admit that I had anything to do with a design like this. Tom is a stand-up guy for allowing

me to acquire a copy of these drawings. Either that or he thought that there was nothing wrong with Ed’s “design”.

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gates he discovered that his piano-hinged door had been axed by the fabricator - with my enthusiastic

approval. That explains why this detail does not show up in Ed’s final drawings for the Port Stanley project.

Below is a detail from the final tide gate drawings that Ed produced for Mr. Slocum:

I presume that the hand-written note above was made by Mr. Slocum. Note that the tide gate (including the

defective “piston”) was installed less than six months earlier (in May of 2006). For a contrast, my Aberdeen

tide gates have been working for 17 years and I predict that they will likely function for at least another 35

years using the original “pistons”.

The scale on the Plan Detail is nonsense - the vault is not 30 feet wide. This detail is a meaningless pathetic

mess. Contrast this detail with the accurate and professional 3-D details that I produced and you will

appreciate the fact that:

1) Not all engineers are equal, and

2) Hydraulic engineers / hydrologists have no business doing engineering design.

The following pages show the final drawings that Ed produced - with a few of my annotations. The title block

on these drawings is shown below:

Note that the title block says:

Design By: ETZ & Drawn By: RAB.

I have no idea who RAB is, but ETZ is the

“co-designer” Edwin T. Zapel, PE.

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northwest hydraulic consultant’s Port Stanley Tide Gate Drawings:

19


20


21


22


23


24

The scales are ALL wrong, the line work is poor, there

are no bar scales, the drawings are not stamped, and

many of the notes are ridiculous and nonsensical – the

design is a pathetic joke. 28

The errors and defects in the Port Stanley design are

particularly disturbing since it is obvious that Ed had a

copy of the drawings that I made for the Aberdeen tide

gates when he produced the drawings for the Port

Stanley tide gate.

Below is the detail for the gusset plates. The detail to the left is from Ed’s design; the detail to the right is

from the plans and specs that I made for the Aberdeen project:

The dimensions above are identical (note that 5/8” = 0.625, 11/16” = 0.68”, etc.), so unless Ed has an

amazing memory, he must have had a set of the drawings that I made in his possession when he produced

the Port Stanley tide gate drawings. There was no reason to re-create my design – but he tried to do it (in

2-D) and he obviously was not capable of this!

The scale on the above Typical Gusset Detail - scale: 1”=10’ is non-sense. At a scale of 1”=10’, the drawn size

of the 15” long gusset would be less than 0.12 inches. You’d need a microscope to read the drawing. Ed

28

Seeing Ed’s design made me feel ill. I felt like sticking gold pins in my eyes. (King Oedipus did this near the end of his

tragedy. See photo above.)

25

doesn’t even understand how to make a scale drawing. Not one of the details is scaled properly. And Tom

Slocum, a registered PE, accepted this design.

Note that the weld symbol beneath the text “(gusset to hinge tube)” is not drawn correctly. The triangle

below the leader on the weld symbol is wrong and it’s on the end of the leader; the call out is for a weld on

the opposite side rather than on both sides of the joint; the text above the leader within the parenthesis is

superfluous; and the arrow misses the welded joint.

For contrast, the detail below (from my original tide gate drawings) shows proper weld symbols for the fillet

welds at the gusset plates:

The proper weld symbols call for a 3/8” fillet weld on both sides of the plate on every plate. The circle at the

break in the call-out means “weld all around”.

Proper weld symbols are very important and it is not that difficult to learn how to detail welds properly.

Fortunately for Ed and Tom, it appears that their fabricator knew better than to weld the tide gate

components together as called for on Ed’s drawings29. The welds on the Port Stanley tide gate were one of

the few things that didn’t fail.

29

A note on one of Ed’s sheets called for the welds to be full penetration fillet welds. There is no such weld.

26

As a contrast to the drawings on the preceding pages, below are a few of the details that I personally

designed and produced in CAD for my Aberdeen tide gate drawings30:

30

“That very skill, however, ruined you” – Tiresias to Oedipus.

27

A few months after the installation of the Port Stanley tide gate, Ed left northwest hydraulic consultants and

started a new company - Pacific Engineers. He was involved in a number of other tide gate projects besides

the ill-fated Port Stanley project. As I predicted, passing out drawings of the tide gate was not good for

business. It was particularly bad for business given the “quality” of Ed’s “design”. It wasn’t long before Ed had

to work part time at the USACE and he eventually returned to northwest hydraulic consultants. Four job

changes in the span of three years.31

31

Life is tough, but it’s tougher if you’re stupid. - John Wayne.

28

The Aberdeen Tide Gate “Success”

For a contrast, the Aberdeen project was a great success. The story on the following page was published in

the Oct-Dec 1996 issue of the Seattle District’s publication “Flagship”. When this article was written, the

construction phase was nearly complete and the project had gone extremely well. I was the project engineer

during construction and I was on site four days a week nearly every week during the 18 months of

construction.

Note that the photo at the top of the article on the following page shows Ed’s backup sluice gates at Mill

Creek. The backup sluice gates added over $200,000 to the 11.2 million dollar project cost and they are

useless since my tide gates work with virtually 100% reliably. The city of Aberdeen employee who is

responsible for the operation and maintenance of my tide gates assured me that the backup sluice gates

there will never need to be used. Had I followed my gut and deleted the backup sluice gates during

construction, I could have negotiated a credit from the general contractor. The cost growth during

construction would have been less than one percent.32

It is unfortunate and ironic that a backup sluice gate was not included in Ed’s design for the tide gate at Port

Stanley. Due to a particularly flagrant design error, the anchor studs disintegrated and the Port Stanley tide

gate literally fell off the wall of the vault. Placing bronze and brass in contact with stainless steel in salt water

is never a good idea. Ed did this in his Port Stanley design and Tom thought it was alright. The design called

for bronze threaded studs for the anchors with brass shims to secure stainless steel to the vault wall.

When the bronze studs disappeared - like any sacrificial anode would33 - a backup sluice gate at Port Stanley

might have been helpful. For some reason Ed’s enthusiasm for backup sluice gates had waned and a backup

sluice gate was not installed at Port Stanley. Fortunately for the property owners at Port Stanley, the Skagit

County Conservation District, Tom, Ed, and northwest hydraulic consultants, the day when their tide gate fell

off the wall of the vault must have had a relatively moderate high tide. Apparently no significant property

damage occurred.

32 The actual cost growth during the construction of the Aberdeen project was 2.2%. I have not heard what the cost

growth during construction was for the Fisher Slough project. If the award amounts listed on the Recovery.gov web site

reflect the total award, the cost growth during construction for this 7.7 million dollar project was 42%. 33

The sacrificial anodes could not escape their fate any more than Oedipus could escape his. We all have inescapable

fates.

29

Oct – Dec 1996

30

The document above is the Project Executive Summary for the Aberdeen project. The Project Manager, Forest Brooks, updated this form at regular

intervals as the project was under construction. Forest gave this copy to me when the project was 95% complete, and he applied the yellow hi-lights as he

explained what the document meant and what a remarkable project this was.34

34

The Fisher Slough project was more in-line with a typical government project: Actual costs greatly exceed the estimated costs and the cost growth during construction was

considerable.

31

• The Authorized Cost Price Level of $22.4 million was based on the design as presented in the

Feasibility Report. This was the design that I started from35. $22.4 million was the project cost listed

in the Water Resources Development Act of 1986.

• The Maximum Project Cost of $28.3 million was the authorized cost including inflation and 20% for

cost overruns and contract modifications.

• With the project 95% complete (on 8/30/96), the Forecast Estimate for the Total Project Cost was

$11.1 million dollars.

• The approved contingency amount was $2,424,000. The amount of contingency that was actually

used during construction was 1/10th this amount at $243,000. This amounts to 2.2% of the total

project cost.36

In 1997 I was named “Engineer of the Year”, primarily for the Aberdeen Project.

In addition to the certificate shown above, I also got a shiny plaque with my name on it!

For a contrast, Tom and Ed’s “Feature Accomplishment” set in motion a series of events that has resulted in

something on the order of ten million dollars being wasted on flawed tide gate projects in San Juan county

and Skagit County37.

35

This was the design that the Corps had been working on since the 1940’s. “Brooks spent over 24 years of his career

guiding it through the study, design, and plans and specifications phases…” (1971 through 1995) 36

For comparison, based on the Recovery Act award amounts, the Fisher Slough project included a contingency of 30%.

32

Fast Forward to 2000 thru 2004

Beginning in 2000, Ed Zapel left the Corps and was working for northwest hydraulic consultants (nhc). In 2000

I began working for INCA Engineers. In 2003 northwest hydraulic consultants ended up working as a

subcontractor for me when I was the Project Manager for a study at Lower Monumental Dam requested by

the Walla Walla District USACE. While working on this project, Ed and I lamented that the Corps had done

nothing with the Aberdeen tide gate design since the Aberdeen project was completed. I had mentioned my

tide gates at INCA’s marketing meetings a few times, but they really didn’t fit with the program.38

Around this time I read a story in the local paper about a battle over tide gates in Skagit County. At the time, I

had never performed hydrologic analyses and flow calculations39, so I teamed with Ed and INCA/nhc

marketed his hydrologic, hydraulic, and flow modeling skills along with my tide gate design experience to

Skagit County. Ed could calculate flows and size culverts, and I would do the design of the tide gates, culverts,

and head walls. It was a sensible partnership since INCA did not have any employees who could do flow

calculations and I was under the impression that nhc did not have the ability to even attempt a detailed

engineering design of anything.

I distinctly remember that while we were en-route to make a presentation in Mount Vernon, I explained to

Ed that we had to avoid giving away hard copies of plans for the Aberdeen tide gate design. I told him that if

the Aberdeen tide gate design drawings were passed out to interested parties and clients, we would lose

control of the design and in no time we would be out of the tide gate business. Ed emphatically disagreed.

That ominous feeling I had when I made my CAD model returned with a vengeance. I should have patiently

reasoned with him, but that had not worked before with his nitronic nuts, his piano hinge, or the backup

sluice gates.

Driving a vehicle at 70 miles an hour in moderately busy freeway traffic, opening the passenger-side door and

pushing someone out of it (without losing control) is nearly as challenging as doing the engineering for a tide

gate project. I did not attempt this. In retrospect I suppose that I could have gotten off the freeway at the

next exit and simply headed back home and saved myself a whole lot of trouble – but I didn’t. In time I would

pay dearly for this indiscretion.

Years later I learned from northwest hydraulic consultant’s website that beginning in 2003, Ed had made a

FOTRAN (computer) model to analyze flows at the tidal lagoon at Port Stanley on Lopez Island. See the

following page.

37

The Aberdeen project was merely a “Success”, while the Port Stanley project was a “Feature Accomplishment”. How

funny is that? I wonder how the press will characterize the Fisher Slough project? 38

INCA worked on the design of the New Orleans Hurricane barrier and the design of the new Locks at the Panama

Canal. My tide gates were small potatoes – microscopic potatoes - by comparison. 39

In 2012, I developed sophisticated spreadsheets for calculating flows for a project that is very similar to the Port

Stanley tidal lagoon / tide gate project. I have a working flow model that will be calibrated and validated in the near

future. It turned out that I could have done the flow calculations for the Aberdeen project.

34

A hydrodynamic routing flow model for a tidal lagoon is remarkably complicated. Apparently Ed had blown

much of the project’s$275,000 budget doing endless programming and flow routing. He and the project

manager, Tom Slocum, could not afford to hire a capable engineer (me) to do a proper tide gate design, so Ed

attempted to produce a design on his own without my help on a very limited budget.

The Port Stanley tide gate experienced a number of serious problems shortly after it was installed in May of

2006. In August of 2008 I retro-fitted the floundering tide gate with my revolutionary new control

mechanism. I was paid a paltry $469.58 for my trouble.

The retrofitted tide gate worked for three years; however the tide gate ultimately failed catastrophically in

June of 2011. The cause of failure was dissimilar metals in contact in salt water. Dissimilar metals were called

for in a number of locations on Ed and Tom’s design. This was a classic rookie engineer mistake.

The photo below shows Ed and Tom’s pride and joy - the Port Stanley tide gate - at its final resting place

outside the county’s Maintenance Building on Lopez Island.

Before it failed catastrophically, Tom Slocum’s $275,000 project was written-up as the San Juan County

Conservation District’s “Feature Accomplishment”.40

40

Note that the county finally took this document down from their web site in March 2012 - eight months after the tide

gate failed catastrophically.

35

If the funding amounts listed above are correct, this project literally flushed $275,000 down the drain. But

they had really good intentions - just like at the Fisher Slough Freshwater Tidal Marsh Restoration Project!

36

It’s rather hard to believe, but Mr. Slocum is a licensed Professional Engineer. He accepted nhc’s “design”,

allowed the tide gate fabricated using these drawings, and he paid Edwin T. Zapel (a Principal) $169.92 an

hour to produce it. The text below is from an invoice for the project41:

The Port Stanley tide gate project is unbelievable in many ways:

• Edwin T. Zapel (ETZ) thought he could do hydraulics/hydrology and engineering design. Based on the

drawings and the end result, he obviously is not capable of doing engineering design.

• ETZ thought that it was OK to give me no role in the Port Stanley project after we jointly marketed

my tide gate design in Skagit County (but not to San Juan County).

• ETZ and Tom Slocum apparently believed that they had produced acceptable engineering documents

(see pages 17-22) – and they are both licensed professional engineers!

• ETZ submitted an invoice to Tom Slocum with a rate of $169.92 per hour for his “engineering”

services – and Tom paid it!

• ETZ is a Principal for a once respectable engineering firm.

• A fabricator was willing to produce the tide gate working from severely flawed drawings. (I’d love to

know how they made a full penetration weld on the 1.5” diameter pins on the ends of the hinge

tube.)

• In spite of the debacle at Port Stanley, Tom Slocum was allowed to participate in the Fisher Slough

project.

• In 2011, I offered to help San Juan County repair and reinstall the tide gate and also pursue A/E

liability against nhc. They have no interest in doing this. How badly does a designer have to screw up

to be held accountable for a poor design???

• San Juan County is comfortable with the fact that their $275,000 Port Stanley tide gate project had

serious design errors and failed catastrophically after less than five years.

• ETZ and Tom Slocum are both presently employed and working as licensed engineers in the State of

Washington.

41

Calling what Edwin did to Tom and San Juan County “Professional Services” is a bit of a stretch.

37

The Port Stanley tide gate design was a bit like a computer virus. Mr. Slocum mailed a copy of Ed’s draft

design for the Port Stanley tide gate to a local welder named Jess Knutzen. (Note that the envelope

below is postmarked 10 May 2005. The drawings inside were dated 04/05/2005. I assume that means

April 5, 2005 -but who knows? It could mean May 4, 200542 or the date could be just plain wrong. To his

credit, ETZ did get his initials right in the title blocks.)

Steve Hinton’s Tide Gate Disaster at Fornsby Creek

Ed and I marketed my tide gate design in Skagit County in March of 2004. I made the Power Point Show and I

did most of the talking during the presentation. A few days later, I received a call from Allison Studley of the

Skagit Fisheries Enhancement Group. Allison informed me that Steve Hinton, the Director of the Skagit River

System Cooperative, had grant money for a tide gate project in Skagit County and he wished to meet me. I

drove to La Conner where I met Steve and we looked at an existing flap-gated culvert in the levee west of the

Swinomish Channel. This was an ideal site and project for my tide gate design.

I contacted Ed and got a price from him for performing the flow calculations. I contacted my fabricator and

got a price for a 48” size Aberdeen tide gate. I then made a preliminary design using H piles, driven sheet

piles43, a concrete headwall, and culvert - which I sent to the general contractor who did the South Aberdeen

project. Quigg Brothers quickly provided me with a quote for the work.

42

It’s interesting to note that the date on the Draft Drawings is the same as the date on the final drawings. ETZ & RAB

couldn’t manage to put the proper date in an unambiguous format on the Port Stanley drawings. 43

Steve elected to use a layer of quarry spalls for the foundation of the culvert and tide gate that was ultimately

installed. Within a few years, the foundation failed and the failure was nearly catastrophic.

38

INCA Engineers requires that a second Project Manager review all proposals to clients to make sure they are

reasonable. The PM who reviewed my proposal suggested that INCA’s fee should be more like $90,000 –

rather than $20,000. I had to meet with the company president and assure him that I would work nights and

weekends on my own time if needed to do the engineering for this project. He reluctantly allowed me to

send Steve my proposal with $20,000 for my work.

Even at less than one quarter of the going rate, the engineering costs were unacceptable to Steve.

At Steve’s request, I reluctantly met with Mr. Jess Knutzen and Mr. Kim Nelson to see if they could fabricate

and install my tide gate for a lower cost than my preferred fabricator and general contractor. I had Jess and

Kim sign non-disclosure agreement documents and then I went over my tide gate design so that they would

have a basis for developing a cost proposal for Steve. I did not give them copies of my design drawings.

39

A few days later I received a phone call from Steve. He had figured out a way “to get this cost down in order

to seriously consider my design”. He told me that he had met with Jess and Kim and they had determined

that they could do his tide gate project without my help. That was the last time I spoke with Steve Hinton

until 2008 when I met him at the kick-off meeting for the flood gates for the ill-fated Fisher Slough project.

A few years later, I learned of Steve’s misadventures at Fornsby Creek from the web site for the:

Proceedings of the West Coast Symposium on the Effects of

Tide Gates on Estuarine Habitats and Fishes44

October 31–November 2, 2006 South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve

Smokehouse Floodplain/Fornsby Creek Habitat Reconnection Project

Steve R Hinton, Todd Mitchell, and Rachel Lovellford

Abstract

This project, conducted by the Swinomish tribal community of LaConner, Washington, focused primarily on the goal of providing fish passage at tide gates located on reservation lands. The project replaced traditional, top-hinged “flap style” tide gates in 2005 with a vertically hung, hydraulically controlled gate design that was first installed and tested in the Aberdeen area of Washington State by the Army Corps of Engineers45….

Results and Discussion

…Working diligently to secure funding tribal staff secured over $500,000 in commitments from the Salmon Recovery Funding Board (SRFB), the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS), and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) by the end of 2003. Desiring immediate and meaningful relief to habitat constraints within Swinomish Channel, the tribal community swiftly moved to implementation, foregoing more-detailed and specific studies and detailed project designs…

…Unfortunately, positive post-construction trends were offset by a design failure occurring in July 2006 that effectively ended the tide gate being operated at optimal conditions. Due to design and fabrication errors, the hydraulic controls providing resistance to tidal flows catastrophically failed…

It’s comical that Steve attributed the failure of his $500,000 tide gate project to “design failure” and “design

and fabrication errors”. Steve’s poor judgment and his decision to do engineering without an engineer is a

more valid explanation. (Karma is an even better explanation.)

44

http://seagrant.oregonstate.edu/sgpubs/onlinepubs/w06001.html 45

Actually it was designed by me, installed by Quigg Brothers, and tested by me while I was an employee for the US

Army Corps of Engineers. It would have been nice to have gotten a little credit…

40

Note that Tom Slocum mailed a draft copy of Ed’s deeply flawed tide gate drawings to Jess on May 10, 2005

(see the postmark on the envelope).This was in time for Jess to use Ed’s “design” to fabricate Steve Hinton’s

first tide gate at Fornsby Creek – the one that failed in July 2006.

In the short time span before Steve’s new tide gate failed catastrophically, Steve showed the tide gate to the

owner of a local fabrication company out of Burlington named “Golden Harvest”. In the preceding years,

Golden Harvest tried their hand at making fish friendly tide gates - and they had failed repeatedly. They were

more than happy to take over my tide gate design – courtesy of Ed Zapel, Tom Slocum, Jess Knutzen, and the

Skagit River System Cooperative.

In my humble opinion, this was despicable. (But within a

few short weeks, karma worked like magic!)

The photo to the right was taken from Golden Harvest’s

on-line tide gate brochure. In this photo, one of Steve

Hinton’s subordinates – Jef Parr (the person on the left) is

giving the owner of Golden Harvest – Mr. Kevin Buchanan

– and others, a briefing on Steve’s fatally-flawed copy of

my tide gate design46. This tide gate was produced using a

DRAFT version of Ed’s deeply flawed tide gate design.

It should come as no surprised that this tide gate failed

catastrophically not long after this photo was taken. It’s

strange that Golden Harvest would use this photo of the

Fornsby Creek tide gate in their literature. They didn’t

have anything to do with the design or fabrication of the

tide gate and it failed catastrophically. (They have no

ethical standards – they merely harvest gold.)

A few years ago, I was told that Golden Harvest sent a

letter to the Salmon Recovery Funding Board objecting to

the decision to use a Muted Tidal Regulator rather than

their knock-off of my tide gate design for the Fisher

Slough project.

There is a potential conflict of interests in the Fisher Slough flood gate debacle: 1) the Skagit River System

Cooperative handed my tide gate design to Golden Harvest; 2) Golden Harvest was thwarted in their attempt

to supply the tide gates for the Fisher Slough project; 3) The Skagit River System Cooperative performed fish

46

On May 4, 2004 Steve Hinton sent me an e-mail that included the following whimsical thought: “I’m sure that some

sort of legal document could be drafted that protects your intellectual investment.” It turns out that Steve was bluffing…

and I was unaware that I was in a poker game. I was simply trying to do great engineering to help endangered Chinook

salmon and improve wetlands. (What a fool I am.)

41

surveys at Fisher Slough and co-authored the Biological and Physical Effects of Fish-Friendly Tide Gates47; 4)

this report made the flood gates provided by Nehalem Marine look bad. 48

The Skagit River System Cooperative is obviously not independent of Golden Harvest. The referenced report

could be biased.

More on the Edison Slough Tide Gate

Golden Harvest’s first attempt to make a copy of my Aberdeen tide gate design was at Edison Slough. It

didn’t work there at all. (There’s this thing called “Karma.) I can prove that the photo on the preceding page

taken at Fornsby Creek was shot a few months before the Edison Slough tide gate project was under way.

Ed’s tide gate design virus had spread from Tom, to Jess, then to Steve, and now to Golden Harvest.

The Edison Slough tide gate is not a carbon copy of Ed’s Port Stanley tide gate. It looks virtually identical to

my Aberdeen tide gates – sans the composite gate leaf. I think that Golden Harvest realized that they were

dealing with a design virus, so they discarded Ed’s Port Stanley design and somehow got their hands on the

original Aberdeen contract drawings. It’s possible that by this time Ed realized that his Port Stanley design

was hopeless and embarrassing. It’s not hard to imagine him attempting to salvage Pacific Engineers’

reputation by providing Golden Harvest with a set of the original Aberdeen tide gate drawings.

The State of Washington and Skagit County had nothing to show for their Waterman SRT at Edison Slough –

except for House Bill 1418. HB 1418 passed unanimously and was signed by Governor Gary Locke (D) in May

of 2003. It exempted agricultural drainage from the Department of Fish & Wildlife’s fish passage

requirements. The fish advocates in Skagit County attempted to demonstrate that agricultural drainage and

flood protection were compatible with fish passage. Instead, they wound up with a restraining order. Good

Job!

In December of 2006, Strider Construction completed the second attempt at a tide gate at Edison Slough – it

was an even more pathetic tide gate installation than the first. After it closed during the flood tide, it never

opened. I’m sure that Strider Construction did nothing wrong. I actually know the Superintendent for Strider

Construction who did this project – Mr. Dennis Uecker - although I haven’t seen him since 2003. He was a

very capable superintendent.

The tide gate was provided by Golden Harvest. That was the root of the problem – and karma.

This wasn’t a “feature accomplishment”, but Skagit County did produce a nice flyer for the project (see

below). There is no mention in the flyer that the tide gate was “stuck shut” for a few years. Per the flyer, the

Aberdeen type SRT “should exhibit improved performance”.

47

See page 4 for the cover of this report. 48

This is as complicated and bizarre as Oedipus’ connection to his father & mother. (Thankfully the patricide and

motherly love of Oedipus Rex doesn’t apply to my story.

42

Back to Fisher Slough…

Unfortunately for The Nature Conservancy and David Cline, Tom Slocum and Steve Hinton were considered

to be tide gate experts and they had a say in the Fisher Slough project. They both were at the first meeting

that I attended. I wasn’t happy to see Steve wander into the meeting a half hour after the meeting had

begun.

At the first break, Steve apologized for stiffing me with his Fornsby Creek project and he explained that he

paid dearly for his mistake with a series of problems on his bootleg tide gate project. He didn’t lose his job, so

technically only the environment, endangered Chinook salmon, and the state’s taxpayers paid dearly for his

mistake. I must not have been thinking clearly, because I accepted his apology and I was happy to have a role

in the Fisher Slough project… at first.

Tetra Tech’s plan for Fisher Slough was to develop a performance specification for a potentially lucrative

sole-source contract to procure Golden Harvest’s knock-off of my Aberdeen Tide Gate design. My assignment

43

was to write the performance specification. I was not particularly happy to oblige - and this was before

learned what an unethical company Golden Harvest is and that the Skagit River System Cooperative helped

them take over my design.

I got the distinct impression that Tom Slocum wasn’t thrilled to have me there. That makes sense, since from

Tom’s perspective Ed had thoroughly discredited me and my tide gate design.

After the meeting, Tom showed me a few

photos of a “Muted Tidal Regulator” and

asked me what I thought of it. The photo to

the right shows the Muted Tidal Regulator by

Nehalem Marine installed at Schneider Creek

in Whatcom County.

I wasn’t impressed with this design. A good

rule for any designer is what is known as “The

KISS Principle”:

Keep it Simple Stupid!

In terms of complexity, the device to the right

is patently ridiculous. Apparently Tom had

some clout with TNC, because an even more

complicated version of the Muted Tidal

Regulator is what was ultimately installed at

Fisher Slough. Greed was also a factor since

Golden Harvest’s asking price for my Aberdeen tide gate design is $60,000 per copy49. Six copies of my tide

gate would be needed for a total cost of $360,000. This was more than twice what the Muted Tidal Regulator

cost50.

About this time, I learned about Golden Harvest’s knock-off copy of my Aberdeen tide gate at Edison Slough.

I made a trip to Edison Slough to see if I could figure out why Golden Harvest’s tide gate didn’t work. The

problem was obvious and it was at that point that I realized that it was likely that my Aberdeen design might

not work very well at Fisher Slough.

My Aberdeen tide gate requires outflow to open after it closes during the flood tide. If there are multiple tide

gates in parallel and if one gate opens before the others or if the volume of outflow is not sufficient, the

gates will not open very wide. This would be a serious problem. I suspect that not opening wide is one of the

main reasons that the Muted Tidal Regulator at Fisher Slough does not allow / encourage juvenile Chinook to

pass upstream as well as the wide-open / tied-open original flood gates did.

A few days later I came up with a revolutionary new way to make a self-regulating tide gate. It was even

more ingenious than my Aberdeen tide gate design. It was very simple, much less expensive, and operated

much better that my original design. It opens wide without requiring any outflow! Engineers at Tetra Tech

49

As compared to $40,000 per copy from my fabricator – per quotes for the Julia Butler Hansen tide gate project. 50

If the award amount for Nehalem Marine ($144,414) listed on the Recovery.org website can be taken seriously. I think

something doesn’t add up. See page 3.

44

and INCA declared that my design solution would not work. (Within two years I had several working copies of

this design. They all work great.)

I made a scale model of the existing Fisher Slough tide gates retrofitted with my new idea for a tide gate

control mechanism and I showed it to Steve Hinton. Steve thought it was wonderful: “I knew there had to be

a better way!” and he encouraged me to show it to the people at the Mount Vernon office of The Nature

Conservancy – and I did.

The project manager for Tetra Tech – David Cline - was furious about this and I was nearly fired as a result.

INCA convinced Tetra Tech that a written reprimand was sufficient and I was taken off the project. The

following day, I put in my two weeks’ notice at INCA. I left INCA on August 1, 2008.

Before leaving INCA, I made a preliminary cost estimate for installing my control mechanism on the existing

Fisher Slough flood gates. This estimate was never presented to the client. I believe that I could have

provided a functional self-regulating tide gate using my mechanism with the existing doors. The cost for

design, fabrication, and installation would have been under $25,000. It would have worked great and the

operation was very simple. The gates would open and close automatically to allow fish passage and prevent

flooding respectively.

As the Fisher Slough project played out, Mr. Cline chose to take Tom Slocum’s advice51 and use a very

complicated design – A Muted Tidal Regulator – produced by Nehalam Marine for the tide gates at Fisher

Slough. These gates work, but they are not always wide open and for some reason juvenile Chinook salmon

are hesitant to swim past them in order to access the newly created habitat upstream. The gates actually

creep closed during the flood tide. A video that I produced titled “Fisher Slough tide gate movie.wmv" shows

the flood gates operating during a flood tide. This video is available on YouTube52.

If my design had been used instead of the Muted Tidal Regulator, the cost savings would have amounted to

over $120,00053 and my gates would have been wide-open rather than only partially open. Fish passage

would have been as good as or better than the original tied-open flood gates. Flood protection would have

been extremely reliable and the head loss through the flood gates would have been miniscule.

51

After all, he is a professional engineer. 52

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbu76guE168 53

Nehalem Marine was paid $144,414 for the Muted Tidal Regulator.

45

Conclusion:

Greed54, arrogance, delusions of grandeur, and poor engineering has resulted in millions of dollars being

wasted on flawed tide gate projects in San Juan County and Skagit County. These projects have culminated in

the new flood gates - a Muted Tidal Regulator - for the $7.7 million Fisher Slough Freshwater Tidal Marsh

Restoration Project. The Fisher Slough flood gates have been investigated by NOAA and have been shown to

not improve fish passage for Chinook salmon.

In addition to problems with fish passage at the new flood gates, the Big Ditch to the north of the flood gate

on the west side of the site is a rancid cesspool. It also appears that “weapons of grass destruction” were not

actually used to control the Reed Canarygrass in the area. This invasive non-native species is the bane of

wetland restoration.

It grows from an aggressive underground stem system, forming massive

colonies that crowd out other vegetation. Its growth is so rapid and prolific, and

its environmental tolerances so broad, that it is capable of fully clogging stream

channels, filling shallow ponds and lakes, dramatically degrading fish and

wildlife habitat, and preempting ecological restoration efforts!55

In 2003, a Waterman-Nekton Self Regulating Tide Gate was installed at Edison Slough in Skagit County. The

objective was to demonstrate that flood control and agricultural drainage was compatible with fish passage.

The tide gate did not work well. The Edison Slough project resulted in House Bill 1418 which exempts

agricultural drainage from fish passage requirements.56

In 2009, a flood gate known as a Muted Tidal Regulator was installed at Fisher Slough as part of a dike

setback project. This was done to demonstrate that taking 60 acres of farmland out of production to restore

wetlands and create fish habitat was a good idea. Unfortunately juvenile salmon are not accessing the

restored wetlands. On top of that, the restored wetlands will likely be infested with Reed Canarygrass. What

legislation will our state government produce as the result of this failed project?

The prospects for future large-scale habitat restoration in Skagit County hinge on the success or failure of the

Fisher Slough project. That could be very unfortunate.

Millions of dollars have been wasted, farm land has been taken out of production, and a nuisance plant

species will inevitably invade the created habitat. If fish kills occur due to low DO, the endangered Chinook

salmon will be further imperiled.

54

Harvesting gold is the epitome of greed. 55

Society for Ecological Restoration International NW Chapter web site. 56

In 2008 I retrofitted this tide gate with a new control mechanism that allows fish passage and tidal flushing. It has

been operating flawlessly ever since.

46

The amount of money that has been spent on tide gate projects at Edison Slough ($1m), Port Stanley

($0.25m), The Smokehouse Floodplain ($0.5m), and now Fisher Slough ($7.7m) is over $9.5 million. This

amount of money is nearly half of the $21 million dollar cut to the WDFW operating budget for the 2009-

2011 biennium.

The state obviously cannot afford to waste money like this.

A Better Way

Rather than spending millions of dollars to take farmland out of production and use it to grow Reed

Canarygrass we should replace some of the over one hundred existing tide gates in the Lower Skagit River

with a tide gate design that provides flood protection, improves drainage, allows tidal exchange, and permits

fish passage.

Food production would not be reduced and millions of dollars would not be spent purchasing agricultural

land from farmers. In addition, flood protection and drainage would be improved. The tide gates that are

replaced would require less maintenance and the channels and ditches would not become choked with

weeds during the growing season. The use of herbicides would decrease and the expansive drainage system

could be left undisturbed for the benefit of plants, fish, amphibians and waterfowl.

The trash racks would be removed at these tide gates. This would significantly reduce the O&M burden for

the diking and drainage districts. In time, the diking and drainage districts would willingly replace most if not

all of the tide gates in the delta.

I have a design for a tide gate that is truly remarkable. It opens and closes automatically, and when it is open

it is always wide open.57 It only closes when necessary to prevent flooding. It is simple; it is fail-safe; it is

relatively inexpensive; and it has a design life of 50 to 100 years. Setting the control mechanism so that my

tide gate closes without allowing too much backflow is simple and fool-proof.

But I nearly get fired for coming up with it and suggesting that it should be used for the Fisher Slough project!

My revolutionary tide gate design could be used to replace traditional flap gates in the drainage systems in

locales with flood control projects where malaria is a problem. This could significantly reduce stagnant water

and thereby thwart mosquito breeding58. Malaria is obviously not a problem in Skagit County, but there are

undoubtedly hundreds of thousands of flap-gated culverts causing stagnant water in areas where malaria is

endemic.

57

Being wide open should improve the ability for fish to get past the open flood gates. 58

As well as snail-borne schistosomiasis.

47

Malaria became widely recognized in Greece by the 4th century BCE, and it was responsible for the decline of

many of the city-state populations.59 Malaria was likely the plague that is referred to in the Oedipus Rex

story.60

The World Health Organization estimates that more than a half million people die each year due to infection

with the mosquito-borne parasites of the genus Plasmodium. Plasmodium causes the disease known as

Malaria. Mosquitoes are also vectors for West Nile Virus, Dengue Fever, Yellow Fever, Encephalitis and other

serious diseases.

Shannon and Wilson, northwest hydraulic consultants, The Nature Conservancy, and the “Tide Gate Experts”

of Skagit County have wasted millions of dollars and they have imperiled endangered Chinook salmon that

are alleged to be headed for extinction. In addition, they have sabotaged a water control device that could

reduce human suffering caused by mosquito-borne diseases.

My engineering career has been irreparably harmed, I have been ruined financially, and this debacle has

thwarted an opportunity to significantly relieve human suffering on a large scale.

…look on Oedipus.

He solved the famous riddle with his brilliance,

…Who could behold his greatness without envy?

…Now as we keep our watch and wait the final day,

Count no man happy till he dies, free of pain at last.

59

CDC Website http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/history/ 60

Athens suffered from plague in the years prior to Sophocles writing Oedipus Rex (first performed in 429 BCE) and

plague is a key element in the play. It is likely that the plague was malaria.

The Fisher Slough Flood Gate Debacle

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Transcript of The Fisher Slough Flood Gate Debacle