The Unfulfilled Promise

It was a well-intended experiment to save a park but instead illustrated the sometimes tragic consequences of challenging nature. Its final lesson however showed that can happen when agencies work together.

The careful observer might notice a few steel piles clustered along the river bank upstream from Woodson Bridge State Recreation Area. The piles (hollow metal pipes) are monuments to a bank protection project that generated hope, disappointment, controversy, and tragedy in its 11-year life span.

Conceived and built to control the river and direct its erosive currents, the Palisades never fully met the expectations promised. Though the river somewhat relented at first, it eventually prevailed, adding mishap and misfortune to disappointment in the project’s failure.

The Experiment Begins
Twelve years ago, state officials gathered to celebrate the Palisades groundbreaking. The project promised to save the Woodson Bridge State Recreation Area, which was literally eroding away. Since the park opened in 1964, the river had devoured 800 feet of riverbank.

“It’s a beautiful park,” says Koll Buer, a Senior Engineering Geologist with DWR’s Northern District. “It is one of the few areas with high-terrace-valley-oak woodland vegetation.”

While it gnawed at the park’s riverbank in its effort to change course, the river deposited sand and gravel on the opposing shoreline. But state officials judged it a poor tradeoff. The park with its paths, roads, picnic tables, and oak trees, was too valuable to sacrifice for the inaccessible wild riparian growth on the opposite shore. A decision was made to stop the erosion, if possible, and do so in a way that caused the least environmental damage to the park and riverbank.

Satisfied with the installation officials prepared to monitor the progress. Their confidence however began waning during the next few years.

Disappointment and Tragedy
“It did slow the bank erosion process. In fact there was very little erosion during the first nine years, but very little sediment deposition occurred,” says Buer.

Such results were not entirely unexpected since Ercon’s previous Palisades projects had been used in rivers with slower flows and vastly greater amounts of sediment, in contrast to the Sacramento River’s stronger flows carrying less sediment. Under these conditions, netting design did not provide sufficient resistance to allow sediment to drop out.

The Palisades installation was moving the deepest part of the river away from the park, but seasonal floods were damaging the project, ripping out the netting and some of the piles. By 1994, half the nets and 10 to 20 percent of the piles were bent or missing. (Although maintenance of the project may have prolonged the structure’s integrity and improved results, the Palisades was consciously being conducted as a “maintenance-free” experiment.)

Reports of occasional boating mishaps suggested that the Palisades posed a navigation hazard. Upstream warning signs directed boaters away from the project, but the signs were vandalized or ignored. Boasters sometimes found themselves caught in the maze of piles and cargo nets, and the swift current caused an occasional craft to capsize. Fortunately, passengers avoided injury during these incidents, though they sometimes lost their craft.

Then disaster struck. In August 1995, a canoe carrying several teenage boys became entangled in the Palisades. The strong current crushed the canoe against one of the piles, trapping 15-year-old Jimmy Bashaw under water. His friends desperately tried to rescue him, but they could not overcome the strong currents. Rescue units pulled him out, but he did not survive.

Following this event, the boy’s mother, Jeannette Bashaw, urged state officials to modify the project to make that portion of the river safer for recreational users. Her efforts, plus reevaluation of the system by DWR staff after the 1997 floods further damaged the structure, led Director David Kennedy to direct that the dangerous portions of the project be removed expeditiously.

Dismantling and Teamwork
The end of the Palisades was now a foregone conclusion, and Koll Buer was assigned in March 1997 to head the dismantling project. State and federal agencies (DWR, Fish and Game, Parks and Recreation, Reclamation Board, Corps of Engineers, Boating and Waterways, Caltrans, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, and environmental organizations) cut through the red tape in record time as DWR sought contractors bids.

“We were limited in terms of time,” recalls Buer. “We had the winter-run salmon fingerlings coming downstream, which meant there could be no in-stream activity, no turbidity after August 15.”

Also, as with the installation, the dismantling had to be done from the river to limit environmental damage to the riverbank. DWR’s Division of Engineering prepared the design and contract documents, solicited bids, and awarded the contract in near record time.

DOE awarded the contract to DD-M Crane and Rigging from Riverside, and the first equipment began arriving in July at a staging area next to the Woodson Bridge. By July 18, the contractor, under the direction of DOE’s Sacramento Project Headquarters, had barges, cranes, and the tugboat in position and began removing the piles and debris. Workers used a vibrating hydraulic extractor to loosen each pile so that a crane could pull it out. Some piles came out quickly, others did not, and some broke off.

The first vibrating head did not work well and was replaced with a different more effective head. Also, submerged snags interfered with the project and had to be removed. “We anticipated snags up to two feet in diameter, but we had full-sized trees four and a half to five feet in diameter,” says then Chief Inspector Sonny Fong.

Meanwhile, DWR environmental specialists monitored the project, watching for water turbidity and oil and fuel spills.

During the project Jeanette Bashaw twice visited the project. DWR Division of Engineering Chief Les Harder first accompanied her and her family to witness construction progress. DOE's Program Manager Maynard Flogaug escorted during her second visit.

“We were moving the piles where her son died, and she wanted to see those piles removed,” Maynard recalls. “We took her out on the water. She got to see the piles removed, and she put flowers in the water. It was a pretty touching time.”

Trouble Happens
Later in the project, the dangerous river current that contributed to her son’s death caused another accident at the removal site. Just before completion, with three piles left to be removed, the tugboat capsized while trying to maneuver the barges into position. Trouble began when the river current wedged the tug against the three piles. DOE Environmental Specialist John Squires happened to be on the tug when it capsized.

“Things happened very quickly,” recalls Squires. “He (the captain) put the tug in reverse and put full power to the engines, and the tug began to list to the port side. I’m up on the bow, hanging on.

“When it started to list, the captain jumped overboard with the tug still in reverse, the engines wide open. As soon as the water broke over the freeboard onto the deck, the tug just rolled on over. I couldn’t jump because of the cables and rigging. So I chose to hang on to a suspended cable until the tug got up to about a 45-degree angle, and at that point I was able to dive off. Unfortunately I had to dive upstream of the tugboat. My concern was that the current would push me back and I would get lodged under the tug and drown.”

Fortunately, the tug began to float downstream before sinking, and Squires was able to keep his distance. Shortly after, the work boat came over and pulled him in. Still drenched and shaken from the incident, Squires notified DOE Headquarters and requested the contractor contact their hazmat team. Then he left for a medical checkup. He was back on-site the next day, monitoring the water for leaking fuel and oil from the submerged tug.

“I was a little shaky for a day or so. It was a real close call,” he says.

Back on the Job
The contractor’s workers and divers worked all night, raised the tug the next day, and transported it to Rio Vista for repairs. The tug was back on the job a week and a half later.

The accident, and a decision to remove additional piles, extended the project completion past the August 15 deadline. Again, the agencies scrambled to review and approve new environmental permits, and the last pile was pulled on August 23.

“We pulled out about 300 piles,” says Buer. “Originally there were 365, but we left some because they had worked.”

Buer says the remaining piles pose little or no navigation hazard. He is disappointed that the Palisades failed to work as expected, but, excluding the tug incident, he feels good about the removal project.

“I never had an opportunity to work on a project as good as this one in terms of cooperation of all the agencies,” he says. “Everybody just pitched in to get this project done.”

Maynard Flohaug agrees.

“Two months is a short period of time to get it all done. You have to get environmental permits, and you have to get authority to advertise contracts. Then you have to develop the contract, advertise it, and then do the construction work. We had to work together to make it happen,” he says.

With the Palisades now gone, state agencies are back where they were before the Palisades were built: searching for a solution to the original erosion problem. They hope to develop a plan this year. Meanwhile, the river continues to consume more of the valuable riverbank in its inexorable quest to change direction.