Thanks, Jack.

Yes, you can use what I wrote below. I also used the knowledge of
Roger Lowe, P.E.. an
experienced retired geotechnical engineer ([email-masked]) .

I was involved in the "stakeholder" meetings which
discussed the public rule you have a link to. These meetings were held summer
2009, and were a put up job, run by a facilitator. The great majority were fish
enhancement folks, including WDFW. There were 4 people who paddled rivers,
and one drift boat guide, of 20 people total. At the end, I was the only one
who said, "I see death and destruction coming from this LWD policy". Everyone
else had caved to the public pressure of a meeting, or were already proponents
of more wood.

I will say that at the first meeting, David Brock, Regional
Habitat Program Manager of WDFW, talking with me during a recess in the
meeting, agreed with me that "There's something wrong with the engineering
at the county."

The county's claim that no deaths have happened because of their
woody debris is irrelevant, because these accidents are rare occurrences.
First, not that many people run rivers. Second, there are "near
misses" which aren't reported to authorities. There were 3 rescues this
year, two on the Cedar and one on the Green. These were the ones in the
newspapers.

After 15 years of working on the county to improve their safety of
LWD installations, they are improving somewhat. They are using "deflector
logs", i.e. no root wad logs attached to the LWD at the low water
elevation when river travelers are expected to be present. This doesn't address
those on the river at higher water levels. For a recent job on the lower Cedar
River, they told us they had actually "tubed"
the river, i.e. went downstream on inner tubes.

Even so, the policy of adding more and more wood will eventually
cause death and property destruction. Attached is a warning of danger from
trees published in the 1982 Washington Kayak Club member's handbook.
Experienced river paddlers, like myself, have known
this long before the county started their program.

Martha Parker

In a message dated 10/19/2010 9:32:15 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
[email-masked] writes:

Great job Martha thanks a lot.  I will post your comments and
may send out if Ok with you.  I have an inside word that King County is
starting another woody debris blocking.  They have
hired one of my neighbors old friends as a consultant.
I can't find the project on there site, it may
be covered up with one of their other projects.

Also found the attached on the ignored safety issues and here http://www.kingcounty.gov/council/news/2009/June/LP_woodydebris.aspx.
These county are idiots.  Even the City of
Seattle employees think they are as well as the vendors.  That says a
lot.  We have an ex county type on our road who I know, and in dealing
with him on simple road maintenance, it makes a couple of wonder where he is
coming from.

This is a lie:

http://www.kingcounty.gov/environment/watersheds/general-information/large-wood/large-wood-faq.aspx#7

Has anyone died as a result of encountering placed large wood in
King County rivers?

There have been no known deaths as a result of wood placed by King
County. There were on average three river drowning deaths annually (compared to
11 annually in lakes), according to data from the King County Medical Examiner
and Public Health -- Seattle & King County regarding preventable
deaths by drowning from 1996-2006. None pf the deaths
were attributed to large wood during this 10-year period. According to the same
document, most cases of drowning could have been prevented through the use of a
personal floatation device (PFD), child supervision, avoiding alcohol
consumption near bodies of water, and other safety measures.

Jack Venrick

PS I have website documentary going out today on how the State of
Washington constitutionS are cooked and all the state
and US constitutions.  This is how they do it.  When the territories
were rolled over into the union, the prominent political attorneys and
politicians wrote up the constitutions more as municipal corporation bylaws
than constitutional republic constitutions focused on protecting the
sovereignty of the natural born state Citizens.

Jack

----- Original Message -----

From: [email-masked]

To: [email-masked]

Sent: Tuesday, October 19,
2010 12:26 AM

Subject: Boise Creek

Hello, Jack,

I can't keep up with all the emails I'm
getting. So I keep yours for a while and read them some more. I just got
through seeing your pictures again on Boise Creek. I checked out who owns the
land at the creek mouth - of course it's King County. Seattle Public Utilities
also owns some nearby - upstream along the White River.

I checked this out easily at the site www.kingcounty.gov/ddes/ and used
Parcel Viewer. This is easy to do, and you can just use the map to zero in on
the area you want - you don't need to have an address or parcel number.

I checked out the Salmon Recovery
Funding Board grants, and found the project, which is in the next paragraph.
(The formatting is messed up). So I found the Puyallup Tribe got $95,000 in
2008. Most of this money usually comes from the feds, some from the state.

Puyallup Tribe of Indians $95,000

Relocating Boise Creek Channel and Providing Fish Passage

The Puyallup Tribe of Indians will use this grant to design and engineer two
projects––

one to relocate Boise Creek to its historic channel within the Enumclaw Golf
Course,

and one to provide fish passage above Boise Creek Falls. Relocating the channel
will

provide shade, better cover and other habitat benefits, and will reduce human

disturbance to spawning fish. The fish passage project will open more than 1
mile of

habitat, increasing spawning habitat in the creek by 20 percent. The newly
opened

segment will offer better overall habitat than areas downstream because it is
in a forest.

The tribe will contribute $25,000. (08-2006)

I attended the SRFB meetings a
couple of times, a couple of years ago. They usually decide which grants to
make in their December meeting. Their meetings, agendas and minutes are on
their website. www.rco.wa.gov/boards/srfb_meetings.shtml
Once you write them, or attend a meeting, you will be on their email list. I
went there to complain that their money was used for an LWD project that killed
someone.

Large woody debris projects can kill
people. That's what happened on the Soleduck on the
Olympic Peninsula in 2006. A suit was instituted, and the family actually got
$225,000. The woody debris that trapped a young lady has now been removed, and
the steel H-piles that provided attachment to the LWD with chain have been
cut off at the river botttom.

There is another suit pending against
the county for the permanent brain damage accident that occurred on the Cedar
in 2002. Trial is expected to be in January.

Even though the Boise Creek project
started by clearing the land, they probably did that so they could
re-shape it. I feel sure they will plant lots of trees and bushes there, all
native plants. It will take years to recover, of course.

There must be a salmon recovery group
for the White, just as there is for the Green, Cedar and other river basins all
over the state. You could find out where and when they meet, and raise some
hell at the meetings.

I brought pictures of the county
structural failures of their woody debris projects to a meeting of the Green
salmon recovery folks. They are still creating failures, as of 2008. They had
to re-engineer and re-create a project on the Cedar. This has now been
completed this year. The old failed one created a problem in Renton when some
of their woody debris got stuck under the Williams Ave. bridge
in Renton. Renton had to cut it out, and discovered the steel understructure
had been bent by the impact. The bridge also carries a gas line, which could
have exploded.

This Boise Creek project reminds me of
the one on the Tolt. They have destroyed most of
the road we used to park cars, so we could canoe out the mouth of the Tolt and take out on the Snoqualmie, which I found a neat
experience. Acres of land at the Tolt mouth are now
meant to be swampy and have plenty of large woody debris. They have even created
several large ditches to carry high water from the lower Tolt
into their new habitat.

This program is not only going on all
over our nation, but in Europe as well. The main problem with these projects is
that there is often no competent engineering used. The managers all seem to be
ecologists. The so-called "science" is fish science and completely
ignores the practical science of structural engineering coupled with
geotechnical expertise. There are some scientific articles in the science literature
pointing out these failures. But the great majority completely ignores a proper
approach.

Even though we have plenty of laws on
the books to safeguard humanity and property, the people who are running these
projects are purposely disregarding human safety. This points
to them having a philosophy that people are bad, and should be at the bottom of
consideration, whereas animals and plants should be at the top. There are now
lawyers to defend plants!

In Washington, as far as I can
determine, we still have laws to protect humans. The environmentalists haven't
yet got them all removed from the books. I think these folks need some
publicity.

Martha Parker