The Nature Conservancy - Just Add Water

Go Deeper

The Nature Conservancy in Oregon
The Nature Conservancy owns or manages 46 nature preserves
and has helped protect over 494,000 acres of important habitat in Oregon.

Explosives Aid Wetland Restoration in Klamath Basin
See a video and slideshow of the blast!

The Conservnacy's Global Freshwater Team
The Conservancy is providing global leadership in environmental flow science and management.

The Essence of Marsh

For a couple of hours after the levee blast at the Williamson River Delta Preserve, something slightly unsettling happens: nothing. Then, late in the afternoon, under a desert sky hemmed at the horizon with a fringe of cloud, an apparent mirage appears in the former wheat and potato fields. Fingers of water begin trickling through the muck-strewn blast zone, slowly working their way into the preserve. Pushing down a dirt farm road, they send up smoky wisps of dust ahead of them and look almost molten. Slowly, the preserve starts to fill with water.

Warren Olson, the construction manager, rolls his pickup along one of the remaining sections of levee, keeping his eyes on the runnels of water as they creep farther into the fields. When the smoke and dust have settled, a ripped-up section of levee still holds fast. But Olson is unconcerned. Soon enough, he says, the lake’s wind-driven waters “will just start meltin’ that booger.” By the end of the week, 2,000 acres will be underwater.

A hard-to-place, slightly chemical reek wafts in on the wind, suggesting a lingering trace of Jerry Wallace’s explosives. Olson takes a deep sniff and laughs. “Nope, that’s peat dirt,” he says. “That’s thousand-year-old dirt: the essence of marsh.”

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