Murky outlook at Wanapum Dam

By: Kate Prengaman
Yakima Herald-Republic

VANTAGE — The boat ramp stretches out into mud, mud and more mud. Nearly 100 feet of mud now stands between the launch at Wanapum Recreational Area and the water.

That’s what a 26-foot drop in this stretch of the Columbia River looks like — dead-end docks, drying and dying mussels, newly exposed sandbars and a couple stranded boats tied up below the Interstate 90 bridge. Farther upriver, the low water revealed what authorities suspect are human bones.

It has been a half-century since the water was this low. That was 1964, the year the Wanapum Dam began full hydropower operations.

Now, long-submerged shorelines are again visible because the Grant County Public Utility District has dropped water levels to relieve pressure from a recently discovered crack in one of the dam’s 12 spillways. Read more