Sometimes complex problems have simple solutions. For 30 years proposals have been floated to improve salmon habitat in the Stillaguamish River’s old channel, known as “Old Stilly.” And for 30 years, every proposal was deemed too expensive or too impractical. Then local Flood Control Commissioner, Chuck Hazleton, started experimenting with more efficient ways to control the flow of water, and the community came together to create a homegrown solution.

Chuck is a salty character with a bristly beard and a pipe often clamped between his lips. He worked building docks and tunnels before he became Flood Control District Commissioner for Snohomish County, which requires him to spend too much time in meetings for his taste. The old channel restoration project got him back to the construction projects he enjoys.

Until flooding altered the course of the Stillaguamish River, the old channel was the river’s last eight miles to Puget Sound. Chuck explains, “In the old days, they took the channel and straightened it out so they could bring logs down it as there was considerable logging activity up on the hill. Why they chose this path is beyond me when there was a much shorter one.” With flooding in 1912, the river took the more direct two-mile course to the bay, leaving the old channel to stagnate during the dry months, often stranding out-migrating juvenile salmon in what Chuck calls “a deoxygenated dead zone.”

The dairy farmer with property at the mouth of Old Stilly suggested the installation of a water control structure to capture the tidal surge, reconnecting the old channel to the river system and providing much-needed side channel rearing habitat for endangered salmon. The project was funded by the Washington Salmon Recovery Funding Board and co-sponsored by the Stillaguamish Flood Control District, the Stillaguamish Tribe, and Snohomish County.

The Army Corps of Engineers was an early partner, but their plan turned out to be like others that had been proposed before: too complicated and too expensive. Chuck laughs as he recalls their estimate, “They got the price of it up to about $435,000, and we didn’t have that much money so we fired them.” A local engineering firm, Chinook Engineering, designed a smaller scale alternative – a concrete structure that stretches across Old Stilly with tidegates that close as the tide recedes, pushing water down the eight miles of old channel and eliminating the seasonal dead zone.

Getting permits was the next hurdle, and it proved to be sizable. “Project planning took three years and a lot of hydraulic studies,” explains Chuck. “It amazes me how much money can be spent on engineering a pile of dirt.” There was also a lot of resistance from agencies. Chuck turned his attention to the design of the tidegates themselves and developed a plywood prototype that seemed a significant improvement over the much heavier tidegates typically used. “I started playing around with plywood and ended up with ultra high molecular weight polyethylene and high strength rust resistant alloy steel,” he explains.

The construction phase of the restoration project was logistically challenging and relied heavily on local volunteer efforts. “We had six days to build this thing between the tides,” recalls Chuck. “The very first thing that happened was our coffer dam failed and we had to find different ways to do things. We called up the local quarry at seven o’clock in the morning saying we are in deep trouble, we need another 400 ton of big rock. Half an hour later the trucks were showing up. Nobody else would have done that, but they wanted this to succeed.”

It took the support of the entire community to make the project work. Chuck shares one of many examples: “One of the guys that lives in the neighborhood came by and saw that we needed help, and called into work and said, ‘I’m not coming in today.’ He came down here, climbed on a piece of equipment and went to work. People weren’t going to let it fail.” Chuck put in a lot of volunteer time on the project himself. “Because I’m a Commissioner with the Flood Control District, I can only be paid to go to meetings, so they got a lot of free work out of me,” he laughs. Other local volunteers worked replanting Old Stilly’s banks and clearing invasive blackberries and reed canary grass to make way for shade trees.

Chuck is clearly proud of what was accomplished – neighbors working together and a final result that cost less than half of what the Army Corps proposed. “Now throughout the whole low tide cycle there is a flow of water where it used to be just sandbars and pools,” he explains. The project also brought together constituents that didn’t always see eye to eye.

Chuck’s lighter tidegates were an important contribution to this breakthrough. “The most significant change is the way the hinge mechanism works,” he says. “It’s what allows the water to pass more freely.” Chuck took a fish scale and pulled on the gates when he had them hanging in the shop, and found that it only took seven pounds of pressure to open a gate a foot. He explains, “With the old gates – most are cast iron – you had to have a tremendous amount of pressure on them to open, so when the water did hit, it spread out wide and was diverted out.” The new tidegates help keep the channel clean because there is a constant, direct stream – benefiting farmers and the fish. “It is just incredible how changing a hinge mechanism can make a difference!” remarks Chuck.

Once the gates on the old channel project were replaced, it was clear there were other applications for the tidegates. Chuck explains, “We had the material, the district was going to replace some other gates, so the Tribe and community joined together again.” The second project involved replacing the tidegates in a nearby drainage structure designed to prevent saltwater from intruding into farm fields, while still allowing for fish passage to over 14 miles of upstream habitat. Chuck eagerly reports, “We are getting the chum salmon back. They have been planting chum upstream for years and not getting anything back, and all of sudden we change the gates and get a few back! The new tidegates give farmers what they need in drainage, and give the Tribes unobstructed access for their fish.”

The Stillaguamish Flood Control District has constructed nine of the new improved tidegates so far. “I kid about it being patent pending,” Chuck laughs, “but I don’t think, practically, you could do such a thing. I figure if I want to build these things, I’ll just build them cheaper than anyone else who wants to fool with them.” The scope of use for the tidegates is broad – applicable anywhere with tidal influence and drainage. Chuck envisions that tidegate technology will continue to improve now that it has been given a much-needed nudge.