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  • July

    Water flows through a fish ladder at John Day Dam in eastern Oregon. Fish ladders are effective at allowing fish to swim upstream of low-head or shorter dams on the Columbia River. John Day’s ladder is 1,080 feet long. (U.S. Army photo by Karim Delgado)

    That sounds fishy: fish ladders at high-head dams impractical, largely unneeded

    Humans. What other sentient being designs a tool requiring hands and feet and expects animals without limbs to use it? Alas, the answer is humans. Humans created a ladder for fish, which is quite effective in certain situations – but isn’t a blanket solution to every fish passage problem. And while most humans would agree that ladders can be useful for climbing short distances, perhaps 20-50 feet– another tool – like an elevator or truck – may be a better option to climb hundreds of feet. Otherwise, there would need to be more infrastructure to support that ladder, or perhaps it would need to be a staircase at that point. This is similar for fish when moving them up and downstream.

  • June

    The Essayons travelled north to the Corps’ Alaska District, to dredge the Cook Inlet Navigation Channel. A sudden surge of shoal material in the past two years reduced depths and affected navigation in the channel, which is the only Coast Guard marked route for all cargo and fuel ships supplying the Port of Anchorage.

    Big Bertha heads to Benson Beach, battles erosion

    Off the coast of Oregon, Big Bertha moves in the water, inching toward land. Bertha, as her government creators to refer to it, is the result of three years of inter-agency planning. Her architects; some of whom work for the Portland District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; conscripted half of Portland District’s dredge fleet to scrape the river bottom and collect what was to become Bertha: a migrating mound of sand.
  • Corps contractors monitor screw traps downstream of Cougar Dam, May 28, 2021. The water flow turns a large screw creating hydraulics, which keeps small fish from escaping the trap. These traps are collecting juvenile salmon after they pass through Lookout Point, Cougar and Big Cliff dams. We’ve changed operations at these dams to help with downstream fish passage – or that’s the goal. These traps will give us insight into how well we’re doing.

    That sounds fishy: twisting traps troll tributaries in the Willamette

    The bulky contraptions float listlessly downstream of three dams in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. The buoyant, metal devices hold large screws that the water flow turns. This twist of the screw – creating a creaking, rasping, scraping sound – generates enough hydraulics to keep small fish from escaping the slowly spinning, cone-shaped collectors – or, screw traps.

  • May

    A ranger stands in front of a dam spillway.

    'I had to be true to myself'

    "When I said no and that I was going to college, it broke her heart,” says Gentilcore. “She thought that I was always going to take over the family business.” Gentilcore left for college anyway. For her, the choice wasn’t about what others expected. It was about finding happiness.
  • A man in a blue button up shirt and blue fleece vest sits at his desk in his office.

    Building dams and, we hope, public trust

    I take pride in knowing my organization, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Portland District, has played an important role in the story of how our country taps into our water resources like the Willamette River. On April 17, the district celebrated 150 years of serving Oregon and southwestern Washington.    

  • February

    The Oregonian recognized the Corps' efforts to save the downtown Portland area from the flooding.

    Containing the Flood of 1996

    One of the biggest floods the Portland District faced in the late 20th century occurred in February 1996 and caused millions of dollars in damage to the region. The District played a crucial role in combating this flood 's impact through a variety of short-term and long-term activities.

  • January

    Workers place the new Auditorium building cupola within reach of the crane that will lift it into place.

    Dam, that’s a lot of work: Bonneville buildings get face lift, cupolas

    Portland District put new roofs – one of the most vital parts of a building in the rainy northwest – on the Bonneville Project Office and Auditorium buildings, which are included in the list of National Historic Landmarks.

  • December

    Headshot of a man with a short beard. He is wearing glasses, a light-gray suit, baby-blue shirt and dark tie.

    Hydropower to the people: Mathematician brings energy to new position

    In the wet world of hydropower, a former math teacher has just donned a watery mantle to meet the changing demands of one of the oldest sources of energy.
  • Brigadier General Peter Helmlinger, Northwestern Division commander, toured the Portland Veteran's Affairs Medical Center (PVAMC) with Portland District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers team members who are working on designs and plans to retrofit the PVAMC, Sept. 28, 2018. The tour was a way for District staff to discuss the difficulties the team will face during seismic retrofitting.

    Crowded crest in Portland confronts crafty crew of engineers, planners

    The Portland Veterans Affairs Medical Center campus sits on a 450-foot-tall basalt-rock hill south of downtown. Marquam Hill, also known as “Pill Hill” due to the amount of medical facilities clustered on its crest, is also crowded with homes, steep slopes and daily commuters (during non-pandemic times). These steep and rocky slopes garnered ridicule for Dr. Kenneth Mackenzie when he initially proposed to build a medical school on Marquam in 1914. According to Oregon Health and Science University’s historical collections, “The land, unusable to the railroad company, came to be known as ‘Mackenzie’s Folly’ in reference to its location on an inaccessible hilltop.”

  • November

    Left: Anthony Johnson, technical writer-editor (engineering) with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Portland District, during his first deployment to Afghanistan, from 2004 to 2005. Right: Johnson in November 2019 at the district's headquarters in downtown Portland.

    From self-hate to self-love: An Army veteran’s journey of healing

    Whatever else Anthony Johnson could say about their military service, it at least gave them a friend who cared enough to hide Johnson’s pistol away from them at a time when Johnson might have used it to end their own life.

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