Duwamish River

Lower reaches of the Duwamish River over the First Avenue South Bridge (Washington State Route 99). Kellogg Iceland is visible to the north.

Duwamish River in South Park, Seattle.

Duwamish River is the name of the last 19 km of the Green River in the U.S. state of Washington. Being strong industrially used estuary is known as the Duwamish Waterway.

History

Not originally led White and Green River at Auburn each other, but resulted in Tukwila in the Black River and formed the Duwamish River. In 1906, the White River but changed its course during a great flood and emptied since then in the Puyallup River. A few years later, in 1912, the Cedar River was diverted and now flows into Lake Washington instead of as before although the lake itself still drains into the Black River, in these. With the opening of the Lake Washington Ship Canals in 1916, the level of the lake dropped by about 2.7 meters and the Black River dried up. That is why the point of the name change from Green River to the Duwamish River no longer the confluence of the Green and Black River, although the location has not changed.

The river is named after the Indian tribe of the Duwamish.

Use

The Duwamish Waterway empties into Elliott Bay in Seattle, Washington, and is divided by the man-made Harbor Iceland into two channels, East and West Waterway.

Due to the heavy pollution from the industrial use of lower, 8 -kilometer section of the river of the United States Environmental Protection Agency declared a Superfund project. Among the pollutants in the river include PCBs, PAHs, mercury, and phthalates. The rehabilitation of the river was controversial. The original plan was to dredge the river and take the occurring in the sewage sludge about 40 kilometers southwest lies Commencement Bay in Tacoma, but the local resistance against this plan forced the transport of sewage sludge into the Klickitat County in Washington south.

Currently, there is an active PCB leak on the north side of the river. It is known that the pollutants via drainage pipes from the northern end of the production area of Boeing come, but the exact cause is not clear. For this reason, the rehabilitation of the river is stopped until the cause of the pollutants is found.