Has anybody researched the earthen damn on Lake Vancouver at 45-40.165N 122-44.650W? It appears to control the depth of Vancouver Lake.
R99 knows quite a bit about Vancouver Lake, its history, reclamation, etc. You might do a search at DZ. We discussed it there. And of course there's the internet....
NMI, I don't see a dam at the coordinates you give. There seems to be a paved road (and maybe an unpaved road) there but no dam.
Here are some elevations to keep in mind when discussing the Portland, Vancouver, and Tina Bar areas. The Portland International Airport is listed as being 30 feet above sea level.
The river gage is on the Vancouver side of the river and typically lists the river surface elevation at only about 5 or 6 feet above sea level. And it is about 100 river miles to the Pacific Ocean. That means the "downslope" to the Pacific is only about 1 foot for ever 20 miles downstream. For comparison, the Mississippi River between Minneapolis and the Gulf of Mexico has a "downslope" of about 1 foot per mile.
Tina Bar is about 10 miles downstream from the Vancouver river gage, so its typical river surface elevation is about one-half foot lower than that at the Vancouver gage.
The point of the Flushing Channel is to move Columbia River water into Vancouver Lake. Typically, the lake gets a large part of the rain water run off from the city of Vancouver, which contains a lot of urban pollution. In order for the Flushing Channel to work, the river level has to be higher than the lake level (plus appropriate gates have to be opened at each end of the channel).
I have never seen a drop of water in the Flushing Channel. It is a relatively shallow and narrow (not more than 50 feet wide) channel that is easy to overlook when driving by or over it. The last time I saw it, it was overgrown with weeds and small bushes. It really needed to be mowed.
The Northwest Lower River Road is built on top of a levee in the Tina Bar area. There is about a 4 or 5 foot drop off on the east side of that road (toward Vancouver Lake). Consequently, water that is in Vancouver Lake will drain down the Lake River and enter the Columbia River about 15 or 20 miles downstream of the Tina Bar area. This means that anything that ends up in Vancouver Lake is going to completely bypass the Tina Bar area.
Was the construction of the Flushing Channel connected in any way to the money ending up at Tina Bar? My guess is that it probably is not. Some topographical maps still list the area between Caterpillar Island and the east shore of the Columbia River as a "mud flat". Nevertheless, in the 1970 aerial photograph of the Tina Bar area, the marina is shown in that channel in full force. And I have seen boats in that channel that probably had 4 or 5 foot drafts. There is no information on when that channel was dredged, as it probably would have to be prior to the construction of the marina.
So like most things related to the Cooper matter, we have a lot of questions but not many meaningful answers.
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