SEQUIM – This is a winter of discontent, marked by a kind of earthquake beneath the Dungeness Valley. From Sequim Bay to Siebert Creek, a century of Peninsula history is being redrawn.
Construction crews are closing up the irrigation ditches that made the prairie bloom and laying pipes in their place.
Glenda Swain Cable, who purchased her property northwest of Sequim 16 years ago – partly because it had a ditch running through it – understands why it must go.
Ditches are sapping the valley’s health, wasting precious Dungeness River water through evaporation, thus robbing salmon of habitat.
They collect stormwater, harmful chemicals and bacteria and pour them into the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
So Cable’s ditch, at 110 years old, is a dinosaur – but it’s also a magnet for birds and squirrels.
Alders and firs flourished around it.
But then came the pre-pipeline work crews, digging, damaging fences and otherwise disturbing the peace, to Cable’s mind.
She knows her big trees will die when the ditch dries up, and thinks they could come crashing down onto the roofs of her outbuildings.
But when she asked the workers hired by the Clallam Ditch Co. when they would remove the trees, Cable heard no straight answers.
Finally Cable and her husband, Richard, sent a letter to ditch company board members Danny Smith and Roger Schmidt, describing damages done and asking for accountability.
“We are tired of construction people passing the buck and ignoring the issues,” the Cables wrote in the Jan. 20 letter.
“We are not the only ones upset with the lack of communication.”
Monday evening, at the Clallam Ditch Co. annual meeting, four dozen farmers and other land owners filled McCleay Hall.
