We may be entering a La Niña winter—when more snow on average can be expected than El Niño years—but just a few months ago a stretch of the Spokane River ran dry. This was likely the lowest the river has ever been, due to a combination of factors like changing climate patterns and groundwater use from an aquifer that’s not recharging fast enough to keep up with demand.
The river running dry is very concerning. Though cool water once again runs through these sections of the river, the low levels are harmful to our ecosystem—disrupting the life cycles of small invertebrates like flies and their larger crayfish cousins, and harming the entire web of life long after water returns.
A quick exploration of the Inland Northwest Special Collections reveals the river’s tumultuous history. For millennia it has provided a bountiful harvest for our region’s Indigenous peoples, but industrial activity, dam building, and waste dumping severely harmed its invaluable resources. It wasn’t until the World’s Fair of 1974 that things began to change for the better.
Though we’ve made much progress in the past fifty years, large scale challenges like a changing climate and increased water use continue to put a strain on our precious river and the aquifer it is closely tied to. The historic water level lows of this summer show that even with improvements, we still have more work to do.
To learn more about this topic, and to see first-hand how people are working to care for our river, I spent a day with a Spokane Riverkeeper team member this past September. The Riverkeeper is a nonprofit team of educators, advocates, and scientists who work to protect our river. We spent the day on the water, discussing the many ways the river can be cared for and loved. See the full adventure in our latest episode of Let’s Explore Spokane.
