The Columbia Slough is a narrow waterway, about 19 miles (31 km) long, in the floodplain of the Columbia River in the U.S. state of Oregon. >From its source in the Portland suburb of Fairview, the Columbia Slough meanders west through Gresham and Portland to the Willamette River. It is a remnant of the historic wetlands between the mouths of the Sandy River to the east and the Willamette River to the west. Levees surround much of the main slough as well as many side sloughs, detached sloughs, and nearby lakes. Drainage district employees control water flows with pumps and floodgates. The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality and the city's Bureau of Environmental Services deal with environmental issues. Early attempts to mitigate the pollution, which included raw sewage and industrial waste, were unsuccessful. However, in 1952 Portland began sewage treatment, and over the next six decades the federal Clean Water Act and similar legislation mandated further cleanup. One of the nation's largest freshwater urban wetlands, Smith and Bybee Wetlands Natural Area, shares the lower slough watershed with a sewage treatment plant, marine terminals, a golf course, and a car racetrack. Watercraft able to portage over culverts and levees can travel the entire length of the slough. The 40 Mile Loop and other hiking and biking trails follow the waterways and connect the parks.
Read the rest of this article: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_Slough> _______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries: 1820: British authorities arrested the conspirators of the Cato Street Conspiracy, an attempt to murder Prime Minister Lord Liverpool and all the British cabinet ministers. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cato_Street_Conspiracy> 1861: President-elect of the United States Abraham Lincoln arrived secretly in Washington, D.C. for his inauguration, thwarting an alleged assassination plot in Baltimore. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltimore_Plot> 1941: Plutonium was first chemically identified by chemist Glenn T. Seaborg and his team at the University of California, Berkeley. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium> 1944: In response to an insurgency in Chechnya, the Soviet Union began the forced deportation of native Chechen and Ingush populations of North Caucasus to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Lentil_%28Caucasus%29> 1945: American photographer Joe Rosenthal took the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima during the Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II, an image that was later reproduced as the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_the_Flag_on_Iwo_Jima> _____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day: caldera (n): (geology) A large crater formed by a volcanic explosion or by collapse of the cone of a volcano <http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/caldera> ___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day: We cannot avoid conflict, conflict with society, other individuals and with oneself. Conflicts may be the sources of defeat, lost life and a limitation of our potentiality but they may also lead to greater depth of living and the birth of more far-reaching unities, which flourish in the tensions that engender them. --Karl Jaspers <http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Karl_Jaspers> _______________________________________________ Wikipedia Daily Article mailing list. To unsubscribe, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/daily-article-l Questions or comments? Contact [email protected]
