By DOUGLAS W. LARSON
Although Spirit Lake owes its existence to volcanic activity on Mount St. Helens roughly 3,000 years ago, the eruption on May 18, 1980, nearly blasted the lake to extinction.
The lake, five miles north of the volcano's crater, is the largest and most prominent among dozens of subalpine lakes battered by volcanic impacts. Following the eruption, the lake became the focus of long-term research to track its ecological response and recovery. But this research and the lake that exemplifies nature's resilience are threatened by a misguided push for commercialization and recreational development.
Unfortunately, the scientific community has little voice in deciding how far this ominous trend will go. That decision rests with the public and what it values most: an extraordinary scientific record of life and life-support reborn or the ordinary material benefits of commercialization.
Spirit Lake is indeed an example of extraordinary ecological recovery. The eruption of Mount St. Helens 30 years ago tore open the volcano's north flank, ejecting a mountainous avalanche that slammed into Spirit Lake with tremendous force. Like a gigantic tidal wave, the avalanche swept the lake northward out of its basin and up the steep slopes of nearby Mount Margaret.
Some lake water may have actually gone over Margaret's summit -- rising about 2,500 feet above the lake's pre-eruption surface -- but most rushed back toward the basin, stripping the slopes of trees, rock and soil down to bedrock and washing it into the lake. The volume of debris thrust the lake's surface upward by about 200 feet, nearly doubling the lake's area and blocking its outlet, the North Fork Toutle River.
The first scientists to reach Spirit Lake were awestruck by the lake's greatly deteriorated condition. Within minutes, the lake had been transformed into a roiling, steaming body of highly degraded water choked with thousands of logs and volcanic debris. Bacterial decomposition of organic material rendered the entire lake anoxic (without oxygen), killing all fish and salamanders. Only bacteria and scarce plankton remnants survived in the black, toxic waters.
Scientists quickly saw in the mass destruction a rare opportunity to study microbial and chemical transformations and the biological restoration of a lake severely impacted by a major volcanic disturbance. The research would be unprecedented.
To ensure protection of Spirit Lake and other recovering ecosystems inside the volcano's 220-square-mile blast area, Congress created the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument in 1982. Considered one of the most remarkable places on earth, the monument was dedicated to science and public education. Congress directed the monument's manager, the U.S. Forest Service, to "protect the geologic, ecologic and cultural resources ... allowing geologic forces and ecologic succession to continue substantially unimpeded." (Emphasis added.) The Forest Service also was required to "permit full use of the monument for scientific study" and "prevent undue modification of the monument's natural conditions."
Thus, for example, fishing and other recreational activities potentially disruptive to Spirit Lake's recovery are prohibited. Logs and other forest debris are left in the lake. No effort is made to manipulate the lake's ecology, such as introducing fish or re-establishing wildlife habitat.
Nevertheless, special-interest groups and their political backers have pressured the Forest Service and the state of Washington relentlessly to open the monument to commercialization, recreation and development.
Despite a $200 million highway linking Interstate 5 to visitor centers at Coldwater Lake and Johnston Ridge, commercial advocates want even more access. In 2001, they lobbied for a 7-mile-long paved highway that would cross the vast pumice plain between the volcano and Spirit Lake, connecting State Route 504 with Forest Service Road 99 at Windy Ridge near the monument's eastern boundary.
The pro-highway crowd -- apparently unconcerned about irreversible damage to the plain's rare ecology and priceless research sites -- viewed the highway as a shortcut for tourist vehicles of all sorts, log trucks, delivery trucks and other typical highway traffic. Never mind that highways are major sources of noise and air and water pollution.
A major highway carrying hundreds of vehicles past Spirit Lake daily is difficult to imagine. The visual impacts of a highway are bad enough, but the potential for water pollution would be worse. Contaminated with automotive wastes and highway detritus, runoff from highway surfaces would drain downslope into Spirit Lake, lacing its waters with petroleum residues, synthetic toxins and heavy metals.
The only good thing about the highway now is that its plans have been shelved, we can hope forever.
Despite the ban on fish stocking, anonymous "sportsmen" illegally dumped in rainbow trout at least 15 years ago. This prompted anglers seeking a rare fly-fishing adventure to demand special privileges to fish the lake. Having access to other monument lakes for fishing was apparently not enough:
Despite the 1982 legislation, the Forest Service and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife stocked nearby Coldwater Lake in 1989 with 30,000 rainbow trout, a population that has since abounded. So far, fishing in Spirit Lake has been forestalled: A bill to allow the fishing failed in the 2009 Washington legislative session, passing the House on a 95-to-1 vote, but stalling in the Senate's Natural Resources Committee.
Grave concerns about proposed highway construction and other invasive commercial ventures have sparked an initiative to convert the monument to a national park.
Those advocating national park status argue that Mount St. Helens would be better managed, better funded and treated with greater dignity.
But a congressionally impaneled advisory committee disagreed, recommending in March 2009 that the monument remain under Forest Service management. The 14-member committee, consisting mostly of local politicians and tourism boosters with a pro-business bent, recommended further that recreational opportunities, including hunting and fishing in restricted areas, be "broadened." Unbridled might be more fitting: The monument already is open for snowmobiling, that bane of national parks and wilderness areas. And, if commerce persists, future visitors can expect yurt camps, vacation cabins, tacky concession stands and, if the gods are bullish and willing, perhaps even an 18-hole golf course.
Surely that can't be what Congress envisioned when it acted to protect the blast area. And surely that's not how we want to leave this precious area to future generations. Much has yet to be learned about Spirit Lake and other recovering ecosytems. That knowledge will come only if we have the sense to put science ahead of recreation.
Douglas W. Larson is a limnologist and Portland writer. He received a Ph.D. from Oregon State University and a B.S. in biology from Jamestown College. He has spent the past 30 years studying Spirit Lake and other lakes in the blast area at Mount St. Helens.