First inhabitants were told by the first people not to set up a permanent residence on this bank. They didn’t listen then or now. Many people still think throwing heavy metal contaminated vehicles into a river will save their skivvies.
| Where is… Bethel coastline 22nd century |
Beautiful Bethel postcard courtesy of Tom Sadowski and Jimmie Froehlich
Go to TomSadowski.com where you can click on the “postcards” link.
There, I would like to say would be many postcard stories with which to regale yourself. However, the postcard link does not work because I haven’t even started on that page!
Site Search Tags: Bethel+Alaska, erosion, cars, riverbank, rip-rap, Tom+Sadowski, Jimmie+Froehlich, On+the+Road+to+Tok, SWMP, trash, melt-rush
Stable carbon isotopes do not date but nevertheless lead full lives. mpb
3 responses so far ↓
Will // 2007 July 17 at 8:58 am |
This post intrigued me, but there is not much information here. A Google search did not turn up anything either. May be just the way I searched, but I am very curious what the story is about vehicles in a river?
mpb // 2007 July 17 at 10:48 am |
Good question. The exact year escapes me and Bethel: the First Hundred Years book is in storage.
The oxbow of the Kuskokwim River which runs in front of Bethel took several streets out. The city had been using old cars and trucks as bank stabilizers. (As with the large boulders currently used by the Corps of Engineers, this increases the turbulence and can undercut.) When the bank went out, it made news and two classic postcards from Sadowski et al. (The other is Archaeology, Bethel style)
Here’s a good image of the river in about 1985 (?)
http://images.usace.army.mil/images/Hires/4414-21.Jpg
The work depicted here in 1996 has already been undermined, but no loss of houses yet.
http://www.poa.usace.army.mil/co/CoOrg/p_i_book/bethbk2.jpg
Witches britches and Alaska tumbleweeds « Grassroots Science // 2008 May 13 at 1:46 pm |
[...] Beautiful Bethel beaches (Sadowski & Froehlich) is the same city that refused to ban the little fly-by-nights a couple of years ago because a few folks ordering delivery lunch wanted them. This is the same public works that ordered new dumpsters that are too tall for folks to use, especially children. This is the same landfill, adjacent to the giant septic pond unlined sewage lagoon, which for years did not use daily cover; the same dump/pond which feeds the gulls and the ravens all year round. [...]