User:Levee Stories

'"All Together Now": Global Movement Towards Solidarity for the Redwood Creek Estuary'

An error was made within the construction of an earthen levee in Orick, California. Fault was admitted shortly after the levee’s completion in 1968. Observation shows this design flaw invades the Redwood Creek estuary. This unwarranted annexation causes extreme damage to the ecosystem. The estuary sits at the western end of the flawed levee system known as the Redwood Creek Flood Control Project (RCFCP). The RCFCP is in the remote Pacific Northwest region of North America in Humboldt County. The alluvial creek is a vital waterway to some of the last remaining old-growth redwood trees. Effects which this flaw has on the ancient forest remain largely unknown, yet the damage done to fish populations has been passionately documented for years. Additional factors including area history, chosen aesthetics, social dynamics and spiritual myths cause immense complexities that make correction of the project’s equation difficult. From authentic fieldwork and archival research to mixed methods conducted in 2016, results show that all interested parties feel that work needs to take place. To acquire the appropriation needed to aid in restoration of the estuary, the primary step is to make the levee’s cultural significance known. Wikimedia platform allows the wisdom gained from the applied anthropological studies to disseminate the knowledge to a larger community. The fruitful broadcast of all current content to aid towards congressional efforts has been published under a fixed Dublin Core based website. This information is also made accessible directly from the Orick Wikipedia page. (244 word count)

Keywords: United States Army Corp of Engineers, Levee, Redwood Creek Flood Control Project, Humboldt County, Redwood Creek Estuary, Indigenous Studies (Yurok People), Ancient Redwood Forest, Critical Habitat for Juvenile Salmon, Philosophy of Social Science, Role of the Anthropologist, Archival Research, Fieldwork, Quantitative and Qualitative Methods, Linguistics, Management Science