With the lake almost 10 feet below full pool for the first time in 10 years, crews on Monday began removing an old and inefficient seawall and the tons of riprap behind it. By Wednesday, thousands of yards of gravel were being hauled in and spread across the lake bed while the riprap was being hauled out.
Come summer, the City of Polson and Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes - who own adjacent parcels of Salish Point - plan to have a park on their new beach for locals and tourists to enjoy.
“Not everyone owns shoreline,” said Les Bigcrane, CSKT's wildland and recreation program manager. “There's limited public access to the lake, but this will be a place within walking distance of downtown available to tribal members, the public and tourists. Instead of just being a parking lot, it will be a place where people can come to picnic and swim.”
Located between the north end of the Kwa Taq Nuk Resort and the Polson city dock, the perched-gravel beach will cover 700 feet of Flathead shoreline. A protected area for swimming, located between the city dock and a dock built by the tribes on the east side of the site, will go out 250 feet from the shoreline and cover 175,000 square feet.
But boaters, who have long launched from ramps on Salish Point and used the land where the park will go to leave their vehicles and trailers, will no doubt be concerned that parking - already at a premium during the summer months - will be even harder to come by.
The two multiple ramps next to the two docks are the only public boat launch sites for miles around. Not only will the park take up a large portion of the formerly barren land used for parking, it will also draw more people - and cars - to the area.
Tom McDonald, division manager for CSKT's Fish, Wildlife, Recreation and Conservation program, said two parking areas above the site along Kootenai Avenue should replace most of the parking that will be lost to the park.
“It was unorganized parking down here, and it's always been unorganized parking,” McDonald said as he watched the new beach being built. “We're shifting where they park, and people will have to adjust and learn how to park up above, but with organized parking on Kootenai Avenue, basically, we're only losing a few spots.”
Smaller parking lots will remain on either side of the park, and they'll be connected by a road at the bottom of the steep incline at the southern end of Salish Point.
McDonald said that in future years, the hope of the committee that has overseen this project is to be able to close the boat ramp next to the city dock to create even more parking.
That ramp sometimes snarls traffic entering Salish Point from the west side, and catches lots of gravel that can make it difficult to gain traction while attempting to pull boats out.
Closing the ramp, however, will definitely require a different spot to launch boats, and the committee's choice - at the county-owned Polson Fairgrounds - has so far been refused (see related story).
No matter what, the new beach is definitely on the way.
Designed by Mark Lorang, research assistant professor at the University of Montana's Flathead Lake Biological Station, the new beach will greatly slow the erosion of land to the often-large waves found on Flathead - and that the old seawall wasn't doing a very good job of holding back.
“The gravel gives the waves something to do instead of eroding the land,” Lorang said about a similar project he directed on Flathead's north shore. “The more the waves move the gravel around, the better the gravel gets at stopping the waves. It shuts the erosion down to glacial-like speeds.”
Plus, McDonald noted, crews can come back each spring when the lake is down and redistribute the gravel so it will be most effective again when summer hits and the lake level returns to normal.
“It's essentially the same thing we did on the north shore,” Lorang said Wednesday, “although this is vastly more complicated.”
The reason? The lake bed here at the south end of Flathead is 4 feet lower than it is at the north end.
“We've got to bring the lake bed up to get the proper wave breaking,” Lorang explained. “But when we're done, it'll be the nicest beach on the lake.”
To that end, 7,000 yards - millions of pounds - of fill is being hauled in. Larger rock is being placed on the bed before the gravel is being spread, and for a long length of the beach, large boulders have been placed several feet out in the lake bed in order to keep the rocks and gravel from washing out in the undertow.
“It's a more passive approach (than a concrete wall), more appropriate to the lake, and cheaper in the long run,” said McDonald, who declined to estimate the cost of the project.
“We won't know until we have it all done,” he said, adding that the funding is coming from grants, the tribes, and “in-kind” labor and materials from the city.
The tribes hope to use the gravel beach to sell private landowners on this approach to battling wave erosion, and slow the building of concrete seawalls around Flathead.
They're also hoping for a grant to come through that would allow them and the city to rebuild the city dock and construct a new road down the steep hillside from Kootenai Avenue to the east parking lot.
Germaine White, information and education specialist for the CSKT Natural Resources Department, said the tribes and city are planning a June 21 event to show off their new beach and park.
Reporter Vince Devlin can be reached at 1-800-366-7186 or at vdevlin@missoulian.com.
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