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>
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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>
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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>
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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>