CLALLAM BAY — The park and community beach, which many call the “jewel of Clallam Bay,” has been closed by devastating winter storms and high-tidal waters, a local calamity that angry community leaders say could have been prevented.
The waterfront park with paved public beach access to Clallam Bay Spit and the Clallam River was closed Dec. 30. River flooding and the bay’s high waters breached the Clallam Bay Spit near the beach-access bridge across the river, washing away trails, picnic areas, trees and plants.
“It’s a big deal, and we’re mad,” said Herb Balch, owner of Herb’s Motel in Sekiu since 1978 and a Clallam Bay High School teacher 30 years before that.
Clallam Bay-Sekiu area community leaders and longtime residents say state Department of Fish and Wildlife officials have dragged their feet for five months over an action that would have eased flooding at the park — cutting a channel from the mouth of the Clallam River to the bay.
Some Clallam Bay-Sekiu residents are so upset that over the weekend they used shovels to begin digging a channel about three feet deep and two feet wide from the river’s sand-gorged mouth into the bay.
Group leader Don Baker, a lifelong resident of Clallam Bay, said a 10 a.m. meeting was set today with Clallam County and state Department of Fish and Wildlife officials at the park’s parking lot off state Highway 12. The river’s flooding problem will be discussed, he said.
If they don’t get satisfaction, they plan to finish digging the channel, said Baker, something that state fish and wildlife officials refuse to permit.
“All we’ve got to do is open up the (river) mouth to correct it, and that’s all we want,” Baker said Sunday in an interview at the channel.
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