Steady Increase In Flooding Driving Washington's Hoh Tribe Away From Their Home River

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For tribe member and treasurer Amy Benally, the danger can be seen on the doorstep of her family's home that has stood at the mouth of the river for nearly a century. Benally grew up there with 12 members of her family. Now the home is a gutted wreck from repeated flooding.

At first the waters took out the garage and the small building Benally's grandfather used to smoke fish. Then the family had to flee upstairs. "We'd see the waves and the logs coming," Benally said standing in the musty ruin of the home. "We'd stand out here on the porch, and my grandfather would get mad at us and tell us to come back into the house. It was pretty scary." Although the lowlands where her family lived were always prone to flooding, Benally said the water rises more often now. "It never used to be this bad," she said. "The river's changed."

Ernest Penn, the tribe's fish and wildlife officer, is a constant presence on the river and sees the difference too. Cruising up the river in his boat, Penn showed where heavy rains caused a landslide, where erosion changed the river's bank and where, pointing to a stretch of water, a "big pasture used to be." The flooding is no small problem for a tribe of just under 300 people who occupy a reservation only one square mile in size.

Several homes have been abandoned, other homes and the tribe's community center wear permanent necklaces of sandbags to keep away floodwaters. There is little room for new buildings and even where there is it's unlikely they could be put up -- more than 90 percent of the reservation is in the flood plain, according to tribal leadership. There are no clear culprits for the tribe's woes. According to Spencer Reeder, the Washington Department of Ecology's lead strategist for climate change policy, the increased flooding could be due to a combination of factors including global warming, logging upriver and cyclical weather patterns that have brought heavy rains.

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http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/04/21/hoh.reservation.flooding/