By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor

If you want to pack the room for your next community meeting, put a wildlife presentation on the agenda.

HPAC invited Pamela Adams of BeaverInsights to come to its first 2025 meeting Wednesday night, and she enchanted the house with her observations about Longfellow Creek‘s beavers.

We’ll get to those shortly. But first, here’s how the meeting of the Highland Park, Riverview, and South Delridge community coalition – held in person at Delridge Library – began – facilitated by co-chair Kay Kirkpatrick, who observed that it’s great to have a sizable turnout about “positive things happening in the neighborhood.”

CARE DEPARTMENT UPDATE: Sean Blackwell from the city’s “third public safety department” spoke briefly, saying the CARE Community Crisis Response team is expected to expand into West Seattle in the second quarter of this year; by March 7, they hope to have 27 responders, as they staff up with the funding in this year’s budget.

MILLION GALLON STORAGE TANK PROJECT UPDATE & SURVEY: Daniel Arauz was there from King County Wastewater Treatment, with an update on the West Duwamish Wet Weather Storage combined-sewer-overflow-reduction project that’s about to be built near the 1st Avenue South Bridge. He began by explaining the problem it’s intended to solve – overflows of combined rainwater and wastewater in major storm situations. Currently when those overflows happen, the sewage/water goes into the Duwamish River from an outfall, “operating as intended, but that doesn’t mean we can’t improve the system.” The “big storage tank” is one way to do it – it holds what would be overflow water until the storm subsides and it can be sent to a treatment plant. If the project works as designed, the annual average of “four or five” overflows will be cut to one. This will be a below-ground 1.25-million-gallon tank, “just an empty lot” right now, with only a small hint above ground – and landscaping – of what’s going on below. Arauz said a lot of “sustainability features” suggested by community members, such as raingardens and climate-friendly concrete, were incorporated, along with art panels planned for the facility’s side, explaining aspects of the river.

Construction of the $50 million project – which might actually hold up to 2 million gallons, Arauz noted – is expected to start this summer; it’ll go out to bid in the next month or so. Construction will involve some street closures and other traffic impacts, but the extent won’t be known until a contractor is chosen. He noted that KCWTD has just opened a survey, mostly about how their engagement/informational efforts have gone so far. You’re urged to participate – do that by going here.

SOUTHWEST PRECINCT POLICE: Next up, a brief appearance by Southwest Precinct police. Officer German Barreto introduced the two new officers who had been mentioned (but not in attendance) at last week’s community-coalition meetings, Officer Hoang and Officer Kepler. They didn’t speak to the group, but Officer Barreto presented a few crime stats, comparing 2024 to 2023 in the HPAC coverage area – thefts, robbery, and gunfire are all up year-to-year; motor-vehicle theft and aggravated assaults are down.

BEAVERS! Then came the guest almost everyone seemed to be waiting for, Pamela Adams. She is a beaver expert working in multiple areas, but the focus of her presentation was eastern West Seattle’s Longfellow Creek.

(2023 photo by Kersti Muul)

If you weren’t aware we had beavers, Adams explained they had a two-century history in the area until they were hunted pretty much out of existence locally – then they started reappearing on the creek around the turn of the millennium (Adams noted a 1992 city report on the watershed that found no sign of them). They’re continuing to make dams and she says that contrary to what some believe, that’s a good thing – the dams are filtering the creek’s water, holding back pollutants, and more fish are showing up, with coho spawners increasing in the past few years. Juvenile coho grow under some of the dams, she explained.

She showed video (“these are OUR beavers!” Adams exclaimed, to ensure attendees understood the video was from Longfellow Creek). She said she’s found evidence of at least 30 beavers and 28 dams. Longfellow Creek is undergrounded in some spots and she said they swim in and out of some of those pipes, such as the one that goes under Genesee to and from the golf course.

Then a mini-Beaver 101 – she said the species has a 7-million-year history, and a 5,000-year history co-evolving with salmon. They are a “keystone species,” she elaborated, meaning that if you remove them, other species will be affected. She showed examples of the biodiversity in the creek, such as crawfish.

Beavers’ resurgence locally followed a ban on “kill traps.” She explained that beavers mate for life and procreate annually, raising their young for one to two years. They are “100 percent herbivores” – no fish in their diet. Their incisor teeth are “self-sharpening chisels” with “an orange layer of iron enamel on the front, a softer layer of dentin on the back.” Their tails are flat, scaly, and act like flippers, kickstands, even “danger whistles.” They build not only dams, burrows/dens, and “bank lodges,” they also build “side channels” for foraging food, as well as “scent mounds” to communicate with other beavers. What they’re doing is “stuff we might not think an animal can do” – essentially, engineering! she said.

Adams noted certain spots along Longfellow Creek, such as what she called its widest part, the “Graham floodplain,” as well as detention ponds. The features of the watershed – whether natural, man-made, or beaver-made! – are intertwined, she explained, telling the story of how water levels were affected when High Point Pond was drained for maintenance.

Her presentation was full of video – of salmon and other wildlife as well as the beavers – and we don’t have that to share, only words (though there are some clips on her website). But she refuted more of the myths about beaver dams – she showed proof that salmon can leap over them, for example. And she urged everyone to “be a beaver detective … when you follow beavers, you follow a whole ecosystem.” An independent filmmaker is in fact making a film about Adams called “The Freelance Beaver Detective” – a bit of her video is in the trailer:

They’re adapting to our world, so we should adapt to theirs and live in harmony, she suggested, adding that “beavers are like a probiotic – a naturally occcurring medicine for our sick and dehydrated urban waterways.” The beneficial effects of their presence include a “fish-friendly temperature” in water that they’ve dammed, she added, helping fight temperature rise in urban creeks.

In all, she says. people should “have less anxiety” about beavers.

WHAT’S NEXT FOR HPAC: The group meets fourth Wednesdays most months – start time depends on the venue; this one started earlier because the library closes at 8 pm and needs groups out by 7:45. Watch the HPAC website next month for info on the February 26th meeting.