Talk:Black River (Duwamish River tributary)

Current location of river
The lead of this article begins by implying the river no longer exists, then walks that back and admits it still runs for about 4000 ft. The 1959 map File:Duwamishvalley1899-1959.png might have been once correct but it's out of date now. The cited source at says the river starts at 47.4742662, 	-122.2509556, the confluence with the Duwamish, and that the river source is  at 47.4516667, -122.2286111. This is a distance of 2-3 miles, not 4,000 feet, and it closely matches the source of the river on Google Maps and on the map File:Black River pre-1916 and 2013 map.png which is supposedly incorrectly labeled. What is incorrectly labeled? I like having a 1959 map for comparison, but we need an up to date map as well. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 22:05, 25 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Okay, first things first: I apologize to you, Dennis Bratland (and Myasuda). I was mistaken. When I looked at your map I did not look at it carefully enough and erroneously assumed you had mistaken the stream running roughly north-south for what is now called the Green River. The stream in question is, in fact, what I and most locals know as Springbrook Creek, a tributary of the former Black River. However, it turns out that sometime (1923?, 1960?, 1979?) after the Black River was killed off, the USGS Board on Geographic Names Decisions renamed it as the Black River. To this day, the Seattle Times, the City of Renton, the City of Kent, King County, the State of Washington and the US Army Corps of Engineers refer to it as Springbrook Creek but the USGS (usually, but not always) calls it the Black River and that is the official name.


 * As for the historic Black River--it's gone. I've walked along most of its historic course and upstream of the mouth of Springbrook Creek, which I've also walked, there's no stream or even standing water except for occasional storm water drainage. I've even walked its course in the rain, there is no Black River. It's dead and gone. Not coincidentally, King County monitors water quality in Springbrook Creek and the Green and Duwamish Rivers but not the Black River.


 * Tukwila - Black River Pump Station 03.jpg body of water the USGS calls the Black River does not even run freely into the Green/Duwamish. It's dammed at the Black River Pump Station (BRPS), 1000 feet upstream of the former Black and White/Green confluence. As the 2000 Habitat Limiting Factors and Reconnaissance Assessment Report for "Green/Duwamish and Central Puget Sound Watersheds" by King County and the Washington Sate Conservation Commission notes: "In 1916, completion of the Lake Washington Ship Canal diverted the Cedar River from the Green/Duwamish Watershed into Lake Washington, and eliminated the Black River" (p. 1-9). "The BRPS represents a barrier to the upstream passage of salmonids. In addition, the ability to control the water surface elevations upstream of the BRPS often results in a situation where the downstream water surface is higher than the upstream water surface" (p. 2.5-21). "In Springbrook Creek, the Black River Pump Station creates a slackwater pond of approximately 3 surface acres" (p. 3.3-7).


 * In conclusion, your map is technically correct and I'll rewrite parts of the article to incorporate--encyclopedically of course--some of the substantive info recounted above. --Mox La Push (talk) 07:10, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
 * No need to apologize. And yes, it's good to spell out that one authority uses the "Black River" name while others use a different name, and what exactly is the crux of their disagreement, if we know. Let me know if you want changes in the map I made; it's not difficult to edit. If you have a set of lat-long points to trace a more accurate course, I can use those instead. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 02:54, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

Images
The three images on the article are a bit cluttered and not well integrated with the text. How about we put up an infobox, using the Fort Dent image, and pick one of the two maps for the passage on the change of course? Or better yet, do you think there might be some more content we can add, so we can keep the images? Ibadibam (talk) 01:08, 11 April 2014 (UTC)
 * It's a short article, almost a stub, and it's not going to be a candidate for Featured Article. I don't see the point in this level of perfectionism with the images. I don't see how it's so cluttered that there is any impediment to reading the text, what text there is. If we did have two or three screens worth of text to go with the images, we would certainly find the three images worth while. So instead of wasting time trying to get the absolute most perfect combination of images, why not just expand the text? Especially since the layout can never be truly perfect on every possible screen size and resolution. Or, better yet, expend the effort on one of the more important Washington or Puget Sound articles. Lake Washington Ship Canal is a much more vital article, and there's volumes of history that are missing over there. Hiram M. Chittenden Locks also cries out for a major revision and expansion. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 01:53, 11 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Ok, I'll try to hunt down some new sources and see if we can't expand this article a bit. Ibadibam (talk) 20:25, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

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