A discourse analysis of Cedar River Watershed

as an extension of Seattle’s story of

innovation

Introduction

On any given weekend, a cosmopolitan northwest crowd

walks up the two miles of continuous switchbacks to the top

of Rattlesnake Ridge to take in the view of the Cedar River

Watershed: avid hikers sporting the latest REI has to offer,

fast runners with bulging calves of steel, big Indian

families sporting Microsoft emblazoned shirts, and old

Chinese ladies in dainty heels holding sun parasols. This

crowd is an extension of Seattle as each passing person has

an individual story of the Emerald City. Seattle, a city of

innovation, overflows its boundaries extending its

narratives through the people hiking the mountain and

through the horizon of undulating evergreen trees circling

the Watershed.

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The magnitude of the Cedar River Watershed, spreading

over more than 90 000 acres of evergreen covered mountain,

might not be obvious to the hikers. Its historical origins

are flowing downstream intertwined with the Cedar River,

carrying the water and its meaning not only to Seattle but

to other thirty-three municipalities in the near

geographical vicinity. Such a normal gesture to turn on the

tap and drink a glass of cool delicious water! But this

normality hides murky stories that were left untold, buried

in the silt left by the main narrative flow.

Image taken at The Cedar River Watershed Education Center on February 19th 2014 by Bogdana m. Manole

My paper intends to bring to light the Seattle’s water

stories that were left lurking in the depth of history,

stories that aided in crafting an image of a visionary

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modern city. I will do that by introducing you to the

Watershed and the Education Center, and follow the

engineered path of the Cedar River from the Masonry Dam to

the tap; I intend to connect the Watershed’s stories with

Seattle’s main narratives, following the threads of

innovation presented in my previous paper written with my

two colleagues, Nicole Wilson and Lauren Russell. My

presentation will invoke historical events as supporting

evidence for Seattle’s stories of modernity: homesteading,

railroads, timber felling and coal mining, the 1887s Great

Fire, and nature protection and conservation. What is the

origin story of the Watershed and how it has changed in the

last a hundred years? I will look at this question through

the lens of history, development, appropriation of nature as

a capitalistic commodity and the discourse of wilderness and

modernity. David Harvey, Neil Smith, Scott Purhham, Raymond

Williams and William Cronen will inform my analysis through

pertinent theories.

The Cedar River Watershed Education Center is a focal

point in discovering Seattle’s water story. The day I

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visited it, I braved heavy rain and snow as the I-90 highway

seemed to disappear into the grays of sky and rain, making

me ponder the philosophical meaning of the “road” that

brings modernity to its end, and often leaves behind the

silenced stories that accompany it. The dark strip of tarmac

leading me into the Watershed’s wilderness is the opening

symbol of modernity. This particular day, the Snoqualmie

Pass has been closed for eight hours, over-snowed form too

much precipitation, and the Facebook was inundated with

posts like “Ok, Emerald City, enough water for now!” The

world seemed to be made purely of water and this disturbed

the fragile order of the human world.

In spite of this, at the end of the black tarmac, the

Watershed welcomed me with the rhythmical sound of the water

drums; I arrived to the place where Water was home. It made

me pause and smile, remembering that oh, yes… this is

Seattle: the place of rhythmical water drums playing music

in the wilderness, and gurgling water fountains at the

Seatac Airport, an intertwined story of water, people and

nature.

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Image taken at The Cedar River Watershed Education Center on February 19 th 2014 by Bogdana m.

Manole

The People, the Watershed and the Water

The Cedar River area has been an ancestral home of five

main tribes: the Muckleshoot, the Duwamish, the Snoqualmie,

Wenatchee and Yakama. The Education Center states that this

area has not been lived-in by the Native Tribes, but instead

used as a sacred gathering place. Ray Mullen of Snoqualmie

Tribe was quoted by the Education Center saying, “The thing

about Cedar River in this area was everything. Cedar and

water were the life forms for the Snoqualmie tribe. ” The

Point Elliot Treaty in 1855 imposed the settlers’ land

ownership, and forced the Indians to cede 64,000,000 of this

land in exchange of the fishing rights.

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“It is also thought necessary to allow them to fish atall accustomed places, since this would not in any mannerinterfere with the rights of citizens, and was necessaryfor the Indians to obtain a subsistence”

declared Governor Stevans in 1850 after the signing of the

Medicine Creek Treaty (Native American Presence in the

Federal Way Area, 2010). A weathered Douglas fir tree on the

side of I-5 still marked the site of this treaty until 2006,

but in spite of the almost forgotten and ignored history of

the treaty, the struggle for recognition stayed strong

amongst the Native tribes.

Thinking this land acquisition as primitive

accumulation through the lens of

capitalist economy, David Harvey pinpoints the Indians’

struggle as part of the initial

“violent struggles against the forcible evictions and

dispositions.” The Watershed exhibit acknowledges only

convenient parts of this history, parts that nicely fit

within the current narrative of the Seattle area and

particularly the Cedar River area: yes, a number of treaties

have been signed more than one hundred years ago and the

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Native Tribes ceded some land, but nowadays the Native

people are collaborating with the modern settlers and

sharing Seattle’s story of innovation and modernity; The

Education Center shows representations of Native people

picking berries and fishing, performing drumming ceremonies

to heal the land , and actively conserving the protected

land of the watershed. After all they know the intricacies

of the web of life better than anyone due their historical

connection with nature, says the Education Center exhibit!

But this representation only comes to reinforce the binary

division between the modernity- and in particular the modern

innovative Seattleites- and the Native People connected to

nature.

The Education Center presents an image of strong

collaboration with the Muckleshoot and Snoqualmie Tribes, as

they are the ancestral people of this land. But there is a

palpable absence of the other tribes that did not receive

recognition by the United States Government. The Duwamish

“the tribal members no longer exist as a people” stated the

Bush administration at the beginning of his first term in

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spite of the Duwamish stating loud and clear that they are

still here (Seattle PI, 2014).

One photograph of the exhibit resonated with me while

visiting the exhibit, one that perhaps allows the

Muckleshoot and Duwamish and Snoqualmie to use their own

voice. The photograph is stating, “We are still here.” This

statement could be understood as a manifesto of a struggle,

a reaction to the forced ceded land, and a political claim.

It perhaps allowed the Watershed Education Center, as a

symbolic representative of the West, to indirectly

acknowledge the role of settlers in appropriating the

Pacific Northwest Native lands.

Image taken at The Cedar River Watershed Education Center on February 19th 2014 by Bogdana m. Manole

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Starting with 1880s, the Watershed became home to the

first white settlers that arrived to this area under the

Homestead Act. Loggers ‘felled’ the big trees, and built

roads to deliver them to mills, then a mere twenty years

later trains replaced the oxen and mules pulling the timber,

making the timber industry much more profitable.

Homesteaders turned forests into farms; they ““proved up”

the land by clearing, planting and building a house, a barn

and outbuildings”(Watershed Education Center). John Locke’s

critical thinking of the relationship between the

legitimization of the land and access to natural resources

allows us to understand the emerging private property rights

at this time: “conferring value on nature only though the

application of human labor…constituted the foundation of a

just and social order”(McCarthy, Purdham, 2004). In the

Lower Watershed area, the Renton-Denny Clay and Coal Company

mined for fine clay for sewer pipes and rich coal for

burning, as “commodities did not only carry their

materiality, but also the promise and the dream of a better

society and a happier life”(Purdham, 2009). But in time,

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these companies left behind such destruction, that they were

forced to close in an effort to preserve Seattle’s water,

what became increasingly important in late 1800s with the

rapid increase in population. The fast growing population

following the Klondike Gold rush, and the Seattle’s Great

Fire, pushed for a dependable city water system, with the

City Engineer Thompson lobbying for a million dollar bond

for the Cedar River Watershed. As a consequence, mining town

companies, settlers and railroads on the proposed Watershed

areas had to be moved. The end of 1800s and beginning of

1900s mark the beginning of the engineering of the Cedar

River area.

Image taken at The Cedar River Watershed Education Center on February 19th 2014 by Bogdana m. Manole

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Following the same frontier dreams, Seattle

attracted more and more settlers lured by the promise of

quick riches. Until 1880, private companies supplied water

from Lake Washington only for the richer citizens, creating

discontent amongst the masses. This discontent arose after

the Seattle’s Great fire destroyed thirty blocks because the

shortage of available water, leading to a campaign for

publicly owned water supply. The nationally famous engineer

Benezette Williams that preceded Seattle’s recognized

engineer, R. H. Thompson, proposed a limitless clean water

supply imported from the high elevation of Cedar River.

R. H. Thompson, foreseeing the need of water for a

rapidly expanding city, advocated that the Watershed land be

acquired and policed by the city; his proposal was soon to

be financially supported by the discovery of gold in

Klondike River in 1897 that infused immediately available

capital and demanded more water. Although the city obtained

the necessary legislation to control the land surrounding

the water sources, it decided that owning it would avoid any

legal doubt, proposing its acquisition. Thompson lobbied for

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a steady water supply supported by a healthy watershed for

future generations through an 1888 ballot. The ballot

proposing the million-dollar bond for building a gravity

system for the Cedar River watershed was postponed until

July 1889 due to a technical ballot error discovered in

November 1888. Just a month before the elections, in June

1889, Seattle burned to the ground, causing the bond to pass

overwhelmingly, with 1875 votes for and 51 against.

Seattle had its first water delivered from Cedar River

on January 10th 1901, into the Volunteer Park reservoir,

this water symbolically extending Seattle’s main narrative

of innovation and progress to the Watershed’s story. This

narrative not only silences the Native land appropriation

and political oppression that is still perpetuated nowadays,

but also it mutes the history of destructive exploitation in

Pacific Northwest during the late 1800s, making the

innovative success of Seattle’s water system the main

narrative.

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Laying main pipe, 1899; Wilse. 26x. Laying 12" Forse [force] main on E. Harrison Str. for Queen Anne stand pipe, Sept. 8th, 1899. UW Digital Collections

The Land, the Watershed and the Water

Thompson’s projection was accurate-a growing city

needed more water. Seattle was incorporated as a city in

1869 with a little more than 1000 people, it reached 3553

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people in 1889 at the time of the Great Fire, and a

staggering 42 837 ten years later during the Gold Rush.

In 1996, the City of Seattle acquired the last area of

the Cedar River Watershed in a land exchange with the US

Forest Services, being the sole owner of its water supply

and the surrounding area. As the Watershed Education ranger

Anna Constance said, “It took Seattle a hundred years to

move all the settlers, to buy all the land.” This statement

includes a multitude of sub-stories seeded in capitalist

production, starting with the increasing demand for the new

commodity: water.

The Watershed area, for instance, was peppered with

pioneer mining and timber towns until 1940s. Historical town

of Taylor in the lower part of the Watershed, prospered both

as a mining center and as a major producer and supplier of

bricks, tile, conduit, and other clay building products. Two

substantial company towns, Barneston and Selleck, and

eighteen logging camps were also situated throughout the

watershed, greatly altered the landscape of the watershed.

As Neil Smith stated, “in search for profit, capital stalks

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the whole earth;” the white settlers conformed under the

same capitalist ideology exploting a readily available

commodity: natural resources. This ideology also

restructures human social relationship with nature,

““freeing” the nature, placing it under auspices of self

regulated market”( McCarthy, Purdham, 2004).

The City of Seattle was able to acquire the land

occupied by these industry towns only when it lost any value

due to extensive usage of the resources; as ranger Anna

said, “they agreed to sell the land only after they cut down

all the timber and they had no use of it anymore.” As

McCarthy and Purdham discuss, land as “accumulation through

dispossession” received value through the application of

human labor, by improving “nature.” The Settlers fell under

the Lockian discourse of property rights and managing nature

though commodification, even if these property rights

allowed them to pollute (McCarthy, Purdham, 2004).

The historical town of Cedar Falls (the birthplace of

Seattle City Light) for instance, became part of the

Watershed not through a purchase, but after the construction

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of the Masonry Dam in 1911, another appropriation of the

water as a natural resource. This dam flooded the adjacent

low land of Cedar Falls town due to extensive underground

leaking due to glacier sedimentation (incidentally, this

sedimentation also provides natural water filtration, one of

five such systems in the country); the town is now on the

bottom of Rattlesnake Lake. As Raymond Williams said,

“nature contains as extraordinary amount of human history.”

The history of the Watershed’s mining towns and the land

acquisition demonstrates how the commodities circulate,

dictated by the flow of capitalism.

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Image taken at The Cedar River Watershed Education Center on February 19th 2014 by Bogdana m. Manole

Science, innovation

The Education Center presents a story of successful and

visionary management of the Watershed. Starting from the

entrance, we are walked though lessons of water cycle,

purification, water composition, salmon life cycle, reducing

consumption levels and water management. Employing sound

science ensures these engineering feats, and the exhibit

presents a parade of artifacts representing it: scientists,

instruments, charts, lab coats, and precise sounds. This

discourse is characteristic to capitalism and is supported

by the idea of modernity, where innovation, technology and

science are aiding in organizing the world into units that

can be easily regulated. Morgan Robertson explains the

production of hegemony through the regulatory articulations

within the realm of scientific knowledge, where the

circulation of capitalism is based on “ever-finer”

distinctions of science and technology.

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The Education Center is certainly presenting the story

of an increasingly regulated watershed, through policies

determined by a multitude of political institutions: the

City of Seattle, Seattle Public Utilities, US Fish and

Wildlife, National Marine Fisheries Services, Washington

State Department of Ecology, Washington State Department of

Fish and Wildlife, King County, US Army Corps of Engineers

and numerous scientists. I intentionally enumerated all the

institutions listed in the Cedar River Watershed pamphlet,

for it is overwhelming to witness how the discourse of a

progressive city through its management of water is formed

and reinforced through multiple regulations. With each new

regulation producing new services that can subsequently be

sold on a new market (Roberson, 2006), “attempts are being

made to create ‘legal instruments providing evidence of

ownership’ and ‘uniform standards for a commodity or

security” (Lohman, 2005). Each of these entities uses the

Cedar River water and adjacent nature as a capitalistic

resource. Regulating specific areas such as chlorine

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additives, filtration, forest management etc, creates new

markets, reinforcing the discourse of capitalism.

Image taken at The Cedar River Watershed Education Center on February 19th 2014 by Bogdana m. Manole

The story narrated by the Education Center is an

extension of the main narrative of Seattle presented by the

MOHAI. Seattle’s turn-of-the-century rapid increase of

population lured by rapid capitalist accumulation is clearly

explained as a success in terms of political economy, under

the discourse of progress and innovation.

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Water and watershed management

As you walk though the Watershed Education Center, you

do not only witness its main story – of an engineering feat

and careful management of the land and the water- but you

are also invited to participate. This is familiar story, as

MOHAI included the Seattleites in the same main narrative of

innovation and technology encompassing all areas of life, a

narrative where the new commodities created through

technological ingenuity became a normalized necessary part

of life. Science, technology, innovation, engineering,

management are discursive concepts feeding into the main

capitalist narrative.

In my analysis, water is not only a nature commodity

that enables capitalist accumulation, but its planned

engineering and careful management falls under the same

prevalent political economy narrative. Seattle’s successful

water system exists only because careful planning,

meticulous management and visionary foresight in the past

one hundred years. But Seattle’s water story is also

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successful, because, as the Education Center invites and

educates us, “we” pridefully partake in enabling this

discourse. “We” are part of this narrative through using

energy efficient appliances, cars, protecting forests and

not polluting the rivers. Paul Robbins eloquently invokes

Gramsci’s theories in explaining how the capitalist economy

is perpetuated not only through consumerism, but also only

through a willingness to participate. We take pleasure in

this process, from simply being able to drink the fresh

water to feeling proud to be part of such a progressive

city; “we” aid in creating the discourse.

Images taken at The Cedar River Watershed Education Center on February 19th 2014 by Bogdana m. Manole

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Hidden within the folds of Seattle’s story, and perhaps

not so obvious, is the story of nature conservation and

wilderness leading to the divide between Nature and People.

Cedar River Watershed attributes its water success to its

engineered isolation from human activity. More than a

hundred years ago the Indians were forced in the

reservations, to create the Watershed’s ““uninhabited

wilderness.” This fact reminds us just how invented, just

how constructed, the American wilderness really is” (Cronon,

1995).

In essence, the human relationship with the water is

also engineered. The people connected with the Watershed are

either scientists-experts or hikers. The Watershed is

producing pure water through the juxtaposition of two main

discourses: the specialized people managing this carefully

crafted land, and the engineered recreational area intended

to keep the Watershed closed to people while still

perpetuating its discourse. The Education Centers reserves

almost half of its space to explain the importance of the

Watershed’s nature conservation that engineers a clean

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landscape that produces Seattle’s pure water. The

management of this area is paramount, for second forest

growth for instance, is thinned out to encourage rapid

forest growth. Scientists constantly monitor levels of

water, bird and deer species, and salmon migration, what is

a paramount keystone species. The main narrative of

innovation travels not only along the waterways, but also

through Seattle’s intricate connection with salmon, another

successfully engineered relationship. Initially destroyed

because of the building of the dams, salmon species have

been re-introduced producing plentiful runs that keep happy

not only Seattle’s sports fishermen that lobbied for them,

but every school child that participated in mini- hatchery

class project.

The Habitat Protection for the Next Fifty Years, the Watershed’s

twelve-inch thick book of regulation stresses the importance

of maintaining the recreational purpose of the Watershed though

the Rattlesnake Hiking Trails and the Education Center.

Hikers and visitors not only use the carefully planned

trails, not only see the beauty and the success of the

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carefully crafter Watershed, but in turn, propagate these

stories reemphasizing the main narrative. Although the

history of the Watershed started during frontier times, its

present preserved recreational areas perpetuates the myth of

the wilderness as “the last bastion of rugged individualism”

(Cronen, 1996). William Cronen critiques the normalized

cultural construction of wilderness when he writes: “To the

extent that we live in an urban-industrial civilization …we

give ourselves permission to evade responsibility for the

lives we actually lead” (Cronen, 1996). Theorists David

Harvey and Neil Smith , too, contest this “nature idolatry”

because it hinders a true understanding of how and why

environmental, historical and political changes occur;

Following the Watershed’s main narrative, it becomes clear

how the historical details, political interests, capitalist

political economy became insignificant in the light of the

engineered success.

Conclusion

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Cedar River Watershed provides only a part of Seattle’s

water, the rest coming from Tolt River, north of Seattle.

Unlike Cedar River that relies on its glacier sedimentation

to provide a natural filtration, Tolt River system needs

filtration- using Tolt River marked a strategic decision to

equip the city with a filtered system as a backup to the

natural filtered one. As a result of the extensive

management of the Watershed area, Seattle is one of the five

systems in US providing water that is purely and naturally

filtered. Only a quarter of the water is diverted for

drinking tough, most of it being invested in managing the

watershed habitat by controlling the levels of the dams: the

water is kept low in the spring to allow space for the snow

melt, and released in the fall, to provide enough river

water for the returning spawning salmon.

Seattle’s water narratives ultimately fit under

capitalism’s political economy:

” nature resources … provide for the possibility of rapid

production so that open access to and control over resources

rich sites became a shadow form of accumulation though

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appropriation” (Harvey, 2006). Thus, the historical

capitalism can function only through continuous

appropriation of natural resources. Seattle water supply’s

discourse of innovation, science and technology comes to aid

this practice of resource appropriation, and open new

markets through new regulations.

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http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Duwamish-Tribe-fights-for-recognition-1284254.php Duwamish people declaredextinct

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