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Future Directions for Snake River, Dams Envisioned by Brian Clark, College of Agricultural, Human and Natural Resource Sciences WSU Today, November 29, 2010

PULLMAN - Landscape architecture, design and education graduate students from WSU and the University of Idaho will present their visions for the Lower Snake River Basin Dec. 9-Jan. 31 at the Sage Baking Company, 1303 Main St., Lewiston. The opening reception will be 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 9.

Snake River reView showcases the design work of graduate students in the course "Cultural Interpretations of the Regional Landscape." During the course, students studied the connections between people and place in the basin and the ways these connections are affected by and affect the Lower Snake River dams.

For their final projects, students created design visualizations that explore the future of the river. The designs were informed by the networked stories and ecologies of the regional landscape; they feature sites from Pasco, Wash., to Lewiston, Idaho.

"The students' projects address and reveal the complex relationships among organisms, locale, the built environment, ideologies and time," said Jolie Kaytes, the course instructor and associate professor of landscape architecture at WSU. "They employ design strategies that require us to broadly reflect on values, energy, edge, transport, recreation, farming, community, power, sustenance, soil, settlement and salmon.

"Ultimately, the students' projects challenge us to re-examine how we see and understand the region - to continually review, in the multiple senses of that word, the Snake River Basin and what it means to be a citizen of this landscape," she said.

Although the students are still working on their projects, some of the working titles are:

• Placing the Rail Back in Road, Doug Stewart
• Channel Change: Shifting the Dialogue on the Lower Snake, Francene Watson
• Beyond Slackwater, Abby Anderson
• State Park Gone Wild, John Buchko
• Hungry Beaver Bites into Park's Plans, John Buchko
• Salmon Survival Secured!, Stephen Ulman
• Plan to Breach Within Reach, Stephen Ulman
• The Snake River: Back in the Flow, Stephen Ulman
• Braided: Weaving Culture, Economy and Ecology in the Lower Snake River Basin, Chris Barnes

"And the Sage is in Lewiston, which sites at the confluence of the Snake and Clearwater rivers. Students and I hope that having the work in this setting will facilitate conversations and get people talking about the Lower Snake River Basin's future," she said.