A Very Hot 15th Birthday For Hanford Reach National Monument

A Hanford technician named Rich Steele devoted a quarter-century to preserving the last stretch of Columbia River in Eastern Washington that had not been turned into a reservoir behind a hydroelectric dam. As his jet boat reached the upstream limit of the McNary reservoir, and the downstream current picked up, Steele would grin, spread his arms and announce, “Now, this … is a river.” Fifteen years ago, President Clinton designated a 194,000-acre Hanford Reach National Monument, embracing the 47 miles of real river and desert islands — home to the Columbia’s last big wild salmon run — as well as lands that formed a buffer flanking Hanford’s nuclear reactors.