WARRENTON, Ore. – Officials from both sides of the Columbia River gathered near the South Jetty Friday to celebrate the completion of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ interim repairs to both jetties at the mouth of the river.

The $30 million in repairs to the two jetties were needed to halt extensive erosion of the rock structures and preserve the river’s navigability. However, the repairs, which began in 2005, are only designed to last eight to 10 years. The project completion event also marked the beginning of an effort to rehabilitate the aging North and South jetties.

The structures were built in the late 1880s and extended in the early 1910s, and experts at the Corps say they’re in need of a total overhaul, a project that is estimated to cost between $150 million to $200 million and is being compared in scope with the channel deepening project. Without the overhaul, a very large storm – the kind the North Coast only sees once every 100 years – could breach the jetties and quash a $14 billion segment of the regional economy.

The repairs will preserve the expensive efforts to deepen the shipping channel, said John Engber, state director for U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.

“All of our states depend so much on the Columbia for trade, power, irrigation, the list goes on and on,” he said. “If these jetties go, all of that effort put into channel deepening is for naught.”

Capt. Gary Lewin of the Columbia River Bar Pilots said the recent erosion of the jetties had an impact on the shape and function of the channel, which had quickly started to “deteriorate and redirect itself” as parts of the jetties broke down. Prior to jetty construction, he said, the mouth of the river was only 20 feet deep, which could be the result if the jetties failed.

“The purpose of the jetties is direct the current and make it stable and self dredging to a degree,” he said. “We’re grateful to all the agencies and governments taking a proactive approach rather than waiting for an emergency situation.”

The jetties influence commerce and workers a long ways upriver, too.

Larry Paulson, executive director of the Port of Vancouver, and Cager Clabaugh, vice president of the Vancouver district International Longshore and Warehouse Union both spoke in support of the Corps’ efforts to protect the jetties.

Paulson said the jetties are a key component of 2,000 jobs at the Port of Vancouver and 8,000 related jobs.

Clabaugh, who works as a longshoreman at the Port of Vancouver and serves as president of a regional chapter of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, said with continued support for river commerce, “work just keeps coming and coming.”

He thanked the jetty repair contractors from Tapani Underground, Inc. of Battle Ground and Kiewit Pacific of Vancouver “for risking life and limb to make sure this river stays navigable.” The repair projects, which together deposited 226,000 tons of rock into weak spots in the jetties, required moving “Volkswagen-sized rocks” into place at the mouth of the river.

Glenn Vanselow, executive director of the Pacific Northwest Waterways Association, a group that led the effort to fund the interim jetty repairs, noted the upcoming effort to obtain more congressional funding to study and model the jetty rehabilitation project, which is in the beginning stages.

Securing the funding to fully rehab the jetties would “protect the well-being of mariners who serve this region” as well as the economic importance of the river, he said.

Col. Thomas O’Donovan, the Corps’ Portland District Commander, thanked the many parties involved in the repair efforts and noted that one rock from the jetty repairs has been donated to the Columbia River Maritime Museum.