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Author Janine Gates traces decades-long fight to save the Nisqually Delta
Summary
At a Lacey Museum History Talk, author Janine Gates recounted 50 years of proposals to industrialize the Nisqually Delta, the emergence of local preservation groups and tribal and restoration efforts — and warned that current permit cases and infrastructure projects still pose risks.
Janine Gates, an Olympia-based freelance journalist and author, told an audience at the Lacey Museum that Saving the Nisqually Delta chronicles decades of development pressure, grassroots organizing and restoration work along the Nisqually River.
Gates opened by situating the river: it begins as a glacier on Mount Rainier, runs about 78 miles through three counties and supports critical salmon habitat that helps feed southern resident killer whales. “My book really does begin and end with the tribes,” Gates said, describing visits with Nisqually tribal elders and decades of oral history that shaped her reporting.
The book recounts multiple mid-20th-century proposals to industrialize shoreline and estuarine areas — from Navy and port uses to a 1965 Port of Tacoma feasibility study — and the role that citizen activists played in opposing those plans. Gates credited early local leaders and organizations, including the…
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