A rare look at the Ballard Locks

This story comes to us from the My Ballard blog. My only question: Why isn’t PugetSoundMaritime.com on the invite list for this tour!?!

Each year the Corps of Engineers “de-waters” the Ballard Locks, which is the official term for letting the water out, to scrape barnacles off the walls and make sure all the mechanical systems are working properly.

This morning I had the opportunity to climb 55 feet down the scaffolding to the bottom of the large Lock and see the structure from a rare point of view.

Here’s a short video clip (above) taken inside to give a sense of perspective.

Dru Butterfield, the Natural Resource Manager at the Locks led the tour. He took the small group into the filling conduits, or tunnels, along the side of the large locks, where volunteers are busy scraping barnacles off the walls. The sound of the scraping is deafening and the smell is eye-watering.

“The reason we hand-scrape barnacles is because we haven’t found a way to mechanically remove them that is more efficient than scraping them,” Butterfield says, “and we haven’t found any chemical that we can use that isn’t hazardous to the fish.”