When considering essential work, most people think of workers whose labor is often invisible or under-valued. These are agricultural workers who grow our food, health-care professionals who work in front-line hospitals or behind the scenes in homes, and incarcerated firefighters who keep communities safe from ever-increasing wildfires. The COVID pandemic exposed starkly just how vital human labor is for supporting global systems and communities. But what about our landscapes, rivers, trees, and honeybees? What about glaciers? Are they also performing essential labor that remains largely invisible and under-appreciated?

The short answer is “yes.” A recent CNN article about Washington State’s Mount Rainier (the mountain with the most glaciers in the contiguous United States) captured some of this hidden work of geology: volcanologist Jess Phoenix said “Mount Rainier keeps me up at night because it poses such a great threat to the surrounding communities. Tacoma and South Seattle are built on 100-foot-thick (30.5-meter) ancient mudflows from eruptions of Mount Rainier.” The Rainier fear thus comes not so much from lava or pumice in a volcanic blast but rather, as CNN put it, from “the prospect of a lahar — a swiftly moving slurry of water and volcanic rock originating from ice or snow rapidly melted by an eruption that picks up debris as it flows through valleys and drainage channels.” This is a very real future fear, but Rainier’s glaciers, water, and mudflows have long shaped the region—literally forming the foundational sediment, energy, life, and services for communities in and around Puget Sound.

More-than-human environments have undeniably shaped the world, both past and present. Rather than seeing landscapes, rivers, and environments as passive backdrops for human communities, industries, and recreation, we instead recognize them as active laborers.

Glaciers perform essential work in the Northwest (and everywhere). They irrigate the crops that feed us. They generate the hydroelectricity that lights our homes and powers our industries, infrastructure, and electronics. They tower over cities and help forge regional identities, communities, and cultures. Glaciers also cause sedimentation in rivers and reservoirs downstream and they cause rivers to migrate and flood—sometimes cataclysmically.

Even far downstream, dozens of miles from the ice where these rivers are born, glaciers do physical work and stimulate new human work. This human work involves not only capturing water and power but also containing the river to protect human life, infrastructure, and communities. Any understanding of essential work in the Pacific Northwest must thus recognize the work of glaciers and all that the ice inspires in human labor all the way from icy mountain summits to the coast.

Mount Rainier’s Emmons Glacier and the White River it feeds offer a case study to help unearth both human and more-than-human labor that is usually invisible to the public. The Emmons-White glacier-river system shows the continuous and simultaneous day-to-day work of glaciers even far downstream, where the glacier meltwater provides water for life but also invades people’s communities. It is the daily work of and with glaciers—the life-giving, the life-threatening, and the life-protecting—that help reimagine glaciers and broaden our understanding of essential work in the Pacific Northwest.

This Emmons story only covers a small snapshot of the long history of people engaging with the glacier-river system, ever since the first Indigenous residents arrived. Here we just start the analysis, following the glacial runoff downstream through three key examples: a protective dam at Mud Mountain; a hydropower reservoir and recreation area at Lake Tapps; and a community managing its dynamic riverbank in the city of Sumner before the river empties into Puget Sound. Much of the essential work done during the last century downstream from the Emmons Glacier ultimately helped protect and stimulate new non-Indigenous settlements, industries, and economies built on lands taken from Indigenous peoples. The labor inspiring and completing these projects irrevocably re-shaped the Pacific Northwest landscape as it had been known.

Mud Mountain Dam: Labor to Protect

Early in the river’s course after water flows away from the glacier, government agencies have been working for a century to control and contain the intertwined forces of the Emmons Glacier and White River. Here, in the early 1900s, settlers were contending with massively destructive annual floods that prompted the US Army Corp of Engineers to describe the rivers of the PNW, including the White River, as blessings “…to the farms of the valley, but there are times when they become unpredictable villains. In the fall and winter heavy rains drench the mountains and valleys. . . . Then the peaceful rivers turn into raging torrents often leaving destruction in their wakes.”

By 1936, the US Flood Control Act stipulated that the Emmons-fed White River was too dangerous, too unpredictable for communities downstream. Managing the river to prevent floods could help secure populations while also helping the success of settler-colonial projects that took Indigenous lands and developed the modern industrial South Sound area. The Flood Control Act authorized construction of the Mud Mountain Dam, just outside the border of Mount Rainier National Park, 40 miles from Seattle, upstream from the thriving cities of Tacoma, Sumner, and Puyallup.

Mud Mountain was a dam built to protect people, not for generating hydroelectricity. Completed in 1941, it holds floodwaters in a temporary storage basin so the periodic outbursts from the Emmons Glacier don’t destroy communities and flood riparian infrastructure downstream. Mud Mountain Dam was, at the time of its construction, the tallest dam in the United States, and the work that went into its construction was equally immense.

Communities in this region were simultaneously dependent on the White River as a water source and existentially threatened by its periodic yet unpredictable floods that could wipe out their livelihoods in hours.

Despite these floods, the nearby metropolitan centers of Tacoma and Seattle and the farms in the White River Valley did not seriously consider relocation to higher ground. Their prosperity hinged in part on their proximity to the glacial river. As is so often the case with essential labor—as epitomized with health-care workers—the essential work of glacier-river-human systems are characterized by this delicate and sometimes deadly intersection of risk and reward. Safety, security, and economic development for residents has depended upon the largely forgotten risky human labor behind the scenes. Essential human labor enabled new riparian development, infrastructure, and settlements, but it simultaneously contributed to displacing Indigenous economies and communities around Mount Rainier.

The US Army Corp of Engineers built a flood control dam to constrain and manage the White’s seasonal floods. They were not working with the White as one shapes a material or collaborates with a peer; the US Army Corp of Engineers was grappling with the White as one does with an antagonist to protect their human communities.

Harold Shaw described the construction site in The Tacoma Times in April 1940 as “A three-shift 24-hour beehive of bustle and gumbo. Employment for around 600 men, a nine-mile railroad with four trains, operated around the clock by more than a dozen train crews.” Shaw followed this statement, writing that the work of these men “…will be small potatoes to the activity that will ensue in the mid-summer when a much-larger crew will begin the big fill as soon as the tunnel is completed.”

Only part of the work on-site involved building the dam; significant effort also went into building and managing the worker’s camp. The preparation of the project site alone involved cutting roads through the land to the dam site and clearing the heavily wooded PNW land of trees. Upon completion in 1939, the camp “consisted of an office building, repair shop, mess hall, hospital, bunkhouses for 400 men, a few family houses, and the original upper vista building.”

Even beyond the actual construction site, the dam had a series of ripple effects, including being, as credited by The Tacoma Times on February 27, 1940, one of the main factors in the “rejuvenation” of Buckley, the town near the construction site. “Industrially and from a labor standpoint, Buckley has perked up quite a bit in the last two years. . . . Employees at the dam, seeking homes in Buckley, have created a housing shortage. The natural result is a new building development.”

Through repeated floods that became increasingly destructive as communities grew along its banks, the glacier-river system created the need for this dam. Glacier-fed rivers can be unpredictable, prone to outburst floods and elevated rates of sedimentation. The Emmons Glacier thus performed work while also necessitating essential work from the human population. What’s more, building Mud Mountain Dam allowed for more human settlement in historical flood zones. Protective work to contain the glacier-river system stimulated a need for more essential work to control the White River as workers themselves moved into the reach of Mount Rainier’s icy system. When essential labor to ensure people’s safety works, it makes them even more dependent on that labor—or makes them vulnerable if the essential work stops. Essential work begets more essential work, thereby generating community dependence on governments to ensure their safety, jobs, and economies.

The 12 years of initial labor to build Mud Mountain Dam were just the start. The White River still necessitates labor on the dam today, specifically because of its glacial nature—with outburst floods, siltation, late reason runoff, and unpredictability when the glacier breaks apart or its internal plumbing and drainage shift. Dam maintenance remains vital to protect nearly half a million people and industries downstream, requiring jobs such as debris removal, intake tunnel maintenance, and monitoring. In addition to the more routine labor, there have also been several larger projects since the dam’s completion.

In 2019, a project worked to re-armor a damaged “tunnel designed to clear bedload and sediment from the bottom of the Mud Mountain Dam.” The White River earned its name from the substantial glacial sediment it carries, which turns the waters a milky white color. This sediment and other debris had significantly damaged and eroded the original tunnel. The re-armoring project went well, and yet the same tunnel will have to be re-armored at some point in the future.

Climate change and Emmons Glacier continue to challenge Mud Mountain managers. In 2022, Joanna Curran from the Army Corps of Engineers, told Crosscut that increasing levels of glacier meltwater and the suspended sediment it carries with it makes Mud Mountain Dam vital but at risk due to rising potential of glacial outburst floods from the Emmons. As Curran put it, “We want to make sure [an Emmons outburst flood] doesn’t rip up the whole dam as it goes through so that we aren’t putting anyone at risk downstream.” Even in wreaking havoc, the White River provided a need for work that was, by definition, essential. Mud Mountain Dam’s purpose is to hold back floods and incessantly impede the flow of the White; there are constant forces against this structure. The dam will require maintenance for as long as it stands, as long as there is a glacial river running through this valley, and as long as the people living there depend on it.

Lake Tapps: Labor for Power and Services

Further down the glacial river’s course, developers have regarded the White River as a resource to tap and exploit. Here, we find Lake Tapps. Tapps, while a human-made reservoir, has become part of the glacier-river system. Now the area depends upon Lake Tapps, even as climate change and political conflicts threaten this lake that provides crucial drinking water for residents.

Built in 1911 by Puget Sound Power and Light (now known as Puget Sound Electricity (PSE)), Lake Tapps was constructed to produce hydroelectricity. Power engineers were attracted to the site because, as they explained: “The White River’s proximity to Mt. Rainier, along with the moist climate, makes for a nearly constant flow of water.” Emmons Glacier, like glaciers worldwide, is critical to providing reliable, consistent water for the reservoir, especially in the hot, dry summer when the rain stops and the snow- and ice-melt fill the glacial river. People and the glacier-river system labored together—often through jurisdictional conflicts with towns, cities, counties, and Tribes jockeying for control—to bring electricity to homes and businesses in the surrounding areas.

The Lake Tapps powerhouse, which at its peak reached an output capacity of 70 megawatts, shows how this glacial river contributed to an essential but usually hidden product: electricity. As Paul Hirt reminds us in his book The Wired Northwest, “We hardly notice electricity’s ubiquity or our dependence on it until it breaks down.” When the power system works, in other words, the essential work of the Emmons Glacier, the White River, and the people engineering the power grid at Lake Tapps remain invisible to at least a half million people who flick switches and expect their homes to heat, their phones to charge, and their computers to run.

In the century since its construction, Tapps has changed hands to Cascade Water Alliance (CWA), and the powerhouses are no longer in use. The lake now, with blue waters characteristic of bodies fed by glacial meltwater, is “an integral resource to the region as a hub of recreation.”

Looking forward, the reliable resource will be used for municipal water supply. In the next decade or two, the glacier-river system will be providing water year-round to Lake Tapps and the nearly 400,000 residents and over 20,000 businesses serviced by Cascade. This signals that, in the summer especially, Emmons Glacier’s work of providing a constant supply of glacial meltwater is vital not just for electricity but also drinking water.

Unfortunately, like most other essential laborers, the glacier-river system is vulnerable and threatened. The PNW has experienced increasingly warmer temperatures and less summer precipitation in recent years. Even in the winter and fall, when there is precipitation, it is more often falling as rain instead of snow. This has led to Emmons glacier terminus retreating up the mountainside, meaning that the stores of water held in the ice on Mount Rainier are not being adequately replenished by snow and ice in the winter. Recent studies show that 51.56% of Rainier’s ice volume has disappeared since 1896, though each individual glacier on the mountain behaves differently over time.

In response to this reality, and as stipulated in water rights agreements that protect downstream access, CWA is restricted from diverting water from the White River when the flow is below a certain level. As a result, during the summer of 2023, Cascade was unable to extract water from the river to feed Lake Tapps for a time because “The White River [was] seeing some of the lowest flows recorded in the last 20 years.” Later in the season, CWA updated the public on the lake levels, announcing, “Due to the dry and warm weather conditions, Cascade is not able to add any additional water to the reservoir in September and October, so reservoir levels are likely to start dropping.” Moving forward, Cascade may frequently be unable to extract enough water from the White River to keep Lake Tapps’ levels high enough to maintain the recreational center, much less provide drinking water to some 380,000 people. As writer Bob Morris explained in his analysis of Lake Tapps, the White River is full of politics and divergent demands for the water.

There is a continuing fragility of the glacier-river system. This state of vulnerability is shared with many essential workers in the Pacific Northwest. When mounting threats finally overwhelm the system’s vulnerabilities, and we lose the products it provides, we may see just how essential that labor was.

Sumner: Adaptation As Essential Work

As the river approaches its outlet into Puget Sound and time moves toward the present, the way people worked with the river shifted to a more mutual relationship. Here, the city of Sumner on the banks of the White River is taking on a different kind of work. Rather than building dams to block the river or seeking hydraulic control by diverting and channeling its flow, Sumner has recently been working with the river and adapting to the challenges the White River poses.

Sumner faces certain problems precisely because the White River is part of a glacier-river system. Up on the slopes of Mount Rainier, the Emmons Glacier is hard at work eroding the stone of the mountainside through abrasion. This produces fine-grained sediment that is carried away in the river’s currents. The glacial sediment and debris eventually wash into Sumner, where they are deposited on the riverbed and banks. Over time, the river’s bed has grown shallower, making the river spread out in order to carry the same volume of water—or even more water as the Emmons continues to melt with climate change.

According to the city’s White River Restoration plan, this sedimentation poses “hazards for endangered species and high risk of flooding during even normal rainstorms” that threaten the city’s economic center. The increased flood risk due to sediment deposits would not be an issue Sumner had to contend with if the White was not a glacial river. Nor would it be an issue if the river had not been confined to one narrow channel, defying its wandering nature.

As a result, Sumner must find a way to understand and work with the system to adapt the city to flood risk. Often, adapting is seen as a concession, but ingenuity, skill, and significant labor go into solving a problem while considering all the factors and working with the system.

The solutions Sumner has come to resemble compromises with the White and the ecosystems it fosters. Plans involve restoring, in total, 215 acres of land along the banks of the river. “In this scenario,” the city’s restoration plan proclaims, “everyone wins: salmon and other species get improved habitat; the region gets flood protection, shoring up the local economy; a regional trail system gets connected and transportation infrastructure improves.” Pierce County’s largest industrial center and manufacturing area is also along the river, and thus a key priority for Sumner adaptation.

Another project addresses the infrastructure threats that floods pose. The city is rebuilding the Stewart Road Bridge, and the “Replacement bridge is higher [and] wider, allowing [the] river to migrate, improving vehicular traffic flow and connecting [the] regional trail system.” Through this project, the city is not only adapting its infrastructure to the reality of living on the banks of a shifting river but also taking the opportunity to improve its function for citizens.

One other proposed, but still unfunded, adaptation project seeks approximately $60 million to restore 45 acres of riparian habitat. The proposed levees would “protect the regional manufacturing center with over 16,000 jobs and national distribution.” As this White River Restoration project explains, the essential work is necessary because “sediment and debris continue to wash down Mt. Rainier from the headwaters into Sumner.”

Sumner’s approach today is vastly different from how technocrats addressed issues with the river in the past. Upon building Mud Mountain Dam, the US Army Corps of Engineers proclaimed that “Like any other villain a rampaging river can be tamed. This is the story of a river and how it was brought under control. It is the story of Mud Mountain Dam.” Now, more than 75 years after the construction of Mud Mountain Dam, Sumner is telling a story much less centered on domination and control but rather on cooperation and adaptation.

The White River today poses a similar threat to the one it did in the early 1900s. Rather than boasting about how people can tame and dominate the White River, however, the recent work in Sumner acknowledges the persistent glacier influence far downstream. There remains a reliance on engineering and technology to manage the White River, but adaptation work has expanded to understand the dynamic human-river dynamics and takes a more river system approach instead of last century’s assumption of hydrologic domination by engineers. The idea of what essential labor looks like, specifically regarding the White River, has changed.

An Essential New View of Ice and Work

Essential work is both everywhere and completely overlooked. This is the same for glaciers on Mount Rainier. The ice is, on one hand, an iconic and omnipresent landscape feature that looms over millions of people in western Washington and powers their lives and businesses. And yet, even as the ice-white glaciers on Rainier are clearly visible from downtown Seattle, most people do not realize the essential work that its glaciers and rivers play, like providing water or shaping the ground they stand on. There are also the engineers and dam builders who have, for a century, been protecting people from the unpredictability of the glacier-fed rivers, such as at Mud Mountain Dam.

People’s relationship with glaciers and glacial rivers is not one with an inanimate force; it is a mutually productive relationship with a dynamic system.

Some of this work—such as building Mud Mountain Dam and developing Lake Tapps—was designed to benefit and protect non-Indigenous settlers while simultaneously, directly and indirectly, harming Indigenous communities. When considering this dynamic we must recognize that the work is not essential to everyone. Some groups are specifically benefitted by any form of essential work while others may be left out or directly harmed.

By broadening the idea of work and deepening understanding of the glacier-river system, the surrounding community, and residents’ place in it, we can begin to notice new physical, labor, and cultural threads that weave through landscapes. Work does not have to be a bound concept. By applying it more broadly, we can identify the role glaciers play in the everyday lives of so many people. And this role is not easily pinned down as “good” or “bad,” “useful,” or “destructive.” Glaciers and rivers are forces of nature; the interpretations and relationships are up to human beings.

By opening up this facet of work and essential labor, we can also better appreciate the work done by humans within this system, such as river restoration, water management, flood protection, and creating adaptive solutions.

Hopefully, by opening up this idea and identifying the glacier-river system as part of human communities, we can understand how much of an active role glaciers play in many people’s everyday lives. They are not so removed as some may think. The Emmons Glacier is present throughout the entirety of the White River watershed. The Emmons is the White. The White River is the Emmons Glacier. Glaciers cannot be separated from the rivers they produce. By restoring this connection, especially now, as most of the world’s glaciers are shrinking and slipping away, perhaps more interest, discussion, justice goals, and care can be turned toward glaciers and their role in our work and world. They are not secluded to only the coldest and highest regions where ice can accumulate year after year. Glaciers flow onward and outward through time, space, ways of living, and essential work throughout the Pacific Northwest.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported, in part, by an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant for the Pacific Northwest Just Futures Institute for Racial and Climate Justice.

This work would not have been possible without the support of the InfoGraphics Lab who helped in so many ways, not least of all by inspiring its shape and direction.

Many thanks to everyone in the Glacier Lab for the Study of Ice and Society for their support, expertise, feedback, and enthusiastic kindness.