A road across Mount St. Helens blast zone threatens one-of-a-kind research, lawsuit says

Conservation groups and scientists are challenging a federal decision to build a road through the Mount St. Helens blast zone, saying it would damage more than two dozen decades worth of irreplaceable research plots.

Since the 1980 eruption, Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument’s blast zone, known as Pumice Plain, has provided scientists and researchers a unique opportunity to conduct studies on plots of land unlike anywhere else in the world. Some of the research started right after the blast, providing four decades worth of scientific knowledge and insight into the ways watersheds take shape, the evolution of aquatic species and mammals, and the development of new plant communities.

But the preservation of some of these research plots is in conflict with another value: protecting against the risk that water, logs and debris held back by a natural dam on the volcano’s Spirit Lake could break loose.

The May 18, 1980 eruption destroyed the lake’s only water outlet. Five years later, a 1.6-mile-long tunnel was dug into a ridge to release the water, which continues to enter the lake as rainfalls and snow melts.