BPA Project Number:  2003-011-00
CR-291604
Performance/Budget Period: October 1, 2015 – September 30, 2017

Technical Contact/Project Lead:  Catherine Corbett
Lower Columbia Estuary Partnership
811 SW Naito Parkway, Suite 410
Portland, Oregon  97204
Phone: (503) 226-1565 Ext. 240
Fax:  (503) 226-1580
corbett@estuarypartnership.org

Contracting Contact: Tom Argent
Lower Columbia Estuary Partnership
811 SW Naito Parkway, Suite 410
Portland, Oregon  97204
Phone: (503) 226-1565 Ext. 242
Fax:  (503) 226-1580
targent@estuarypartnership.org

BPA Project Manager:  Anne Creason
Bonneville Power Administration
905 NE 11th Avenue
Portland, Oregon  97208
Phone:  (503) 230-3859
amcreason@bpa.gov

Background
The Lower Columbia Estuary Partnership (Estuary Partnership) Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan (Management Plan) calls for 25,000 acres of habitat to be restored and/or protected by 2025 in the lower Columbia River and estuary. Since 2000, the Estuary Partnership has been implementing the Lower Columbia River Ecosystem Restoration Program (Program) to restore lower Columbia River ecosystem structure and function, with funding from Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The geographic scope of the Program is within the study area of the Estuary Partnership, and encompasses the lower 146 river miles of the Columbia River from Bonneville Dam to the Pacific Ocean, including the tidally-influenced portions of its tributaries. The overall Program includes toxic contaminant reduction and species recovery efforts, representing the umbrella program for the lower river. NPCC/BPA funding under this Project focuses on a subset of actions addressing BPA’s Columbia River Ecosystem Restoration Program (CEERP) goal of improving habitat opportunity, capacity and realized function for aquatic organisms, specifically salmonids. Funding of this Project provides direct funding for multiple restoration actions under CEERP annually and provides leverage for the Estuary Partnership to expand restoration efforts beyond CEERP for a comprehensive, integrated and collaborative ecosystem based restoration program.    

To implement the Program, the Estuary Partnership staff work regularly with and rely on the Estuary Partnership’ s Science Work Group, a committee of technical experts from throughout the region from the public and private sectors with specific knowledge in related sciences. Lessons learned during earlier phases of the Program have guided the development of the current approach, which now includes multiple major components. The components are designed to address the region’s goal of ecosystem restoration and support the needs of resource management programs and partner restoration practitioners:
1) A coordination structure designed to improve efficiencies and increase results;
2) A technical assistance program that provides capacity and support for restoration partners who individually cannot afford this expertise to work with landowners to identify, develop, construct and monitor restoration actions;
3) A rigorous scientific review process to evaluate and prioritize individual restoration actions;
4) A restoration inventory database to track status of actions in a GIS-based system, allowing annual reporting to BPA and others; and
5) An adaptive management framework that includes:
a) Ecosystem monitoring to track trends in habitat conditions and fish use, provide a suite of reference sites for use as end points in restoration actions and place results of RME findings into the context with the larger ecosystem (via project #2003-007-00);
b) Action effectiveness monitoring to track whether restoration actions are meeting goals and need for future actions; identifies actions that work best and informs how to improve our actions (this project and #2003-007-00);
c) Critical uncertainties research to address specific questions (e.g., salmon use of estuarine habitat’s contribution to adult returns) (via USACE AFEP projects) and
d) Implementation monitoring (this project and #2003-007-00).

The Estuary Partnership will continue to partner with CREST, CLT, the Cowlitz Indian Tribe, watershed councils, local governments and others to implement the Program, including annually implementing and monitoring multiple restoration actions.  

This statement of work describes the work elements, milestones and deliverables for the Program efforts that will be implemented from October 1, 2015 to September 30, 2017.

Review of Prior Work
From 2000 -2014, Estuary Partnership funding has supported approximately 83 actions that have restored or protected over 3,523 acres and opened over 79 miles of stream habitat. When combined with regional efforts, partners have accomplished over 197 actions representing 20,419 acres restored or protected in the lower river. The Estuary Partnership has also completed a multitude of programmatic tasks to provide a strong scientific framework for decision-making and effective implementation:
1. Established a solicitation, technical review, prioritization and selection process for restoration and protection proposals, including the development and continual refinement of a rigorous set of restoration proposal evaluation criteria
2. Developed and used a restoration prioritization framework for assessing landscape disturbances and comparing potential ecological uplift across actions
3. Completed an inventory of shoreline condition to aid in identifying site specific limiting factors and potential restoration actions
4. Monitored four pilot action effectiveness sites from 2007-2012, that lent key information to an overarching programmatic action effectiveness monitoring and research strategy, started in 2013
5. Developed a system of 51 reference sites
6. Compared action effectiveness data to reference sites to refine monitoring protocols and developed region specific restoration design considerations
7. Developed a Restoration Inventory geodatabase to track location and status of actions
8. Hosted a series of workshops on restoration to identify issues and increase coordination
9. Developed a Technical Assistance Program to help restoration partners identify, design and monitor restoration actions
10. Created and facilitated a Pile Structure Program to aid BPA and the USACE implement 2008 FCRPS RPA 38
The Estuary Partnership also leveraged resources from this Project to develop additional tools to help with prioritizing locations and restoration and protection actions as well as improving information available for designing and evaluating them. These latter landscape assessment tools include:
1. Columbia River Estuary Ecosystem Classification (CREEC) (under project #2003-007-00)
2. Land cover and bathymetry datasets
3. Terrain model
4. Tidally impaired dataset
5. Fish passage barrier inventory
All GIS datasets are available from the Estuary Partnership’s interactive mapping website (www.estuarypartnership.org) and can also be provided electronically upon request.

Despite this incredible amount of work and investment in ecosystem restoration, much still remains to be accomplished. The focus of efforts in the past has largely been opportunistic restoration and protection activities with an emphasis on a limited set of focal species (e.g., waterfowl, Pacific salmonids) on available lands. Our ability for new protection and restoration activities in the lower river is constrained in some areas, namely the Portland to Longview corridor, by urban and industrial development, and by the transportation corridor (e.g., the Columbia River Gorge) in others. Yet other areas have been set aside for the management of specific faunal guilds, such as waterfowl and overwintering birds and the biological and ecological needs of these guilds may not overlap well with those of aquatic or upland faunal guilds. As a result, the next phase of restoration in the lower river will require a more focused, strategic approach that incorporates a multi-species perspective.

This next phase will demand a scientifically-based regional habitat restoration strategy and increased regional collaboration and communication. It requires resource managers to review what has been accomplished on an ecosystem scale, assess benefits on a cumulative basis, identify gaps and strategically plan restoration activities to allow for more integrated multi-species protection and recovery over the long term. The framework for this next phase is in place. The Estuary Partnership has developed (and continues to expand) an ecosystem-based restoration strategy with the support of state and federal partnering agencies. The restoration strategy, including guidelines for implementation, is documented in the Guide to the Lower Columbia River Ecosystem Restoration Program (Estuary Partnership 2012). Those aspects of the Program relevant to the BPA’s Columbia River Estuary Ecosystem Restoration Program (CEERP) are contained within this Project.

Work Efforts for October 1, 2015 to September 30, 2017
Implementation of the Project will allow regional partners to continue protecting and restoring the lower Columbia River ecosystem structure and function, focusing on habitat opportunity, capacity and realized function for aquatic organisms. This Project will increase habitat opportunity by reconnecting historic channels, floodplain and wetland habitats to the mainstem and tidal tributaries. It will improve habitat capacity by increasing habitat complexity and native species, in turn promoting site conditions supporting the production of preferred invertebrate prey, high assimilation efficiencies and low predation and competition levels. Ultimately, these improvements should improve physiological conditions within organisms using these sites including foraging success, growth, fitness and survival. The overarching project goal is to ensure ample coverage of diverse, quality habitats throughout the lower river to aid the recovery of juvenile salmonid natural life history diversities. We will accomplish this with the following:
• Maintain a scientifically rigorous set of review criteria for evaluating individual restoration actions.
• Identify and prioritize protection and restoration actions working with landowners in the lower Columbia River.
• Design, permit, construct and manage restoration actions within the lower Columbia River.
• Monitor the success and effectiveness of restoration actions for adaptive management.
• Provide technical review and funding recommendations of restoration and protection actions for BPA.
• Provide regional coordination of restoration and monitoring as well as information sharing events to ensure ecosystem-scale adaptive management.
• Provide technical assistance to partners in three ways:
1. through funding for baseline data collection, modeling and feasibility assessment
2. through technical staff support on hydrologic and environmental modeling, data collection and action effectiveness monitoring
3. by providing high quality equipment for data collection efforts through a lending library

Through this Project, three to six restoration actions will be constructed or designed annually at tidally influenced and historic floodplain wetland habitats within the lower Columbia River. These actions will:
• Improve habitat opportunity through breaching levees; reestablish flow patterns altered by causeways, culverts and tide gates; restore channels in intertidal areas and restore and enhance connections between sloughs, side channels and floodplains with the mainstem
• Improve habitat capacity through adding large woody debris; remove or manage invasive and nuisance vegetative species and plant native plant species.
We will monitor action effectiveness at Estuary Partnership led sites and coordinate monitoring and data management with partners at their sites. We will provide technical review and funding recommendations of proposed actions for BPA and coordination opportunities for partners to ensure adaptive management and integration of emerging science.

Specifically, the Estuary Partnership will continue to work with partners to identify, develop, design and implement habitat restoration projects. Restoration projects will focus on tidally influenced habitats in the lower Columbia River and estuary that provide benefits to salmonids. Project types may include dike breaches, tidegate removal or retrofits, large wood placement, riparian plantings and habitat creation. In this role, the Estuary Partnership will provide information to BPA for potential projects, collect baseline data, develop scopes of work, budgets, and designs and oversee construction for those projects selected for funding. The Estuary Partnership will coordinate with contractors, engineers, and agencies as needed, and will ensure compliance with all applicable laws.

The Estuary Partnership will continue to provide engineering, design, hydrogeology and other technical assistance to restoration practitioners. Technical assistance helps offset the limited resources of Watershed Councils, land trusts and others who implement habitat restoration projects. Technical assistance will include developing conceptual designs for restoration projects, reviewing initial restoration project conceptual designs, identifying data needs for project engineering designs, and estimating project implementation costs.

The Estuary Partnership will continue to host project development coordination meetings with restoration practitioners to discuss on-going and potential projects to ensure coordination and technical exchange. Participants discuss gaps in restoration; pros and cons of techniques; logistical and long-term maintenance issues; action effectiveness monitoring; methods for documenting project objectives and actions and other ways to improve restoration projects in the lower Columbia.

Estuary Partnership staff will continue to work with partners and Action Agencies to track restoration project information, including wetted acres and river miles restored; status; permitting and other issues; types of restoration actions; costs; and other information. The Estuary Partnership staff will continue to track this information in a central database and work on making this available to partners with different levels of permission for read/write accessibility. The Estuary Partnership will provide maps to the Action Agencies of results and provide project descriptions and maps to the public over the Estuary Partnership website for projects after receiving approval from partners and Action Agencies. The “project development coordination” meetings and restoration project inventory database will allow the Estuary Partnership and its partners to track the status of restoration projects and help ensure that restoration in the lower Columbia is implemented in a coordinated manner.

Additionally, to aid in the development and implementation of the expanded Action Agency habitat program, project selection, and RME requirements, the Action Agencies and the Estuary Partnership will meet regularly to collaboratively plan future tasks, resolve problems that arise, discuss emerging issues and make decisions. In addition, the Action Agencies and the Estuary Partnership will work collaboratively to arrange field visits throughout the contract period to help in site selection. Participants of these visits could include Action Agency staff, contractors, Expert Regional Technical Group (or ERTG), elected officials, members or staff of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council and others to be determined on an ad hoc basis.

In summary, under this contract the Estuary Partnership will work in coordination with the Action Agencies, partners and others to accomplish the following:

(1) Continue the success of the habitat restoration program for the lower Columbia River and estuary (Bonneville Dam to mouth of river) and support efforts to move towards strategic project implementation.
(2) Provide technical assistance to restoration partners to address the limited resources of watershed councils, land trusts and others pursuing habitat restoration projects.
(3) Ensure long term support and coordination of restoration activities and techniques through regular meetings with restoration practitioners, project tracking and site visits, in close collaboration with Action Agency staff.
(4) Manage restoration project development through construction tasks at Estuary Partnership –led project sites.
(5) Support project implementation efforts by partners to ensure restoration activities are moving toward a more concerted, strategic method of ecosystem restoration.
(6) Continue to develop and advance the use of datasets and other tools to better inform project identification, selection and implementation to ensure the long term success on both individual project and program-wide scales.

The outcome of these approaches is a coordinated restoration program at both the program and project level that provides a high likelihood of sustainable project success over the long term.