Lower Columbia River Habitat Restoration Project
Statement of Work and Budget FY2008

BPA Project Number:  2003-011-00
Contract Request Number:  CR-99492
Performance/Budget Period: September 15, 2008– September 14, 2009

Technical Contact:  Patti Howard
Technical Projects Coordinator
Lower Columbia River Estuary Partnership
811 SW Naito Parkway, Suite 120
Portland, Oregon  97204
Phone: 503.226.1565 Ext. 235
Fax:  503.226.1580
howard@lcrep.org

Contracting Contact: Kenny Weiner
Financial Officer
Lower Columbia River Estuary Partnership
811 SW Naito Parkway, Suite 120
Portland, Oregon  97204
Phone: 503.226.1565 Ext. 223
weiner@lcrep.org
Fax:  503.226.1580

BPA Project Manager:  Tracey Yerxa
Bonneville Power Administration
905 NE 11th Avenue
Portland, Oregon  97208
Phone:  503.230.4738
Fax:  503.230.4564
tyerxa@bpa.gov

Project work completed under this contract which covers the fiscal year 2008 from September 15, 2008 to September 14, 2009.  Project work contracted and completed during the last funding cycle, 2007-2008, will be summarized and submitted to BPA by March 26, 2009 and is covered by the 2008-2009 funding year contract.

Lower Columbia River Habitat Restoration Program
Contract Description

The Lower Columbia River Estuary Partnership (Estuary Partnership) Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan (Management Plan) completed in 1999, called for 16,000 acres of habitat to be restored in the lower Columbia River and estuary.  The 2000 Biological Opinion on the Federal hydropower system adopted this goal and identified actions pursuant to it.  This would restore 50% of habitat lost since settlement. Since 2000, the Estuary Partnership has been implementing a habitat restoration program that includes funding from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, NOAA and BPA.  The program includes on-the-ground restoration, developing a regional prioritization framework for restoration projects, scientifically based restoration criteria, and establishing an infrastructure for soliciting, developing, selecting, and funding priority restoration projects.  To implement this 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 sector with specific knowledge in related sciences. The geographic scope of the program is within the study area of the Estuary Partnership which 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 onset of the program coincided with the completion of the report “An Ecosystem-Based Approach to Habitat Restoration Projects with Emphasis on Salmonids in the Columbia River Estuary”. The Estuary Partnership’s restoration program was designed, in part, to meet several of the recommendations of this report, most notably:

• Finalize the proposed project selection guidelines and list specific restoration projects and potential sites
• Prioritize restoration projects that promote the long-term sustainability of ecosystem function and structure at the landscape scale wherever possible
• Perform effectiveness monitoring for implemented projects and develop methods to evaluate cumulative effects of multiple projects; and
• Establish a data management system for Columbia River and estuary habitat restoration. (Johnson et al., 2003)

This statement of work describes the work elements, deliverables, and costs for the Habitat Restoration Program efforts that will be implemented from September 15, 2008 to September 14, 2009.

Review of Prior Work

To date, the Estuary Partnership, in collaboration with federal, state and regional entities,has created and established the Estuary Partnership habitat restoration program. This consortium established a competitive review and selection process for project proposals; refined and used rigorous set of project selection criteria; developed a restoration prioritization framework; established an action effectiveness monitoring program; completed an inventory of shoreline habitat and structure and implemented 30 restoration projects that resulted in over 4,500 acres protected and/or restored and over 26 linear miles of shoreline reconnected or enhanced.  

Work Efforts for September 15, 2008 to September 14, 2009

2008 Federal Columbia River Power System Biological Opinion (2008 BiOp):
To improve juvenile and adult fish survival in the estuary habitat the 2008 BiOp directs the Action Agencies (AAs) to implement an expanded estuary habitat program, including the new Pile Structure Program, to address limiting factors involved in passage and rearing in the estuary.  The AAs will refine and implement the expanded program in coordination with the Estuary Partnership and other regional entities.  The AA will utilize existing tools (e.g., the Estuary Partnership’s prioritization framework, emerging science such as fish genetic information, and the habitat classification system, etc), build upon other Estuary Partnership efforts, and utilize the Estuary Recovery Plan Module, and local experts and resources to ensure timely and effective implementation of the 2008 BiOp.

RPA 37 of the 2008 BiOp directs the AA to convene an expert regional technical group to support project selection and determine the estimated change in survival which would result from full implementation.  As a member of the expert regional technical group the Estuary Partnership will participate and work collaboratively with the AAs, expert regional technical group members, and others.

The Action Agencies are responsible for selecting, approving, and funding estuary restoration projects to satisfy 2008 BiOp requirements. To accomplish this, the Action Agencies are developing a decision-making process and scientifically sound methodology to approve restoration and protection projects. The Action Agencies will establish a scientific methodology that will guide their estuary habitat restoration project approval process to ensure that projects directly meet 2008 BiOp requirements. The scientific methodology and priorities will be developed using a small group of restoration experts and planners selected by the Action Agencies.  The Estuary Partnership will work collaboratively with the AA and others toward this effort.

Continued Estuary Partnership Efforts:
The Estuary Partnership will continue to use and expand the Restoration Prioritization Framework for habitat restoration. This Framework strengthens restoration decision-making and emphasizes an ecosystem-based approach to site selection. The Estuary Partnership uses the Framework to guide restoration in the estuary towards a coordinated strategy in determining project locations and designs to provide greater certainty for success and sustainable results.

Determining the effectiveness of a restoration project requires a comparison of the restoration site to a relatively unaltered reference habitat in close proximity.  Data collected at these reference sites provide a baseline characterization of different, relatively unaltered habitats within the study area. These environmental conditions can then be used as targets for restoration sites to improve salmon habitat restoration success. In particular, information characterizing the elevation, soil, and inundation range required by native tidal wetland vegetation is critical for designing successful restoration projects. For these reasons, we have included within this contract year objectives to continue the process of reference site identification and characterization on a reach by reach basis. Ultimately, this network of reference sites will provide resource managers a means of statistically analyzing and comparing projects with habitat restoration project sites coming on line, to assess effectiveness not only at the site scale but of the coordinated inter-agency estuary-wide habitat protection/restoration program as called for in the estuary RME plan.

The 2008 BiOp directly calls for action effectiveness to “evaluate the effects of selected individual habitat restoration actions at project sites relative to reference sites and evaluate post-restoration trajectories based on project-specific goals and objectives” (RPA 60, Appendix A, NMFS, 2007). In response to RPA 60, the Estuary Partnership, in collaboration with the AAs, implemented action effectiveness based on the plan for “Research, Monitoring, and Evaluation for the Federal Columbia River Estuary Program” (Johnson et. al 2008) in summer 2008. The Estuary Partnership, with input from the Estuary and Oceanic Subgroup (EOS) and Science Work Group, identified 4 pilot sites (Mirror Lake, Sandy River Delta, Scappoose Bottomlands, and Fort Clatsop). Sites were chosen to represent different restoration activities (culvert enhancement to improve fish passage, large wood installation, revegetation, cattle exclusion, and culvert removal for tidal reconnection), habitats (bottomland forest, riparian forest, emergent wetland, and brackish wetland), and geographic reaches of the river (reaches H, G, F, and A, ranging from tidal freshwater in reach H, or the Columbia River George, to saltwater intrusion in reach A, near Astoria). Action effectiveness partners are implementing the Roegner et al. (2008) protocols, which were designed for estuary-wide action effectiveness research, and are collecting data on parameters such as water quality, sediment accretion, channel cross-sections, vegetation cover, vegetation planting success, salmon, and salmon prey. During September 2008 – September 2009, action effectiveness will continue at these sites and include winter sampling events.

During 2008-2009, the Estuary Partnership using federal, state and regional expertise will provide engineering, design, hydrogeology and other technical assistance to restoration practitioners. Technical assistance will reduce upfront risks to and address limited resources of Watershed Councils, land trusts and others active in restoring important estuarine and riverine habitat. Technical assistance will include developing conceptual designs for restoration projects, identifying problems with initial restoration project conceptual designs, identifying data needs for project engineering designs and estimating costs for implementing projects. We anticipate that this will reduce uncertainties in implementation and reduce unanticipated construction issues.

A restoration subcommittee of the Estuary Partnership’s Science Work Group, a regional team of technical experts, will meet regularly to discuss on-going and potential projects to ensure coordination and technical exchange.  The subcommittee will discuss gaps in restoration type and locations; pros and cons of techniques; logistical and long-term maintenance issues and ways to improve restoration programs in the LCRE. Estuary Partnership staff will also compile information from partners quantifying acres and riverine miles restored; types of restoration; costs; success and failures and other information. The information collected through these meetings and from Estuary Partnership staff will be compiled into a central database and then mapped by the Estuary Partnership. Maps and descriptions of monitoring programs will be available to the public on the Estuary Partnership website.

To aid development and implementation of AA expanded habitat program,  project selection and final decision making, and RME requirements the AAs and the Estuary Partnership will work collaboratively to determine how many, where, and who will participate in all field visits conducted under this contract.  Participants could include AA staff, management and contractors, regional technical experts, scientists, elected officials, members or staff of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council (Council), and/or  others. The AAs and the Estuary Partnership will meet periodically to collaboratively make decisions and plan field visits.  

The AAs will work in coordination with the Estuary Partnership, regional experts and others to accomplish the following:  
(1) Continue the success of the regional habitat restoration program for the lower Columbia River and estuary (Bonneville Dam to mouth of river).
(2) Identify and Characterize Reference Sites for Action Effectiveness Research and Status/Trends Monitoring in the Lower Columbia River.
(3) Evaluate the effects of selected individual habitat restoration actions at project sites relative to reference sites and evaluate post-restoration trajectories based on project-specific goals and objectives.
(4) Provide technical assistance to restoration partners to reduce upfront risks to and address limited resources of Watershed Councils, land trusts and others active in restoring important estuarine and riverine habitat.
(5) Ensure coordination of restoration activities and techniques through regular meetings of restoration practitioners and long term support for restoration through site visits for Action Agency staff.

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